Caris Corfman Movies
Paul Mazursky directed this comedy, which blends a broad satire of the film industry with a thoughtful tale of a middle-aged man looking back on his life's failures. Harry Stone (Danny Aiello) is a film director who desperately needs a hit -- so desperately that he gets talked into directing an inane sci-fi film about a group of farm kids (led by Ally Sheedy) who grow an enormous pickle that they turn into a spaceship, allowing them to visit the planet Cleveland (ruled by Little Richard and his right hand man, Griffin Dunne) where everyone eats nothing but meat. Convinced that the film will flop, Harry is in a state of panic as he returns to New York with his Parisian girlfriend Francoise (Clotilde Courau), a mere 20 years his junior, and visits his ex-wife Ellen (Dyan Cannon); his mother Yetta (Shelley Winters); and his son Gregory (Chris Penn). Meanwhile Harry flashes back on his childhood and the film he could have made of it, and pitches his dream film (a historical epic about the life of Montezuma) to studio executives, who instead want him to make a movie kids can relate to. The Pickle was filmed in 1991, but only received a token theatrical release two years later. Actually, the sci-fi story with Little Richard as the undisputed ruler of Cleveland looks like it might have been an ideal vehicle for Edward D. Wood Jr.. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Dyan Cannon, (more)
Chevy Chase stars as Andy Farmer, a sportswriter who moves with his schoolteacher wife Elizabeth (Madolyn Smith) to the country in order to write a novel in relative seclusion. Of course, seclusion is the last thing the Farmers find in the small, eccentric town, where disaster awaits them at every turn. The veteran production staff features the likes of composer Elmer Bernstein, cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek, production designer Henry Bumstead, and director George Roy Hill (The Sting, The World According to Garp). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chevy Chase, Madolyn Smith, (more)
High-powered gangsters move this crime drama along at a fast pace. When two cops, Eddie Jillette (Richard Gere) and Joe Collins (Gary Basaraba), hear about a contract out on local crime boss Losado (Jeroen Krabbe), they go undercover posing as hitmen, and the result is murder. Collins and the man who hired them, Paul Deveneux (Terry Kinney) are killed, and Jillette goes looking for the assassin. He ends up in New Orleans where he locates Michel Duval (Kim Basinger), the girlfriend of Deveneux now virtually held a prisoner by Losado. Jillette has his work cut out for him. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Gere, Kim Basinger, (more)
- 1985
- PG
Irreverent British writer Dennis Potter speaks aloud what many literary historians have only postulated in whispers in Dreamchild. The film is set in 1932, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of Alice in Wonderland creator Lewis Carroll. The guest of honor at the New York-based celebration is 80-year-old Alice Liddell (Coral Browne), who as a child inspired Carroll's whimsical novels. Amidst the cajoling of both devoted fans and fast-buck hustlers, the grim-faced Alice tries to remain calm and dignified. What none of the idolaters suspect is that Alice harbors a long-suppressed secret concerning her "very special" relationship with Carroll -- a secret revealed in an extremely tasteful fashion during a flashback sequence, featuring Amelia Shankley as young Alice and Ian Holm as Charles Dodgson, the virginal, child-obsessed clergyman whom the world knew as Lewis Carroll. The darkness of Dennis Potter's vision is lightened by Muppeteer Jim Henson's marvelous three-dimensional renditions of the Wonderland and Looking Glass characters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Coral Browne, Ian Holm, (more)
- 1983
Nesto Izmedju is an intellectually comic spoof of cultural morés and linguistic groping between an American journalist (Caris Corfman) and two Yugoslav men who "court" her -- a doctor (Predrag Manojlovic) and a playboy (Dragan Nikolic). As each man tries to outdo the other for her affections, the American makes note of the aspects of the culture that might understandably seem a bit odd (eight rotating presidents at the time, for example). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Predrag Manojlovic, Dragan Nikolic, (more)
