Billy Hopkins Movies

In the first episode of the HBO comedy series Sex and the City, Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) suggests to her friends Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis), and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), on the occasion of Miranda's 30th birthday, that they should try having sex like men -- just for pleasure and without any illusion of a long-term commitment. Carrie takes the plunge by calling one of her former boyfriends for a one-night stand, but finds it harder to stick to her new policy when she meets Mr. Big (Chris Noth). Carrie tries to fix Miranda up with Skipper (Ben Weber), but while he's taken with her, the feeling is hardly mutual. And Samantha decides to sleep with her latest flame on the first date (Jeffrey R. Nordling) -- much to the amazement of Charlotte, who went out with him as well and didn't think he was worth spending the night with. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Adam Coleman directed this psychological thriller that opens as attorney David (Alan Rickman) and Alexis Weinberg (Polly Walker), trying to catch the last ferry to their island home, spot a man (Norman Reedus) alongside the rainswept road. He's bleeding from a beating by unknown assailants and will only accept assistance from David and Alexis if they agree not to call the police. The delay keeps the Weinbergs from boarding the final ferry, so they rent a motel room. Later, the nameless, mysterious man becomes a stowaway on the ferry and arrives on the island. After he once again bumps into the Weinbergs, they invite him to stay at their cottage. Is the couple a target? Or has the stranger been hired by one spouse to eliminate the other? Shown at the 1998 Seattle Film Festival and the 1998 Hamptons Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

This two-part TV miniseries, adapted from Dorothy West's novel The Wedding, takes a look at mid-century issues of race and class in well-to-do black society. On Martha's Vineyard in 1953, debutante Shelby Coles (Halle Berry) stirs discord in her social-climbing family when she chooses to marry impoverished white musician Meade Howell (Eric Thal). At the Shelby family estate, weeks prior to the wedding, Meade informs her parents, Corinne and Clark Coles (Lynn Whitfield, Michael Warren), that his family won't be attending the wedding, and the irony of upper-crust blacks being rejected by poor whites hangs heavy. In a later plot twist, the single black father (Carl Lumbly) of three mixed-race daughters takes a very strong interest in Shelby that quickly turns into an overly persistent pursuit. Filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina, the miniseries premiered February 22-23, 1998 on ABC. Also known as Oprah Winfrey Presents: The Wedding. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

As another installment of Whit Stillman's trilogy, The Last Days of Disco fits chronologically between Metropolitan (1990) and Barcelona (1994), with several cameos overlapping and linking the films. During "the very early 1980s," friends gather at a popular Manhattan disco club reminiscent of Studio 54, where getting past the velvet ropes and inside was the first step. Edgy ad-exec Jimmy (Mackenzie Astin) can sometimes get his clients in with the help of the club's womanizing assistant manager, his pal Des (Chris Eigeman), who lets them enter via the rear door. Beautiful brunette Charlotte (Kate Beckinsale) and her former college classmate Alice (Chloe Sevigny) move about the club during the 24-minute opening club sequence. Attorney Tom (Robert Sean Leonard) takes an interest in calm, reserved Alice. Both Alice and the opinionated, assertive Charlotte hold day jobs as entry-level editorial associates at a small book publisher. With Holly (Tara Subkoff) as a third roommate, the trio rents a railroad flat in the Manhattan's Yorkville neighborhood. Charlotte throws dinner parties in an effort to solidify a social circle as an alternative to "the ferocious pairing off" around her. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

While one would imagine that the average New Yorker would be used to dealing with bugs after years of apartment dwelling, a scientific experiment gone wrong results in an insect that even Raid can't handle in this sci-fi/horror thriller. In Manhattan, cockroaches are spreading a deadly disease that is claiming hundreds of the city's children, so entomologist Susan Tyler (Mira Sorvino) uses genetic engineering techniques to create what she and her colleague (and husband) Peter Mann (Jeremy Northam) call the Judas Breed, a large insect that will feed on the disease carrying roaches. Since the Judas bugs have been designed so that they can't breed, the mutated species should die out in a matter of a few years. However, Susan, Peter, and their staff severely underestimated the cockroach's ability to adapt to its conditions. The Judas Breed has indeed found a way to reproduce itself, but more importantly, the insect has grown remarkably large (sometimes reaching six feet in length), has developed a taste for meat, and can mimic the appearance and behavior of other creatures with uncanny accuracy -- including humans. Susan and Peter have learned that huge swarms of the Judas Breed are living beneath the city in the subway system, and with the help of Leonard (Charles S. Dutton), a transit system employee who knows the labyrinth of subway tunnels like the back of his hand, they search out the humanoid insects before they can take over the city. Mimic also features Giancarlo Giannini, Josh Brolin, and F. Murray Abraham. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A lawyer discovers just how fine the line between good and evil can be in this drama based on the novel Tainted Evidence by Robert Daley. When a carefully-planned bust of drug dealer Jordan Washington (Shiek Mahmud-Bey) goes sour, a shootout between Washington and officers from three precincts leaves a number of cops dead or wounded. Washington escapes in the confusion, but he turns himself in on the advice of gadfly lawyer Sam Vigoda (Richard Dreyfuss). District Attorney Morgenstern (Ron Leibman) appoints Sean Casey (Andy Garcia), a former cop new to trial law, to prosecute the case, less for his legal expertise than because Sean's father, Liam (Ian Holm), was one of the injured officers, guaranteeing good press. Despite Vigoda's allegations of widespread police corruption, Sean scores an easy victory in the case; Washington is behind bars, and the young lawyer's career is on the rise; however, the discovery of a dead body confirms suspicions that Vigoda's allegations have a basis in fact, and Sean learns that his father may be in on a police cover-up. Night Falls on Manhattan also features Lena Olin as Sean's girlfriend and James Gandolfini as Liam's partner. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

For the third film in this series, Alex D. Linz replaced Macaulay Culkin as the central figure. Four industrial spies acquire a missile guidance-system computer chip and smuggle it through an airport inside a remote-controlled toy car. Because of baggage confusion, grouchy Mrs. Hess (Marian Seldes) gets the car. She gives it to her neighbor, eight-year-old Alex (Linz), just before the spies turn up. The spies rent a house in order to burglarize each house in the neighborhood until they locate the car. Home alone with the chicken pox, Alex calls 911 each time he spots a theft in progress, but the spies always manage to elude the police -- while Alex is accused of making prank calls. The spies finally turn their attentions toward Alex, unaware that he has rigged devices to cleverly booby-trap his entire house. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

David Mamet's play about three losers planning a robbery is brought to the screen in an admirably simple, straightforward manner. Don (Dennis Franz) is the owner of an "antique store" (read: junk shop) who discovers that the buffalo head nickel he recently sold to a coin collector was a lot more valuable than he imagined. Don hatches a scheme in which he and Bobby (Sean Nelson), a teenage kid who works at the shop, will steal the nickel back and sell it for a much higher price. Teach (Dustin Hoffman), Don's down-on-his-luck buddy, insists on coming in on the job, but Don isn't sure he wants Teach's help -- or that the robbery is a good idea at all. While director Michael Corrente occasionally moves the action out of the shop (unlike the original play), American Buffalo maintains nearly all the dialogue of the original play and its three-man cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The sophomore film from former music video and commercial director Michael Bay, this fast-paced action yarn featured rapid-fire editing, a cutting-edge rock soundtrack and liberal use of shots awash in a haze of burnished hues, all trademarks of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer. Nicolas Cage stars as Stanley Goodspeed, an FBI chemical weapons expert handed a unique assignment. Francis X. Hummel (Ed Harris), an insane Marine Corps general, has taken 81 tourists hostage on the abandoned island prison of Alcatraz. He and his men are threatening to bomb San Francisco with deadly gas unless $100 million is paid in war reparations to the families of servicemen killed in covert operations. Goodspeed is teamed with former British spy John Patrick Mason (Sean Connery), the only man ever to escape "The Rock," as well as a Navy SEAL team. When their military escorts are ambushed, it's up to odd couple Goodspeed and Mason to break into Alcatraz and stop Hummel. The Rock was the last film produced by Simpson, who died of a drug overdose before the film's release. Solo, his partner Bruckheimer continued making the sort of glossy, frenetic films for which the duo was famed. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

A lover, an ultimatum, a phone call, and a gun: these elements are found in each segment of Hal Hartley's Flirt, an experimental comedy-drama that essentially repeats the same story three times. But while the basic narrative remains the same -- a congenital flirt must decide whether or not to commit to a current lover, who otherwise will marry someone else -- the details differ greatly, from the location of the film to the gender of the participants. The initial segment, set in New York, tells the tale with a male flirt in turmoil over his relationship with a woman. The film then moves to Berlin, where the same drama is played out amongst a gay male couple, with an added touch of self-reflexive humor. The third and final episode takes place in Tokyo, with a female flirt and a more abstract cinematic approach, including several sequences in traditional Japanese pantomime. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Director David Fincher's dark, stylish thriller ranks as one of the decade's most influential box-office successes. Set in a hellish vision of a New York-like city, where it is always raining and the air crackles with impending death, the film concerns Det. William Somerset (Morgan Freeman), a homicide specialist just one week from a well-deserved retirement. Every minute of his 32 years on the job is evident in Somerset's worn, exhausted face, and his soul aches with the pain that can only come from having seen and felt far too much. But Somerset's retirement must wait for one last case, for which he is teamed with young hotshot David Mills (Brad Pitt), the fiery detective set to replace him at the end of the week. Mills has talked his reluctant wife, Tracy (Gwyneth Paltrow), into moving to the big city so that he can tackle important cases, but his first and Somerset's last are more than either man has bargained for. A diabolical serial killer is staging grisly murders, choosing victims representing the seven deadly sins. First, an obese man is forced to eat until his stomach ruptures to represent gluttony, then a wealthy defense lawyer is made to cut off a pound of his own flesh as penance for greed. Somerset initially refuses to take the case, realizing that there will be five more murders, ghastly sermons about lust, sloth, pride, wrath, and envy presented by a madman to a sinful world. Somerset is correct, and something within him cannot let the case go, forcing the weary detective to team with Mills and see the case to its almost unspeakably horrible conclusion. The moody photography is by Darius Khondji; the nauseatingly vivid special effects are by makeup artist Rob Bottin, best known for more fantasy-oriented work in films like The Howling (1981). ~ Robert Firsching, All Movie Guide

Oliver Stone, the most outspokenly political American filmmaker of the 1980s and '90s, directs this epic-length biography of Richard Nixon, the 37th President of the U.S., who was re-elected by a landslide in 1972, only to resign in disgrace two years later. Taking a non-linear approach, Nixon jumps back and forth between many different periods and events, from Nixon's strict upbringing at the hands of his Quaker mother, through the many peaks and valleys of his political career, to his downfall in the wake of the Watergate scandal. The facts of his life are blended with supposition and speculation to create a portrait that is often critical of the man's policies but displays an unexpected compassion toward his failings as a human being. Anthony Hopkins stars as Nixon, Joan Allen plays his long-suffering wife Pat, Mary Steenburgen portrays his mother Hannah, Bob Hoskins is cast as J. Edgar Hoover, Powers Boothe plays Alexander Haig, Paul Sorvino portrays Henry Kisinger, and Ed Harris plays E. Howard Hunt. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide