Sam Grogg Movies
- 1988
- R
In this comedy drama, Spike Fumo (Sasha Mitchell) is a Brooklyn streetfighter with pugilistic aspirations. With Spike's mafioso father in Sing Sing, mobster and former fighter Baldo Cacetti (Ernest Borgnine) looks out for Spike by getting him some bouts and every once in a while convincing the fighter to throw a match. When Spike meets and falls for Baldo's daughter Angel (Maria Patillo), Baldo suddenly sours on Spike. The father wants Angel to marry the college-bound son of a cocaine-snorting congresswoman (Sylvia Miles), and Baldo only envisions Spikes' future as being a mob enforcer. Eventually, Spike moves away from his embittered lesbian mother (Geraldine Smith) and moves in with the Puerto Rican boxer Bandana (Rick Aviles). He soon has two women pregnant in two different neighborhoods as he contemplates his future. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sasha Mitchell, Ernest Borgnine, (more)
- 1988
- PG
Irish author Hugh Leonard's play Home Before Night was the basis of Da. Martin Sheen plays an Irish/ American playright living in New York. No matter how much he's assimilated himself, Sheen cannot escape the influence of his deceased adoptive father (Barnard Hughes). The writer has several heated confrontations with the "ghosts" of his father and mother (Doreen Hepburn), as well as with his own adolescent self (Karl Hayden). Sheen comes to realize that his own success was in part sparked by the failures of his "Da", a gardener who spent his life speaking in empty aphorisms and wishing he were someone else. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Barnard Hughes, Martin Sheen, (more)
- 1987
- R
A macho misogynist meets his match in this independent comedy-drama. Shortly before Christmas, Eddie Jenks (John Jenkins) gets a call from his old friend Billy Regis (Chris Mulkey). Billy has just learned that his girlfriend Patti Rocks (Karen Landry) is pregnant; Patti doesn't know that Billy already has a wife and two kids, and Billy wants Eddie to lend moral support for what he expects to be an ugly scene when he breaks the news to her. Over the course of a long drive, Billy regales Eddie at great length with his low opinion of women in general and Patti in particular, but when Eddie finally encounters Patti in the flesh, he discovers an intelligent, down-to-earth woman rather than the slatternly slob he'd been led to expect. As it turns out, Patti already figured out that Billy was married, wants no help from him in raising the child (which she intends to keep), and refuses to be apologetic about pursuing sex when she wants it, the same way a man would. Chris Mulkey and John Jenkins previously appeared as Billy and Eddie in David Burton Morris's 1975 feature Loose Ends. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Chris Mulkey, John Jenkins, (more)
Adapted by Horton Foote from his own television play, A Trip to Bountiful is set in 1947 Houston. Forced by circumstances to live her loathsome son (John Heard) and daughter-in-law (Carlin Glynn), elderly Geraldine Page wants nothing more out of life than to return to her home town of Bountiful. Escaping from her family's clutches, Page boards a bus to Bountiful, where she makes the acquaintance of young Rebecca DeMornay. The two women immediately hit it off, and their trip is a most pleasant one. Eventually, sheriff Richard Bradford, ordered to find Page and bring her back to her family, catches up with the old woman just 12 miles from Bountiful. Feeling sorry for Page, Bradford permits her to complete her sentimental journey, even though he knows full well that Bountiful is now a ghost town of empty ruins and dilapidated shacks. It doesn't matter, though: Page sees Bountiful just as it was when she left it, and for the first time in years she is truly happy and at peace with herself. After several near-misses, Geraldine Page finally won an Academy Award for A Trip to Bountiful (incidentally, the original TV production, which still exists in kinescope form, starred Lillian Gish and Eva Marie Saint). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Geraldine Page, John Heard, (more)
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