Howard Feuer Movies
Based on a series of Rolling Stone articles by Aaron Latham, this romance was set in the world of L.A.'s hip fitness scene. Rolling Stone reporter Adam Lawrence (John Travolta) comes to L.A. to write a story about a prominent businessman who's been arrested for drug dealing (shades of the John DeLorean scandal). He's also decided to research a piece on the exercise fad and how health clubs have become the "singles bars of the '80s." His boss (real-life Rolling Stone editor Jann Wenner as himself) OK's the project. At a club called The Sports Connection, an incognito Adam meets the regulars, including promiscuous Linda (Laraine Newman), airhead Sally (Marilu Henner) and aerobics instructor Jessie (Jamie Lee Curtis), a former Olympic swimmer. Adam and Jessie begin a romance, but it ends when she discovers that he's there to trash her and the club in print. Conflicted, Adam wrestles with publishing the story, but the final decision isn't his. A director of sincere, sober dramas, James Bridges was an odd choice to helm the romantic Perfect (1985), widely considered one of the decade's notorious cinematic misfires. Bridges had enjoyed much greater success with his previous collaboration with Travolta, Urban Cowboy (1980). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Travolta, Jamie Lee Curtis, (more)
Charles Purpura scribed this semi-autobiographical tale about his experiences in a Brooklyn Catholic school of 1965. The film focuses on several Catholic school boys who get into ever increasing amounts of trouble with the presiding priests of the Catholic school, St. Basil's. Andrew McCarthy plays Michael Dunn, a newly arrived student who latches onto the class egghead Caesar (Malcolm Danare), who is constantly picked on by the class bully Rooney (Kevin Dillon). Rooney intimidates Michael and Caesar to become his erstwhile chums and, along with a few other quiet students, they receive corporal punishment for minor infractions, disrupting communion and confession and, ultimately, their antics inspire changes in the strict school hierarchy. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Donald Sutherland, John Heard, (more)
The TV prints of this entertaining melange whittled down the film's original self-serving title (Motown king Berry Gordy was the producer), and settled on merely The Last Dragon. Taimak stars as an African American martial-arts whiz, so devoted to his hobby that he dresses and behaves in what he thinks is true Chinese fashion. Taimak falls in love with sexy veejay Vanity. Gangsters intrude on both their lives when crook Julius J. Carry III tries to promote his talentless protegee into rock stardom. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Cat's Eye is an uneven, tepid trilogy of stories written by Stephen King connected by a cat which appears at the beginning of each story. The best story, and first episode, concerns chain-smoker Morrison (James Woods) who joins a stop-smoking group run by sadistic Dr. Monatti, played with great relish by Alan King. In the second episode, a gambler named Cressner (Kenneth McMillan) makes a bet with his wife's lover. In the third episode, a young girl (Drew Barrymore) is terrorized by a tiny troll. Although he wrote the screenplay, Stephen King was disappointed with the results and thought the interconnection of the stories using the cat clumsy and distracting. Directer Lewis Teague does an average job of directing the confusing and sometimes foolish script. However, James Woods' fine performance and the special effects by Jeff Jarvis make the film worth a view. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Drew Barrymore, James Woods, (more)
- 1985
- R
Director Frank Perry brings Susan Issacs' comedic whodunit novel to the screen with Susan Sarandon as a Long Island housewife who tries to escape her deadening suburban life by trying to solve the murder of a philandering local dentist. The dentist, Bruce Fleckstein (Joe Mantegna), is the kind of swinging ladies' man who wears gold chains and jazzy clothing. He also arranges to meet his lonely housewife patients in hotel rooms for afternoon quickies. When he is found murdered in his office, the suspects are as numerous as the names in the Nyack telephone directory, especially since Fleckstein had the habit of taking incriminating Polaroid snapshots during his one-on-one sessions. Judith Singer (Sarandon) is an ex-Newsday reporter and bored wife of Bob Singer (Edward Herrmann), a stuffy business executive, and she was one of the last people to see Fleckstein alive. Considered a suspect by police detective David Suarez (Raul Julia), she determines to solve the case herself, interviewing suspects and searching for evidence. If she solves the crime, Judith hopes to write an article about it and get her old job back at the newspaper. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Susan Sarandon, Raul Julia, (more)
This macabre, whimsical, erotic, dark, seriocomic film is a complex tale about an eccentric family and the psychological and emotional maelstroms that follow them around from New England to New York to Vienna, where the Hotel New Hampshire is located. Writer-director Tony Richardson worked from the convoluted novel by John Irving that covers most universally saleable topics -- homosexuality, death, incest, abandonment, Nazis, masochism, terrorists, rape, mental instability, and anarchists. The children in the family are the main focus: John (Rob Lowe) is a womanizing high-school student with a deep-rooted desire for his own sister; Franny (Jodie Foster) is the eldest daughter, a victim of a gang rape, now morbidly fascinated by one of the rapists, and equally attracted to her brother with incestuous desire; Frank (Paul McCrane) is the younger gay brother; and Lilly (Jennifer Dundas) is the little sister who blossoms into a famous author. Associated with the family is Suzie the Bear (Nastassja Kinski) who is not secure enough to come out of her bear suit. One friend of the family, Freud (Wallace Shawn), has been blinded by the Nazis and is running the Hotel New Hampshire in Vienna when he asks everyone to come and help him out. By this time, the plot has run out of room, and the climactic endings to several unresolved relationships happen in quick succession. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jodie Foster, Beau Bridges, (more)
Following magnetic performances in Taps (1981) and Fast Times at Ridgemont High (1982), young actor Sean Penn sealed his reputation as one of his generation's most gifted performers with his gritty star turn in Bad Boys (1983), an entertaining tale of teen hoodlums in juvenile lock-up. Penn plays Mick O'Brien, a Chicago street tough who's planning on ripping off drug dealer Paco Moreno (Esai Morales). When the scam goes bad and his partner Carl (Alan Ruck) is slain, Mick flees from the cops in his car and accidentally runs over Paco's little brother, killing the boy. Sent to juvenile hall, Mick encounters a violent prison society run by the murderous trustees Viking (Clancy Brown) and Tweety (Robert Lee Rush). After Mick defends himself by savagely beating Viking, he becomes the facility's new top dog. On the outside, however, Paco seeks revenge by raping Mick's girlfriend J.C. (Ally Sheedy). Enraged, Mick escapes with the help of his brainy roommate Horowitz (Eric Gurry), but Mick is captured by compassionate guard Ramon (Reni Santoni). When Paco is arrested and unwisely sent to the same jail holding Mick, a showdown between the two old rivals is inevitable. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Penn, Reni Santoni, (more)
Fresh off the success of Breaking Away(1979), writer Steve Tesich and director Peter Yates re-team on a thriller starring a young William Hurt as a janitor infatuated with television reporter Sigourney Weaver. When she arrives at his building to interview the tenants about a murder that's occurred on the premises, the janitor, having discovered the body, implies that he knows more than he's saying in order to keep the newswoman interested. Although he reveals nothing more, she does become interested in him, and when her nefarious aristocratic boyfriend (Christopher Plummer) learns from the unwitting woman that there's someone with knowledge of the murder, he's more concerned about what Hurt might know than about her relationship with him. Meanwhile, his paranoid, loose cannon of a friend James Woods has managed to get himself incriminated, although he had no involvement in the case. Hurt and Weaver continue to investigate the murder together, and as they become more closely entwined, both of their lives are put in jeopardy. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, (more)
The ads for Arthur suggested that this was an obnoxious film about an obnoxious man, an eternally drunken millionaire indulging his every whim. Instead, Arthur (Dudley Moore) is a sweet, somewhat pathetic character whose millions have left him lonely and with no motivation in life. When the film opens, Arthur is on the threshold of an arranged marriage with simpering socialite Susan (Jill Eikenberry), whom he does not love. Everyone expects Arthur to behave himself, but nobody truly cares for his well-being, with the exception of father-figure butler Mr. Hobson (John Gielgud, who won an Oscar for his performance) and blue-collar shoplifter Linda (Liza Minnelli). Arthur would prefer to marry the lowly Linda, but his iron-willed grandmother (Geraldine Fitzgerald) threatens to pull the plug on his huge inheritance if he doesn't honor his position in life and go through with his marriage to Susan. A sequel, Arthur 2: On the Rocks, followed in 1988. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dudley Moore, Liza Minnelli, (more)
- 1981
- R
Trying to recreate the screwball comedy success of his collaborations with Peter Bogdanovitch, actor Ryan O'Neal headlined this sporadically funny mixture of light farce and social satire. O'Neal stars as Bobby, an intellectual English professor who leaves his job when his father Jack (Jack Warden) appeals to him for help. A garment manufacturer, Jack is in serious debt to humongous loan shark Eddie (Richard Kiel), and he desperately needs his business to provide the capital to pay Eddie back. Completely by accident, Bobby invents the solution to his dad's problem: see-through denim blue jeans with strategically placed holes in the rear that expose one's backside. The fickle public goes mad over the "sexy" new style, and the money starts flowing in, but Bobby exacerbates his father's problems greatly when he falls for and begins dating the amorous Lira (Mariangela Melato), whose husband is none other than Eddie. So Fine was the feature directorial debut of popular Blazing Saddles (1974) writer Andrew Bergman, who would wait eight years before getting behind the camera again with the much more successful The Freshman (1990). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ryan O'Neal, Jack Warden, (more)
In this 1980 sci-fi horror film, William Hurt plays Eddie Jessup, a scientist obsessed with discovering mankind's true role in the universe. To this end, he submits himself to a series of mind-expanding experiments. By enclosing himself in a sensory-deprivation chamber and taking hallucinogenic drugs, Jessup hopes to explore different levels of human consciousness, but instead is devolved into an apelike monster. Director Ken Russell helmed Altered States from a script by Paddy Chayefsky, who adapted his own novel of the same name. Unhappy with the finished product, Chayefsky had his name replaced with his pseudonym Sydney Aaron. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Hurt, Blair Brown, (more)
