Henry Czerny Movies
One of Canada's most respected dramatic actors, Henry Czerny (pronounced ChiERRnee) has earned acclaim on stage, television, and in feature films, both in his native land and in Hollywood. Born and raised in Toronto, Czerny cut his professional teeth on Shakespearean and classical theater following his graduation from Canada's National Theater school in 1982. He also occasionally guest starred on such television shows as Night Heat and Hot Shots. His blood-chilling portrayal of an anguished, pedophiliac priest running an orphanage for young boys in the 1993 CBC-produced miniseries The Boys of St. Vincent provided Czerny with the needed star-making turn. The film was a hit and was released theatrically in the U.S. In 1994, the critically acclaimed role earned Czerny a 1994 Canadian Gemini award for "best performance by an actor in a leading role in a dramatic program or miniseries." He appeared in other esteemed television films, including The Margaret Sanger Story, Trial at Fortitude Bay, and Shattered Vows. Czerny entered feature films with small supporting roles in the Canadian-produced police thrillers A Man in Uniform and Cold Sweat (both 1993). He got his break in Hollywood after playing an incestuous father in the CBS telemovie Ultimate Betrayal: The Rodgers Sisters Story (1994). Shortly after signing to the William Morris Agency, he was cast as the manipulative and clever chief of CIA operations opposite Harrison Ford in Clear and Present Danger (1994). The film was a smash hit. Czerny has subsequently been kept very busy, appearing in Canadian and Hollywood feature films and in television movies. His film credits include Jenipapo (1995), Mission Impossible (1996), The Ice Storm (1997), and Kayla (1998). ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1997
A ranching movie set in Western (Canada) during the 1920s. The story line is a little unusual: A ranch foreman makes a promise to his boss to fetch the ranch-owner's son, who has been boarded since birth in a distant large city. He travels there, only to find out that the boy, now a young adult, has spent his entire life in an insane asylum. He takes him (and his Native-American nanny) back to the ranch, only to find his boss has died and the bank is trying to take over the property. Just prior to his death, the ranch owner had signed a paper leaving the guardianship of his son and the fate of his ranch in the hands of the foreman, leaving nothing to his conniving and jealous brother. This story is about fending off the bank through mounting a successful cattle drive, teaching the hearing-impaired rancher's son (and new owner) about ranch life, and coming to terms with a young woman who is not afraid to speak her mind. Mix all of this with plenty of dirty tricks by the banking crowd and the brother and you have the standard recipe for overcoming hard odds, falling in love, and attempting to save the ranch. This is unabashedly a romantic melodrama, one with a happy ending. ~ Michael Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Czerny, Colette Stevenson, (more)
- 1996
Comic actor Bob Saget served as producer and director of this made-for-TV film, inspired by the true story of Saget's sister Gay, who died in 1994 at the age of 47. Despite the pressures of single motherhood, schoolteacher Hope Altman (Dana Delany) seems to have her life in order until she is diagnosed with scleroderma, a disfiguring skin disease that causes her body's connective tissues to stiffen and atrophy, and will eventually paralyze her while eating away at her vital organs. There is no cure for scleroderma, and the survival rate is tragically low--and worse, neither the medical community nor the general public has a firm grasp on understanding the disease and its many victims (500,000, mostly female, in the United States alone). The film chronicles the manner in which Hope and her family handle the nightmarish situation, often with what Saget described as "irreverence and dark humor" (At one point, Hope's brother Alan--a comedy writer--quips that scleroderma sounds like "a deli entrée"). Sharon Monsky, who at the time ran one of the most prominent organizations for those suffering from scleroderma, appears briefly as herself. For Hope originally aired over the ABC network on November 17, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1996
Canadian defense attorney Gina Antonelli (Lolita Davidovitch) takes on her most unusual case--and her biggest professional challenge--when she agree to defend Pauloosie (Paul Gordon), a 19-year-old Inuit living in a remote Arctic village. Accused of sexual assault of a minor, Pauloosie has by the standards of his people alrady done penance for his crime (which in his eyes was not a crime), pleading unconditional guilt and offering a gift of atonement to the girl's family. But ambitious prosecutor Daniel Metz (Henry Czerny) intends to make an example of Pauloosie by demanding the maximum sentence under Canadian law, a move that has divided the region's political interests straight down the middle. It is up to Gina to burrow through a maddening maze of cultural conflicts and arrive at a legal decision that will satisfy both the government and the natives--and also will assure the fairest amount of justice for the stoic Pauloosie. Produced for Canadian television in 1994, Trial at Fortitude Bay first aired in the US over the Lifetime cable network on March 15, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
After he is framed for the death of several colleagues and falsely branded a traitor, a secret agent embarks on a daring scheme to clear his name in this spy adventure. Though it drew its name from the familiar television series, director Brian DePalma's big-budget adaptation shares little more with the original show than the occasional self-destructing message and the name of team leader Jim Phelps (Jon Voight). The film focuses not on Phelps but his protégé, Ethan Hunt (a reserved Tom Cruise), who becomes a fugitive after taking the blame for a botched operation. He responds by banding together with a group of fellow renegades, and he is soon maneuvering his way through a twisted series of double crosses that mainly serve as excuses for spectacular high-tech action sequences. Much of the activity revolves around a missing computer disk, with the film's most famous scene depicting Hunt's delicate efforts to retrieve the disk from a secure, well-alarmed room in CIA headquarters. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Cruise, Jon Voight, (more)
This Canadian drama tells the tale of Camille, who works at an uptight Protestant college as a professor of mythology. She has been going out with career theologian Martin for three years, but it appears her real true love is her dog, Bob. Bob dies in a tragic car accident and poor Camille is devastated. She is so upset that she grabs the wrong clothes from the laundromat. The clothes belong to the beautifully predatory Petra. Camille discovers the error and returns them to Petra's workplace, an avant-garde circus in an empty warehouse where Petra confesses that she switched them on purpose so she could seduce Camille. Camille demurs. Petra begins following her, and gets to kiss her in the lobby. Eventually the persistent Petra succeeds and the two become lovers. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pascale Bussières, Rachael Crawford, (more)
- 1995
- Add Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story to QueueAdd Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story to top of Queue
Dana Delany stars in this made-for-TV movie as Margaret Sanger, a nurse who, in 1914, became a pioneering crusader for women's reproductive rights after she published a booklet on birth control techniques that flew in the face of a law established by Anthony Comstock (Rod Steiger) forbidding the dissemination of information on contraception. Sanger later helped to establish America's first birth control clinic in 1916, and in 1925 was one of the founders of Planned Parenthood. Choices of the Heart: The Margaret Sanger Story also stars Henry Czerny and Julie Khaner.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dana Delany, Rod Steiger, (more)
- 1995
When government tax-auditor Alex Hartwell is sent to the hamlet of Walton to check the books of the Turnbull Chemical company, the last thing he expects is to find himself involved in corruption, murder, romantic mayhem and intrigue in this darkly slapstick Canadian comedy. Things go amiss right from the start when he arrives and finds that his pre-booked hotel room has been taken and he must then stay in the creepy, ramshackle Michelle Apartments in a room that belonged to a woman who died the night before he arrived. After settling into the unsettling place, Alex sends out his laundry and it comes back with a pair of purple undies belonging to Madeline, his seductive neighbor, who is married to a mentally unstable and insanely jealous Dean. Prior to Alex's arrival, Dean was incarcerated for fighting with his wife. The next day Alex meets with company-president Mr. Turnbull and finds him a few-cents-short-of-a-dollar. As he talks to the crazy CEO, he begins suspecting that the fellow has frequently helped himself to the company coffers. Later that night, Alex ends up necking with Madleine. Unfortunately, they are caught in mid-smooch by Dean who has just been released from the slammer. It's downhill from there and murderous chaos reigns. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1995
The fate of a remote Brazilian province will be determined by the passage of a reclamation bill. If the bill goes through the land will be destroyed. Fortunately, Father Stephen Lewis is working hard to stop it. For months he has led numerous high-profile protests, but then just a few days before the assembly retires to decide the bill, he simply vanishes. This off-beat political thriller chronicles the attempts of American reporter Michael Coleman to find the radical priest and interview him. Coleman, who works for a paper in Rio, is obsessed with finding Father Lewis for over the months the two have developed a tempestuous, argumentative relationship over the phone. Privately, Coleman wonders if the outspoken priest's actions mask ulterior motives. Still, he cannot help but respect the father's charisma and drive. So desperate is Coleman to find Lewis, that he stops at nothing, calling in every favor, and even resorting to dirty tricks. In the end it is his blatant abuse of media power that manages to keep the would-be land-grabbers from succeeding. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Czerny
- 1995
- NR
This adaptation of Dostoevsky's novella does an exceptional job of retaining the multi-textured richness of the original story about the intimate thoughts of an anonymous lonely building inspector known only as the Underground Man. Everything about the misanthropic civil servant is dull and unpleasant. His job is boring and his only joy comes in using bureaucracy to spitefully torment contractors and architects who despise him. Realizing that he has no friends, the Underground Man does try to ingratiate himself with acquaintances and only ends up even more lonely and bitter. It does not help that he believes himself intellectually superior to those he encounters. He gets involved with a prostitute, Liza, whom he sees at a local brothel. His relationship with her is as complex as he is. On one hand he inflicts his seething rage and the pain of his isolation upon her; on the other, he cares about her and wants to help her escape her sordid situation. He decides to take her to his home, but once she is there, he finds that he is unable to overcome his misanthropy and ends up making her even more miserable. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Czerny, Sheryl Lee, (more)
- 1994
A family is torn apart when two adult sisters decide to take their father to court for sexually abusing them as children. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Marlo Thomas, Mel Harris, (more)
This is the third film based on Tom Clancy's high-tech espionage potboilers starring CIA deputy director Jack Ryan. Harrison Ford, returning to the Ryan role after his first go-round in 1992's Patriot Games, is assigned to a delicate anti-drug investigation after a close friend of the President (a Reaganesque Donald Moffat) is murdered by a Colombian drug cartel. When Ryan discovers that the President's wealthy friend was in league with the cartel, the President's devious national security adviser (Harris Yulin) and an ambitious CIA deputy director (Henry Czerny) send a secret paramilitary force into Colombia to wipe out the drug lords. The force is captured and then abandoned by the President's lackeys. It falls to Ryan to enter Colombia and rescue them, aided only by a renegade operative named Clark (Willem Dafoe), with both his life and career on the line. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harrison Ford, Willem Dafoe, (more)
- 1993
- PG
Members of Canada's groundbreaking improvisational comedy troupe CODCO helped create this broad black comedy about a small Canadian community's unique bid to become a world power. Solomon Gundy is a small island off the Atlantic Coast of Canada whose economy is built around fishing. A government researcher determines that Canada's fish production needs to be cut by four percent -- and since Solomon Gundy produces four percent of the nation's catch, the government simply decides to suspend all fishing licenses for the Island. Needless to say, this decision is wildly unpopular with the locals, and Dexter (Maury Chaykin), the Federal official who has to break the bad news to the town, nearly gets lynched for his troubles. Augustus (Paul Gross), who acts as Solomon Gundy's mayor when he isn't busy officiating at the local church or running the miniature golf course, decides to take the bull by the horns and rallies the townspeople to declare their independence from Canada. As fate would have it, a group of Russian sailors gone AWOL happen by the Island, and Augustus is able to buy their submarine from the sole crewman left on board (Tommy Sexton). Augustus soon discovers the sub still has a cache of tactical missiles on board, making the newly independent Solomon Gundy a nuclear superpower. Also released as Northern Extremes, Burried on Sunday proved to be the final film role for founding CODCO member Tommy Sexton, who died of AIDS-related illnesses in 1993. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Gross, Denise Virieux, (more)
Actor Henry Adler (Tom McCamus) has a tenuous hold on his identity in Canadian director David Wellington's I Love a Man in Uniform. On his way to audition for a violent TV police show, he sees an officer shot in the line of duty. Using what he witnessed in his tryout, he impresses the casting director and gets the role of a tough street cop. But it's more than just a part for him: he takes his uniform home, goes out on the street, and gets mistaken for a real cop. Like Anthony John in A Double Life, he has become his character, and like Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver, he wants to clean the world of its filth. This film is not merely an exploration of one man's descent into madness; it is also an indictment of society's confusion of televised fiction with real life. ~ Steve Press, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom McCamus, Brigitte Bako, (more)
- 1992
Brian Dennehy makes one of his many TV-movie appearances as Chicago homicide cop John Reed in the two-part Deadly Matrimony. Reed's quarry this time is mob lawyer Treat Williams, who murders his wife and then effectively covers his tracks. The closer Reed comes to the truth, the more he's in jeopardy of losing his job (and possibly his life) thanks to Williams' friends in high places. Based on a true story, part one of Deadly Matrimony was first telecast on November 22, 1992. In part two, which debuted November 23, Reed is victimized by the crooked cops under Williams' thumb, but refuses to knuckle under to mob pressure. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brian Dennehy, Lisa Eilbacher, (more)
- 1992
In this drama, based on a true story, an unconventional New England principal tries some radical new techniques to reform his high school and ends up unemployed. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Tucker, Jill Eikenberry, (more)
- 1991
- R
The great achievement of The Boys of St. Vincent is not that it deals with the controversial subject of pedophilia among Catholic clergy, but that it deals with that subject so honestly, without resorting to melodramatics. At the core of this powerful film lies Henry Czerny's searing performance as Brother Peter Lavin. Czerny deftly shows in the film's first half how Lavin used the double-edged sword of adult and religious authority to intimidate his charges. And in the second half, when Lavin is confronted with the monstrousness of his crimes, Czerny's ability to construct a plausible set of denials (if you had seen only this part of the film, you might be tempted to believe him) lifts the film above a simple case study. Lavin's character, a man who translated his own troubled childhood into pain and affliction for others, is one of the most fascinating psychological studies in contemporary film. Co-writer and director John N. Smith is also to be praised for tamping down the urge to embroider this story with unnecessary flourishes. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Henry Czerny, Johnny Morina, (more)
