Beverly D'Angelo Movies

An international collection of well-known directors contributed to this compilation film, each fashioning a short film inspired by an aria from a famous opera. The approaches vary broadly, from the playful abstraction of Jean-Luc Godard's segment, which illustrates Armide with exercising body-builders, to the more literal approach of Franc Roddam, who transports Tristan und Isolde's story to modern-day Las Vegas. A particular stand-out is Julian Temple's take on Rigoletto, which recasts Verdi as the accompaniment to a contemporary Southern California sex farce. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

In this sci-fi film, actually a television pilot inspired by Nicolas Roeg's provocative 1976 film, chronicles the exploits of an alien marooned on Earth. All he wants is to go back to his dying planet. He is hindered by military forces determined to find him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Rich but repulsive teenager Jessie (Ally Sheedy) can't stand the notion that the whole world doesn't jump to the crack of her whip. Her overindulgent father, millionaire Charles Montgomery (Tom Skerritt), wishes he could teach his daughter a lesson, but can't bring himself to deny his little darling everything her heart desires. Unfortunately, she gets her comeuppance when, after finding out that Jessie has been arrested, her father mutters a wish that she'd never been born. Zap! Enter fairy godmother Beverly D'Angelo, who grants the girl her wish. With no name, no friends, and no money, Jessie has no choice but to look for work. She is hired as a maid by a filthy-rich Malibu couple (Valerie Perrine and Dick Shawn), whose selfish excesses make Jessie look like Pollyanna. Worse still, Jessie is compelled by circumstance to meet up with her father, who doesn't even recognize her. The key to the film's success is the wonderfully many-sided performance of Ally Sheedy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Slow Burn, directed by Matthew Chapman, a well-above average, made-for cable-TV mystery thriller tells the story of a detective and his search for the missing son and ex-wife of his client. Based on a novel by Arthur Lyons, and well-directed by Matthew Chapman this intelligent thriller follows detective Jacob Ash (Eric Roberts) as he investigates the disappearance of Donnie (Johnny Depp) the missing son of his client Gerald McMurty (Raymond Barry) and his ex-wife artist Laine Fleischer (Beverly D'Angelo) during a routine visit to Las Vegas. As the investigation continues Jacob discovers an intricate web of deceit and betrayal that leads to a murder which Jacob must solve. D'Angelo, frequently underrated, is top notch in her role of the frightened woman who may have secrets. Roberts, who can be uneven, is successful in creating an engaging and sexy character who has a good deal of appeal and a good chemistry with D'Angelo. Slow Burn is a surprising, engaging thriller with good performances and an intelligent premise and is highly recommended. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

It took nearly two years after its completion for Big Trouble to reach the big screen. Peter Falk and Alan Arkin are respectively cast as a shady wheeler-dealer and an uptight family man. Strapped for the cash necessary to send his son to Yale, Arkin reluctantly enters into a murder scheme with Beverly D'Angelo. She is married to Falk, who, though he hasn't got long to live due to a heart ailment, may very well spend every penny D'Angelo has before he expires. Arkin is persuaded to kill Falk before this happens, then split the money with D'Angelo. To Arkin's amazement he finds himself the victim of a carefully prepared confidence scam engineered by Falk and D'Angelo. Now that he has a hold over Arkin, Falk gets the poor fellow mixed up in yet another "perfect crime". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this slapstick chase-adventure, some unlikely heroes try to outwit each other for possession of a huge stash of cash hidden on the train they are all riding together. The comedy is a little uneven here or at least not to everyone's taste, and the pace is fast-forward frantic. Josef (Ed Lauter) and Georgiana (Pamela Stephenson) manage to break into her father's estate and swipe $5 million in cash from the safe, with plans to spirit the money across country on a train. Meanwhile, Michael (Michael O'Keefe) is a con man being chased by irate women on a roller derby team who have reason to be angry with him. He zips into a second-hand clothing store and dons the disguise of an army uniform, hoping to board a train for New York unnoticed. But when an officer gets suspicious at the station, Michael retorts that he is escorting a nearby coffin -- a coffin that actually contains the stolen $5 mil. The thieves are also nearby, but for reasons of their own, they go along with Michael's charade. Along for the ride are a neurotic woman (Beverly D'Angelo), an eccentric train conductor (David Wayne), a stowaway Vietnam defector, a blond woman of the underworld, a nymphomaniac, and briefly, a crafty con man (Louis Gosset Jr.). From that point onward, episodic vignettes are tossed here and there as the train moves ever closer to New York, and the protagonists try to outmaneuver each other for the money. Viewers may note that along for his fourth cinematic ride is Jim Carrey in a bit part. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The first film in the Vacation comedy franchise stars Chevy Chase as Clark Griswold, an ad exec who becomes consumed with taking his family cross-country to Wally World, a California amusement park. Less a vacation than a descent into a peculiarly American kind of hell, the Griswolds suffer through an endless series of catastrophes, culminating in a run-in with the law. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

The directorial debut of actor and stand-up comedian David Steinberg concerns a single man who decides that he wants to be a dad -- without the complication of a wife. Burt Reynolds stars as Buddy Evans, the manager of Madison Square Garden. A longtime lothario, Buddy has always been very content as a bachelor, but he has begun to feel lately that he'd like to experience fatherhood. His yearnings receive plenty of fuel from his best friends Larry (Norman Fell) and Kurt (Paul Dooley), and from his parental-mentor relationship with a young boy, Tad (Peter Billingsley). So Buddy decides to seek out a woman who will bear his baby for a price, with no strings attached. He finds Maggie Harden (Beverly D'Angelo), a beautiful young music student working as a waitress and yearning for the financial resources to study in Paris. She agrees to serve as Buddy's temporary companion, but as the months pass and her pregnancy progresses, Maggie begins to fall in love with Buddy, who doesn't return her affections -- at first. Steinberg would go on to have greater success as a television sitcom director, calling the shots for several episodes of hit series in the '80s amd '90s. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Loretta Lynn was one of the first female superstars in country music and remains a defining presence within the genre; with her strong, clear, hard-country voice and tough, no-nonsense songs about husbands who cheat and wives who weren't about to be pushed around, Lynn introduced a feminist mindset to Nashville years before the phrase "women's liberation" became common currency. Coal Miner's Daughter is a screen adaptation of Lynn's autobiography, starring Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn. One of eight children born to Ted Webb (Levon Helm), a coal miner raising a family despite grinding poverty in Butcher's Holler, KY, Loretta married Dolittle "Mooney" Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones) when she was only 13 years old. A mother of four by the time she was 20, Lynn began singing the occasional song at local honky-tonks on weekends, and at 25, she cut (at Mooney's suggestion) a demo tape that earned her a deal with an independent record label. Loretta and Mooney's tireless promotion of the record (including a long road trip through the south in which they stopped at every country radio station they could find) paid off -- Loretta's first single, "Honky Tonk Girl," hit the charts and earned her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry. Stardom called and Loretta never looked back, but success brought with it both joy (a long string of hit records and sold-out concerts and a close friendship with Patsy Cline) and sorrow (a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork and a great deal of stress to a marriage that endured -- but just barely). Sissy Spacek won an Academy award for her vivid, thoroughly natural performance as Loretta (she also did her own singing), and Levon Helm (drummer for the legendary rock group the Band) made an impressive screen debut as her father. Ernest Tubb makes a cameo appearance as himself. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Milos Forman's adaptation of the tribal rock musical Hair stars John Savage as Claude, a quiet young man from the Midwest who becomes friendly with a group of New York hippies on his way to begin basic training in the military. The repressed Claude is quite taken with Berger (Treat Williams) and the group of freedom seekers who reside in Central Park. The group encourages Claude to go after a debutante named Sheila (Beverly D'Angelo). Legendary choreographer Twyla Tharp masterminded the dances, which attempt to flow from the natural settings of the film. The film includes most of the more famous songs from the original play, including "Donna," "Aquarius," "Easy to Be Hard," "Let the Sunshine In," "Good Morning Starshine," "Frank Mills," and the title number. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Woody Allen's romantic comedy of the Me Decade follows the up and down relationship of two mismatched New York neurotics. Jewish comedy writer Alvy Singer (Allen) ponders the modern quest for love and his past romance with tightly-wound WASP singer Annie Hall (Diane Keaton, née Diane Hall). The twice-divorced Alvy knows that it's not easy to find a mate when the options include pretentious New York intellectuals and lifestyle-obsessed Rolling Stone writers, but la-di-dah-ing Annie seems different. Along the rocky road of their coupling, Allen/Alvy weigh in on such topics as endless therapy, movies vs. TV, the absurdity of dating rituals, anti-Semitism, drugs, and, in one of the best set pieces, repressed Midwestern WASP insanity vs. crazy Brooklyn Jewish boisterousness. Annie wants to move to Los Angeles to find that fame that finally does in the relationship -- but not before Alvy gets in a few digs at vacuous, mantra-fixated California. Originally entitled Anhedonia (the inability to enjoy oneself), Annie Hall blended the slapstick and fantasy from such earlier Allen films as Sleeper (1973) and Bananas (1971) with the more autobiographical musings of his stand-up and written comedy, using an array of such movie techniques as talking heads, splitscreens, and subtitles. Within these gleeful formal experiments and sight gags, Allen and co-writer Marshall Brickman skewered 1970s solipsism, reversing the happy marriage of opposites found in classic screwball comedies. Hailed as Allen's most mature and personal film, Annie Hall beat out Star Wars for Best Picture and also won Oscars for Allen as director and writer and for Keaton as Best Actress; audiences enthusiastically responded to Allen's take on contemporary love and turned Keaton's rumpled menswear into a fashion trend. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

One of four dramatic miniseries carried by NBC under the blanket title Best Sellers, Captains and the Kings was adapted from a novel by Taylor Caldwell. Covering a time span from 1857 to 1912, this was the saga of the Irish-immigrant Armagh clan, with emphasis on the rags-to-riches career of Joseph Armagh (Richard Jordan). Achieving fame and prominence (if not full-fledged social acceptance) through a Byzantine series of investments in the oil industry, the elder Armagh was obsessed with the notion of having one of his sons become the first Irish-Catholic President of the United States (does this story sound vaguely familiar?). Along the way, Joseph and his offspring indulged in innumerable romantic liaisons, extramarital and otherwise. Featured in the all-star cast is Patty Duke Astin, who won an Emmy award for her portrayal of Bernadette Hennessey Armagh. Captains and the Kings was broadcast from September 30 to November 18, 1976 in seven installments, two of which ran 120 minutes, and the other six lasting 60 minutes -- a total of nine hours' air time in all. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide