Michael Tennessee Lee Movies
- 1995
A young punk escapes to a remote village in mainland China and discovers his roots in this Hong Kong drama. Fai, a young gangster, thinks he killed a Hong Kong cop. He escapes to Guangzhou until the situation blows over. The foolish boy immediately wastes the money his boss gave him. Now he is penniless and at the mercy of the mainland gangs. He is wounded in a scuffle. Again he escapes, this time into an isolated village in the Shaanbei province of northern China. He is cared for by a tough old soldier and his granddaughter Xiuxiu. Rural life does not come easily to Fai. While he is there he accidently burns up the village maize field and subsequently causes the death of prize bull. Soon he begins to adjust. He finds himself adopting rural values and enjoying the simple love of Xiuxiu. Finally he knows he must return to Hong Kong and allow justice to be served. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara becomes this sprawling historical epic. As in Shaara's novel, director Ronald Maxwell focuses on a handful of major players to dramatize the events of July 1863, when the armies of the Union and Confederacy clash at the small Pennsylvania town of the title. Among them are Martin Sheen as General Robert E. Lee, who disagrees with his top advisor, General James Longstreet (Tom Berenger) over battle strategy, and Jeff Daniels as Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, a college professor whose unorthodox techniques save the day (and possibly the war) for his beleaguered army. Other cast standouts include Richard Jordan in his final film appearance as the ill-fated General Lewis Armistead, and cameo roles for Civil War buff Ken Burns and media mogul producer Ted Turner. Filmed on-location at Gettysburg National Military Park, Gettysburg was shot as a television miniseries for Turner's TNT cable channel, but earned a limited theatrical release. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Sheen, Jeff Daniels, (more)
The plot of this action film begins in 1996, with Los Angeles in a violence-crazed conflagration. One of the LAPD's most notorious cops, John Spartan (Sylvester Stallone), known as "the demolition man," is in hot pursuit of blonde-haired psychopath Simon Phoenix (Wesley Snipes), who is so nasty he even kills sometimes just because he feels cranky. John captures Simon, but not before Simon kills innocent hostages. John is blamed for the deaths of the hostages, and both he and Simon are cryogenically frozen to remove their brand of ultra-violence from a society that is simply just too violent. The film shifts to the future world of 2032, where Los Angeles has become a megalopolis called San Angeles. There is no poverty, Arnold Schwarzenegger was (at one time) president of the United States, and Taco Bell is the sole survivor of the Franchise Wars. Into this peaceful and bland society, Simon is summarily defrosted by reigning benevolent dictator Dr. Cocteau (Nigel Hawthorne) to have Simon murder Edgar Friendly (Denis Leary), the leader of a group of underground rebels. But Cocteau bites off more than he can chew when the melted-down Simon proceeds to go on a murder-and-looting spree. Reluctantly, Cocteau defrosts John to hunt down his old adversary. As John adjusts to self-driving cars and having sex wearing helmets, he pairs up with Lenina Huxley (Sandra Bullock), a bored cop with a nostalgic fascination for 20th-century culture. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sylvester Stallone, Wesley Snipes, (more)
