Christina Applegate Movies

Described by director Gregg Araki as "A Beverly Hills 90210 episode on acid" (with no suggestions of what it might be cut with), Nowhere is a companion piece with Araki's previous meditations on youth gone wild in the 1990s, Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation -- Araki's self-described "teen apocalypse trilogy." Nowhere follows 18-year-old Dark Smith (James Duval) as he goes through a fairly typical day in Los Angeles. Dark needs, but rarely gets, emotional support from his girlfriend Mel (Rachel True). Mel, however, is also involved with a girl named Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson), while Dark moons over hunky Montgomery (Nathan Bexton). Dark's best friend Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz) has troubles of his own, as his boyfriend and bandmate Bart (Jeremy Jordan) is back on drugs and spending most of his time with his dealer. Mel's friends include sugar junkie Dingbat (Christina Applegate), doomsday poetess Alyssa (Jordan Ladd), and Egg (Sarah Lassez), who is being unexpectedly wooed by a Famous Teen Idol (Jason Simmons). Egg's brother Ducky (Scott Caan) has a crush on Alyssa, but she's keeping company with a biker named Elvis (Thyme Lewis). Alyssa's assignation with Elvis gets a psychic boost by her twin brother Shad (Ryan Phillippe) and his tryst with Lilith (Heather Graham). The day continues on a roller coaster of kinky sex, hallucinogenic drugs, random violence, romantic misunderstandings, alien abductions, and (of course) a wild party, this time at the home of noted hipster Jujyfruit (Gibby Haynes). Like The Doom Generation, Nowhere features a wealth of pop culture icons in cameo appearances, including John Ritter, Traci Lords, Charlotte Rae, Eve Plumb, and Shannen Doherty. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This quirky science fiction comedy is a characteristic feature by iconoclastic director Tim Burton, known to moviegoers for Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and The Nightmare Before Christmas. The storyline affectionately harkens back to the deadpan sincerity of such '50s and '60s science-fiction films as The Day the Earth Stood Still and War of the Worlds. Flying saucers have been reliably seen over the capitals of the world, and the whole world awaits with bated breath to see what will transpire. Among those waiting is the President of the United States (Jack Nicholson), who is assured by his science advisor (Pierce Brosnan) that the coming aliens are utterly peaceful. This advice is hotly contested by the military (led by Rod Steiger), who advices the President to annihilate them. When the aliens land, they are seen to be green, garish, and very cheerful. But appearances prove deceiving when the "friendly" aliens abruptly disintegrate the entire U.S. Congress. Hollywood notables appear in vast quantities in roles (and sub-plots) of all sizes in this zany feature. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

A talented young rock keyboardist allows his life to fall into the gutter after he loses both hands during a mugging. He is later fitted with special hand extensions, but these neither allow him to play music nor much of anything else. Despondent, he starts drinking heavily and soon finds himself a self-pitying homeless street bum in New York. His life starts improving after he encounters Anamika, a New Age girl who befriends him and introduces him to special friends, one a computer genius and the other, her landlady, a metal sculptor. Together with some assistance from his roommate, the three devise a marvelous set of hands for the boy, ones endowed with special qualities that allow to play music even better than before. Billing himself as Cyberstorm, the lad becomes a star. A hometown concert gives him a chance at revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

As Married...With Children enters its ninth season, the Bundy family's youngest member, Bud (David Faustino), has gotten a job at the motor vehicle bureau; Bud's older sister, Kelly (Christina Applegate), has become a commercial pitchwoman; father Al (Ed O'Neill) continues striking a blow for male chauvinist pigs worldwide as head of "NO MA'AM"; and mom Peg (Katey Sagal) at last invades the sanctity of Al's favorite hangout, the Nudie Bar. Next door at the D'Arcy home, Jefferson D'Arcy (Ted McGinley) worries that his past life as a spy will catch up with him, while wife Marcy (Amanda Bearse) invites her niece to her home -- and invites trouble when the girl scores with Bud. New to the series' cast is Harold Sylvester as Griff, another salesman at the shoe store where Al works. We also get to see a lot more of Al's buddies and fellow NO MA'AM members Ike (Tom McCleister), Sticky (Pat Millicano), and Bob (E.E. Bell). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Eight seasons have passed since Married...With Children made its Fox network debut, but the Bundy family is just as boorish and decadent as ever -- if not more so. This season, shoe salesman Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) loses sleep over the dread "Bundy Curse," endeavors to teach a high school graduate the facts of life, and establishes the all-male conclave "NO MA'AM"(National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Women). Lazy, oversexed housewife Peg Bundy (Katey Sagal) wins a chance at a 10,000-dollar contest during a basketball game, is exposed to public embarrassment (and admiration) when her picture is hung up outside a photo shop, and impersonates one of the Village People. Libidinous daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate) gets a steady job as a pest exterminator and displays a hitherto untapped prowess at sports; and opportunistic son Bud (David Faustino) generally hangs around the house, like always. Next door at the D'Arcys, unemployed Jefferson D'Arcy (Ted McGinley) reveals his past life as a secret agent, while wife Marcy (Amanda Bearse) embraces feminism and has an existential moment while delivering a speech. The season ends with the episode "Kelly Knows Something" -- quite a shocker for series fans who have resigned themselves to the "fact" that Kelly knows nothing. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As a means of freshening up Married...With Children during the series' seventh season, the producers decided to add a new regular: Seven Bundy (Shane Sweet), six-year-old son of one of Peg Bundy's hillbilly cousins, who is left in the care of Peg (Katey Sagal) and her husband, Al (Ed O'Neill), by Seven's irresponsible parents. Alas, Seven never caught on with the series' fans (some critics have compared him to the benighted "Oliver" on the final season of The Brady Bunch), so the character was abruptly dumped in mid-season, without comment or explanation. Elsewhere, things haven't changed much for the boorish Bundy family. Dad Al continues to be the archetypal male chauvinist pig, Peg persists in avoiding housework and indulging in sexual fantasies, daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate) puts her show-biz career on hold to work as a waitress, and son Bud (David Faustino) continues to seek out hot chicks and fast money. This is the season in which the entire cast appears as pirates and captured maidens in a dream sequence; Al is sued by a man who was robbing the Bundy house; Peg doodles a cartoon of Al which wins him about 15-and-a-half minutes of fame; Bud shows up as a contestant on The Dating Game; and Al's old girlfriend makes him an offer he can't refuse. Season seven closes with an offbeat special episode, "A Day in the Life," focusing on the backstage activities of series regulars Amanda Bearse (Marcy) and Ted McGinley (Jefferson). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Christina Applegate stars in this convoluted comedy that comes across as a teen fantasy combination of Home Alone and Working Girl. The premise is all in the title -- when the mother (Concetta Tomei) of a sniveling group of surly kids goes on a much-deserved summer vacation, she leaves her kids under the charge of an elderly distaff granny (Eda Reiss Merin). When granny ups and dies, the kids load her dead body in a trunk and deposit the package on the steps of the local funeral home. The kids are ecstatic thinking that with the big wad of cash Mom has left, they can have a summer of consumer madness. But when they find out that the money has been buried with the baby-sitter, the kids have to fend for themselves to make ends meet. Dream teen Sue Ellen (Christina Applegate) tries working at a fast food restaurant but she can't stand the grease. So, she puts together a false resume and, posing as a twenty-eight-year old, she applies for a job as a receptionist at a garment manufacturing company. The company vice president, Rose (Joanna Cassidy), is so impressed by her resume that she hires her on the spot as her executive assistant. Her deception looks to be working out great -- Sue Ellen manages to hold off the office lady killer Gus (John Getz), avoids exposure by the embittered receptionist, borrows money from the company's petty cash box for household incidentals, and continues her relationship with restaurant employee Bryan (Josh Charles). But suddenly, the clothing firm is set to go under, and Sue Ellen must use her teen fashion sense to save the company and her job . . . and she has to get the rest of the brood involved. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Best known as the sexy but intellectually challenged Kelly Bundy on Married with Children, Christina Applegate broadened her range a bit with this tough-minded drama in which she played a drug-addicted teenage prostitute living on the streets of Los Angeles. Sy (David Mendenhall) is a clean-cut, middle-class teenager who dreams of becoming a rock star, so he makes his way from the suburbs into downtown L.A. to check out the action. Shortly after arriving, Sy sees a man with a gun beating Dawn (Christina Applegate), a hooker who didn't let her customer get as rough with her as he wanted. Sy comes to Dawn's rescue, and he suffers some severe facial scratches for his trouble. Dawn takes Sy under her wing and gives him a guided tour of the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles, where murder, theft and addiction are as common as jaywalking, and hundreds of homeless kids no older than Sy fight for survival. Meanwhile, as Dawn and Sy become closer, the psycho who attacked Dawn is hot on her trail, looking for revenge and unconcerned with who gets hurt before he finds her. Streets was directed by Katt Shea Ruben, who acted in several low-budget exploitation films for producer Roger Corman before moving on to direct several films for Corman's New World Pictures. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The third season of Married...With Children might not have happened if a certain Michigan housewife had had her way. Outraged by the excessive sex talk and overall lack of good taste on the series, the woman from Michigan launched a letter-writing campaign to get Married... banned from the Fox network. This didn't happen for three reasons: Most viewers accepted the series as a broad satire of '80s TV raunchiness, the series was enjoying its best-ever ratings, and the show was a cash cow for Fox, accruing more advertising revenue than the rest of its programs combined. As they say, money talks, and something else walks. Anyway, season three offers even more outrageous behavior from the Bundy family of Chicago, much to the dismay of their strait-laced neighbors, the Rhoadeses. To cite on example among many, we submit for approval the episode in which, thanks to Peg Bundy's (Katey Sagal) lousy sense of directions, Steve Rhodes (David Garrison) and wife Marcy (Amanda Bearse) come home to find that their house has been demolished and their lot replaced by a gaping hole! The season's best-known episode, "The Camping Show," was originally titled "A Period Pierce" because it deals with the discomfort of Peg and Marcy whose "time of the month" occurs during a camping trip; the Fox network decided to change the title rather than offend its audience (as if the audience for this show could ever be offended). Another episode, "I'll See You in Court," was not aired in the U.S. until it was cablecast by the FX channel in 2002. The plot? Well, it seems that both the Bundys and the Rhoadeses are videotaped while having sex at a cheap hotel...say no more, say no more, wink wink, nudge nudge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The Fox network's very first sitcom launches its very first season, as Married...With Children invades the sanctity of the American home. We waste no time introducing the Bundys of Chicago, headed by cloddish, chauvinistic shoe salesman Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) and his lazy, oversexed wife Peg (Katey Sagal). And of course, there are the Bundy brats: Daughter Kelly (Christina Applegate), who has managed to garner the worst reputation in her school at the tender age of 15, and eleven-year-old son Bud (David Faustino), a J.D.-in-training. The Bundys spend most of the series' first season outraging and disgusting their wide-eyed newlywed neighbors, young accountants Steve and Marcy Rhoades (David Garrison, Amanda Bearse). Whatever illusions Steve and Marcy may have had about the sweetness of matrimony and family life are destroyed by the boorish Bundys and their repulsive children on a weekly (if not daily) basis. Highlights (or is it lowlights?) of the series' inaugural season include Peg's efforts to go on a diet, Al's accidental "execution" of the neighbors' dog, Al and Steve bonding over the matter of a '65 Mustang (and simultaneously alienating their wives all the more), the family's depletion of their already tenuous credit rating, a "second honeymoon" at a no-tell motel, Peg going to work in order to buy a VCR, and innocent Marcy's outrageous sexual fantasies. . .about Al. Closing the season as Fox's highest-rated program, Married...With Children also established the fledgling network's mandate: Shock 'em, gross 'em out, make 'em laugh, and count the change as the advertising revenue rolls in. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

According to legend, the working title for Married...With Children was "NOT the Cosby Show," and that said it all. This raunchy, ribald eleven-year saga of a boorish, dysfunctional family living in the outskirts of Chicago was about as far removed from The Cosby Show as Mercury is from Pluto -- which was just fine so far as its creators, Ron Leavitt and Michael Moye, were concerned. Harboring a lifelong hatred for the "typical, wholesome" American TV family, Leavitt and Moyes chose instead to develop a series which revelled -- nay, wallowed -- in questionable taste, endless insults, and juicy sexual badinage. The newly formed Fox network, anxious to offer programming that would immediately separate itself from the "norm" as dictated by the ABC, CBS, and NBC, was receptive to the concept, and on April 5, 1987, Married...With Children debuted as Fox's first-ever sitcom -- not to mention its first-ever prime-time series. The Bundy family might well have been described as "trailer trash," only they didn't live in a trailer but instead in a large, untidy suburban Chicago house. Patriarch Al Bundy (Ed O'Neill) worked for minimum wages as a clerk at Gary's Shoe Store. Being an unregenerate male chauvinist pig, unkempt, and reeking of body odor, Al would sooner hang out at the local nudie bar with his fellow members of "NO MA'AM" (the National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood) than come home to the wretched meals prepared by his lazy, viper-tongued wife, Peggy (Katey Sagal). Hating housework almost as much as cooking and forever dressed in tight, garish outfits that displayed her ripe figure to anyone who was interested (Al certainly wasn't), Peg was also distinguished by her layers of facial makeup and her towering teased hair. The Bundy's dimwitted, slatternly daughter, Kelly (Christina Applegate), was so proud of her reputation as the high school's "easiest" girl that she sometimes gave annotated lectures on the subject; in later episodes, Kelly worked at such intellectual pursuits as waitressing and as commercial spokesperson for an off-brand beer. Kelly's kid brother Bud (David Faustino), eleven years old when the series began, was a combination juvenile delinquent and con artist, who, once he reached maturity (?), held down jobs as a clerk at the Motor Vehicle Bureau and as a one-person talent agency (with Kelly as his sole client). The Bundy family was a great source of irritation and embarrassment for their strait-laced newlywed neighbors, Steve and Marcy Rhoades (David Garrison and Amanda Bearse), who were respectably employed as accountants. The bad influence of the Bundys eventually seeped over into the Rhoades household, with Steve losing his job, divorcing his wife, and ending up working as a forest ranger, and Marcy taking as her second husband the terminally lazy Jefferson D'Arcy (Ted McGinley), whom she met during a drunken binge at a banker's convention. During the series' seventh season, Shane Sweet became a regular as Seven Bundy, son of one of Peg's many cousins; but the character never caught on and was summarily dropped without explanation. Two other series regulars never appeared on camera. Kevin Curran provided the voice of the Bundys' unhousebroken, oversexed dog, Buck, and later voiced a cute cocker spaniel puppy named Lucky -- who turned out to possess the reincarnated soul of the late and very reluctant Buck. And during the series' tenth season, Kathleen Freeman was heard but not seen as Peg's harridan hillbilly mother, Mrs. Wanker, who moved into Bud's room after walking out on her husband (played in some episodes by Tim Conway).

Bearing absolutely no resemblance to real life and doggedly avoiding sentiment and "very special episodes," Married...With Children was not exactly everyone's cup of treacle; in fact, one Michigan housewife became so incensed by the series' outrages (which were grotesquely exaggerated for full satiric effect) that she organized a letter-writing campaign to force Fox to cancel the series. Though the woman did not succeed, one third-season episode of Married...With Children, in which the Bundys were unwittingly videotaped while having sex at a cheap motel, was never aired by Fox and in fact was not seen in the United States until 2002, some 14 years after it was produced! Though the series had more than its share of detractors, it also enjoyed a huge fan following with most viewers fully aware that Married was actually a spoof of late-'80s/early-'90s TV raunchiness and accepted it as such. The series' "nothing sacred" attitude enabled the writers to sidestep a particularly delicate situation during season six. To accommodate the real-life pregnancy of Katey Sagal, it was decided that Peg Bundy would also have a baby. Unfortunately, Sagal miscarried, leaving audiences to wonder how this personal tragedy would affect the series. As it turned out, the writers managed to transform pathos into hilarity by stating baldly that Peg's pregnancy was merely a bad dream, à la Dallas! (Later in the series, Sagal again became pregnant, fortunately carrying the baby to term; this time around, however, the writers felt it would be best not to say anything whatsoever about babies on the series). Ending its original network run in 1997, Married...With Children has continued to be successfully rebroadcast in syndication and as part of the FX cable network lineup. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Actors pose as the Beatles, the classic rock superstars, in this musical based on the stage production. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide