John Erman Movies

Based on the 1999 bestseller by K.C. McKinnon, this touching Hallmark Hall of Fame presentation stars Alicia Silverstone as Dee Dee, a single mom and professional candlemaker who returns to her Maine hometown after a lengthy absence. Having left town with a somewhat sullied reputation, she returns with apparently the best of intentions--bringing her 12-year-old son Trooper (Matthew Knight) along for the sentimental journey. Dee Dee's reappearance is initially met with hostility by veterinarian Lydia, whose husband (and coworker) Sam had once been Dee Dee's sweetheart. Ultimately, however, Lydia warms up to both her "rival" and her son--just before Dee Dee poignantly reveals the real reason for her unexpected homecoming. Filmed for television on location in Nova Scotia, Candles on Bay Street was first broadcast by CBS on November 26, 2006. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

While 18-year-old Victoria (Victoria Hamilton) struggles to escape the rule of her domineering mother (Penelope Wilton), King William IV dies and the teenager assumes the throne as Queen of Great Britain and Ireland and empress of India. With the help of sympathetic advisers and her lady-in-waiting, Baroness Lehzen (Diana Rigg), Victoria asserts herself, relocating her mother's living quarters and dismissing her mother's overbearing supporter, Sir John Conroy (Patrick Malahide). She then reluctantly agrees to invite her first cousin, Albert (Jonathan Firth), prince-consort of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Germany, to the royal household as a possible match for her. Remembering him from childhood, she thinks him a bore. But when grown-up Albert arrives, Victoria falls madly in love with him. After they marry, Victoria must counter troublemaking political schemers on the one hand while attempting to assuage a disenchanted Albert on the other. The problem is that he has nothing to do. He is merely an ornament, albeit a cherished one. He cannot even command a servant to clean a fireplace. However, when the administration of the queen's friend and adviser Prime Minister Melbourne (Nigel Hawthorne) collapses, Albert becomes Victoria's partner in government as well as in marriage. In time, she realizes that her husband is really a co-ruler: "A king," she says, "in everything but name." Together, they reign over their empire -- and their brood of nine children. It is Albert's task to supervise the country's Great Exhibition of 1851 to promote British pride, commerce, and industry. But his untiring efforts to make the exhibit a success take their toll on him, and he falls ill. However, he tenaciously clings to life -- and Victoria -- and lives another decade before typhoid fever claims him in 1862, leaving behind a distraught Victoria and a monarchy he helped rescue. ~ Mike Cummings, Rovi

In this two-part made-for-TV romantic drama, a neurosurgeon finds difficulty in dealing with the fact that his latest critically ill patient is the woman whom he once wanted to marry. He is married to another woman, but he still has feelings for his patient. ~ Andrew Olthuis, Rovi

Filmed in Vancouver, this Hallmark Hall of Fame takes place during the '70s in the U.S. After the death of her mother, Charlotte (Glynis O'Connor), 10-year-old Ellen Foster (Jena Malone, who narrates) suffers abuse from her alcoholic father (Ted Levine) and is ill-treated by her maternal aunts Nadine (Debra Monk) and Betsy (Barbara Garrick) and also by Nadine's mean daughter Dora (Kimberly Brown). Ellen is sent to live with her grief-stricken grandmother Leonora (Julie Harris), but her problems continue since the mean-spirited Leonora blames Ellen for Charlotte's death. Harry Nilsson's song, "Remember Christmas," is featured. This TV movie premiered December 14, 1997 on CBS. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

This much-ballyhooed TV miniseries sequel to Gone with the Wind finds former Agent 007 Timothy Dalton reprising the tough-to-fill shoes of Clark Gable's Rhett Butler, and former Val Kilmer spouse Joanne Whalley-Kilmer beating out thousands of hopefuls to play what was once Vivien Leigh's Scarlett O'Hara role. Loosely based on Alexandra Ripley's sequel novel, the film finds our heroine traversing the country to win back Rhett but inadvertently becoming pregnant with Rhett's baby and absconding to Ireland to raise the tyke. There, she becomes indoctrinated into a royal clan. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

Carolina Skeletons is based on a prize-winning novel by David Stout. Louis Gossett Jr. plays a former Green Beret colonel who returns to his home town after thirty years. As a child, Gossett was forced to look on in horror as his brother was tried and executed on a trumped-up murder charge. Now that he's back, Gossett seeks out new evidence, intending to bring the real killer to justice. Unfortunatel, there are several people in town who'd prefer that the past remained buried-and aren't averse to burying Gossett should the need arise. Made for television, Carolina Skeletons debuted September 30, 1991. An R-rated version was later prepared for cable TV. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Tyne Daly ages and ages (courtesy of a sympathetic makeup staff) as the matriarch of an upper-class Connecticut family. This TV movie traces the progress of that family--mother, father, three kids--from 1962 through 1984. We watch the children go through all the joys and heartache of maturity, and we see Ms. Daly's husband (Terry O'Quinn) stray from the fold in the company of another woman. The one unifying factor throughout the years is the family's well-appointed suburban house. The title The Last to Go refers to Tyne Daly, who is the final person out of the house when it is finally put up for sale. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this made-for-TV movie, a woman suffering the ravages of terminal cancer desires, against the wishes of her husband, to permanently end her suffering. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

Bette Midler stars as Stella Claire, a working-class, fun-loving barmaid in northern New York State. A brief affair with handsome Stephen Dallas (Stephen Collins) produces a daughter, Jenny (Trini Alvarado), whom Stella insists upon raising alone, despite Dallas' marriage offer. As the years pass, Stella and Jenny are a happy pair. Stella gives up bartending to sell cosmetics, supported by her friend Ed (John Goodman), a bartender developing a crush on her and a problem with alcohol. Dallas has stayed involved with his beloved daughter from afar and is now a urologist in New York City, engaged to a book editor (Marsha Mason). As Jenny reaches adulthood, Stella becomes aware that life with her father would provide her daughter with opportunities that she'd never have otherwise, so she devises a painful, self-sacrificing scheme to drive Jenny from the nest. Although functional as a tearjerker, many of the themes in Stella simply don't make as much sense in a modern age of healthy, fractured families, muting the drama of the tale's earlier versions, specifically Stella Dallas (1937). ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

This 1988 TV movie covers much of the same ground previously assessed in the stage and movie versions of The Diary of Anne Frank. The principal difference is that this adaptation is told from the point of view of Miep Gies (Mary Steenburgen), the courageous Dutch gentile who, together with her husband (Huub Stapel) risked her life by hiding the Jewish Frank family in the attic of an Amsterdam office building during World War 2. We see how Gies and other good Samaritans attempted to protect and provide sustenance for their Jewish neighbors, right under the noses of the Gestapo. Paul Scofield co-stars as Otto Frank, while his daughter Anne is played by newcomer Lisa Jacobs. Like George Stevens' 1959 filmization of Diary of Anne Frank, this film was made on location. Unlike Stevens' film, The Attic: The Hiding of Anne Frank is based not on Anne's diary but on Miep Gies' memoirs, Anne Frank Remembered. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The Atlanta Child Murders is a five-hour, two-part dramatization of one of the most tragic and controversial homicide cases of the past twenty years. From 1979 through 1982, some 28 African-American children and young adults disappeared from Atlanta--some without a trace, but others to later turn up as murder victims. Part One (which debuted February 10, 1985) details the beginning of the manhunt conducted by the Atlanta Chief of Police (James Earl Jones). Screenwriter Abby Mann uses the actual events as a springboard for his thesis that the case and its outcome revealed many uncomfortable truths about the still-fragile state of race relations in the New South. Both parts of The Atlanta Child Murders were later combined into one 245-minute "feature film."

The second part of the five-hour TV docudrama The Atlanta Child Murders originally aired February 12, 1985. After 28 African-American children and young adults have either disappeared or been murdered, the Atlanta police finally have a suspect in custody: Small-time show business entrepreneur Wayne Williams (Calvin Levels). Scriptwriter Abby Mann utilizes actual court transcripts of Williams' trial, which results in a conviction on one count of murder. This decision in essence leaves the cases of the other 27 victims unresolved--and in so doing, Mann opens the door to speculations that Williams, a black man, was a "convenient" suspect, who might possibly have been railroaded in the authorities' haste to find a solution to the sordid case. Whatever Mr. Mann may have felt concerning Williams' guilt or innocence, the fact remains that the murders and disappearances stopped cold once Williams was in custody (as of this writing, Williams persists in his efforts to reopen the case, claiming that he was framed by the white power structure). Morgan Freeman served as narrator for both installments of The Atlanta Child Murders. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ann Margret looks too healthy to portray Blanche DuBois, the physically and mentally fragile Southern-belle protagonist of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, but we forget this discrepancy five minutes into her marvelous performance. This TV-movie version of Streetcar costars Treat Williams as faded aristocrat Blanche's rude 'n' crude brother-in-law Stanley Kowalski; Williams is persuasive, though he tries so hard not to be Marlon Brando that he comes off as a bit mechanical. The 1984 Streetcar is more realistically staged than the near-impressionistic 1951 Vivien Leigh/Marlon Brando filmization. The storyline, concerning the battle of wills between the earthy, pragmatic Stanley and the delusional Blanche, remains the same in both films, as does the script's tendency to avoid the homosexual elements that were so important to Williams' original play. The newer film's photography is bathed in an ambler tint throughout, conveying both nostalgia for the era in which it is set (the late 1940s) and a visual literalization of Blanche's "yellowed with antiquity" former lifestyle. The 1984 Streetcar Named Desire is less a remake of the 1951 version than a companion piece--a praiseworthy alternate version of the same sturdy material. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Ann-Margret is beyond praise in her TV movie debut as the real-life Lucile Frey. A poor, minimally educated rural Iowa mother, Lucile learns on the occasion of the birth of her tenth child in 1952 that she is dying of cancer. Reasoning that her husband (Frederic Forest) is not responsible enough to take care of her children on his own, Lucile takes upon herself the task of finding suitable foster parents for her soon-to-be motherless brood. Not as depressing as it might have been, Who Will Love My Children? closes with the implication that Lucile's children were able to retain their family ties even after being separated for 29 years. The real-life Frey children were showcased the same evening that Who Will Love My Children premiered (February 15, 1983) on an installment of the ABC TV series That's Incredible. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi