Tony Edwards Movies
- 1994
After a fight with his wife over the proverbial "other woman," building super Mr. Wicker (Jerry Adler) moves in with Paul and Jamie Buchman (Paul Reiser, Helen Hunt). An additional crisis arises when it develops that Jamie needs glasses -- or would contact lenses go better with her "trapezoidal face?" Best moment: the faux Dickens recital. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Movie references, sight gags, silly puns, and double entendres abound in Hot Shots! Part Deux, Jim Abrahams' sequel to Hot Shots -- only now the object of the skewering is the Stallone Rambo movies instead of Top Gun. Charlie Sheen returns as the lunk-headed Topper Harley, who has retreated to a Buddhist monastery after being dumped by Ramada Rodham Hayman (Valerie Golino). In this far-off retreat, the monks have "taken a vow of celibacy, just like their fathers and their fathers before them." But Topper bulks up and goes back into action when his superior officer, Colonel Denton Walters (Richard Crenna) is captured by a Saddam Hussein look-alike, missing somewhere between "Iraq and a Hard Place." Topper charges into Iraq (after barreling through a Beverly Hills barbecue) along with sexy CIA operative Michelle Rodham Huddleston (Brenda Bakke) in tow, his guns ablazing. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlie Sheen, Lloyd Bridges, (more)
- 1989
- PG13
SCTV alumnus Dave Thomas manned the megaphone for the direct-to-video Experts. John Travolta was between career highs when he agreed to appear in this anachronistic cold-war comedy. Travolta and Arye Gross play Travis and Wendell, a couple of vagabonds hired by Soviet spy Cameron Smith (Charles Martin Smith) to act as experts on the American lifestyle. It seems that Smith is in charge of one of those "typical American towns" constructed in the middle of the Soviet Union for espionage-training purposes (remember all those Red-baiting documentaries of the 1950s?) Under the influence of drugs, Travis and Wendell are relocated to the phony burg of Indian Springs, Nebraska (actually well within the Russian borders). They immediately begin indoctrinating their "American" neighbors in all the guilty pleasures of Yankee hedonism. Hardly a comedy classic, The Experts did produce one salutary by-product: it was on the set of this film that John Travolta met his future bride Kelly Preston, here cast as a peaches-and-cream Russian spy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Travolta, Arye Gross, (more)
This satirical look at the ambivalent relationship between Hollywood power brokers and African-American performers marked the writing, producing, and directing debut of Robert Townsend. The filmmaker also stars as Bobby Taylor, a struggling actor looking for his big break despite his family's and co-workers' reservations about his chosen career path. While working a day job flipping burgers, Bobby heads out to insulting cattle calls where white casting agents pass judgement on whether he seems "black enough." Meanwhile, he imagines himself playing Sam Spade, Rambo, and other movie heroes rather than the stereotypical roles actually available to him. When Bobby actually does win one such pimp-daddy part, however, he is forced to choose between accepting work that opens doors, but ultimately demeans him and returning to obscurity with his principles intact. Hollywood Shuffle's enormous supporting cast includes a wealth of black actors, from then-unknowns such as Damon Wayans to veterans such as 227 star Helen Martin. Self-financed and filmed on scraps of hand-me-down celluloid, the film helped establish actor Townsend as a director of note and also kick-started the career of co-screenwriter and co-star Keenen Ivory Wayans, who would cast Townsend in his own directorial debut the following year. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Townsend, Anne-Marie Johnson, (more)
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) concludes the story arc begun with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) and continued in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984), but on a wholly new, different, and upbeat note. As the movie opens, months have elapsed since the events in Star Trek III; Admiral Kirk (William Shatner), McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Scott (James Doohan), Sulu (George Takei), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and Chekhov (Walter Koenig) are marooned in self-imposed exile on Vulcan, along with the resurrected and regenerated Spock (Leonard Nimoy, who also directed). While Spock tries to sort out the Vulcan and human halves of his resurrected psyche, the others prepare to return to Earth to face a brace of charges by the Klingon Empire and Star Fleet over events on Genesis. Taking off in their commandeered, jerry-rigged Klingon ship, they head to Earth, not knowing that a new crisis could destroy their home world -- a huge, immensely powerful alien probe has entered the galaxy and established a position near Earth, disabling every vehicle and installation in its path with its energy and communication output, and has ionized the entire atmosphere and started vaporizing the oceans, leaving the planet only hours to survive.
Spock determines that the probe is sending out signals to another intelligent terrestrial life form, humpbacked whales, which no longer exist. Using the gravity slingshot time-warp effect (established early in the original series) to travel back into Earth's 20th century, Kirk and company land in 1980s San Francisco to try and bring humpbacked whales to the 23rd century, to respond to the probe. Thus starts a surprisingly breezy, light-hearted, yet serious odyssey through the past (comparable to the best work of the original series), as the crew learns to deal with exact-change buses, angry drivers, punk-rock enthusiasts and other elements of '80s life, and Kirk tries to persuade a scientist (Catherine Hicks) of his good intentions for two whales in captivity. The screenplay, co-authored by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Nicholas Meyer, and Harve Bennett (from a story by Nimoy and Bennett), is the cleverest and most sophisticated of all the Star Trek movie screenplays, recalling some of the elements of Meyer's earlier time-travel movie Time After Time and also anticipating the feel and tone of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (which would be on the air not quite a year later). Nimoy's direction offers a combination of brisk pacing and a deep love of the characters and the actors, as well as a serious appreciation of the humorous aspects of the script, and Shatner gives his best performance of any of the movies. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
Spock determines that the probe is sending out signals to another intelligent terrestrial life form, humpbacked whales, which no longer exist. Using the gravity slingshot time-warp effect (established early in the original series) to travel back into Earth's 20th century, Kirk and company land in 1980s San Francisco to try and bring humpbacked whales to the 23rd century, to respond to the probe. Thus starts a surprisingly breezy, light-hearted, yet serious odyssey through the past (comparable to the best work of the original series), as the crew learns to deal with exact-change buses, angry drivers, punk-rock enthusiasts and other elements of '80s life, and Kirk tries to persuade a scientist (Catherine Hicks) of his good intentions for two whales in captivity. The screenplay, co-authored by Steve Meerson, Peter Krikes, Nicholas Meyer, and Harve Bennett (from a story by Nimoy and Bennett), is the cleverest and most sophisticated of all the Star Trek movie screenplays, recalling some of the elements of Meyer's earlier time-travel movie Time After Time and also anticipating the feel and tone of the series Star Trek: The Next Generation (which would be on the air not quite a year later). Nimoy's direction offers a combination of brisk pacing and a deep love of the characters and the actors, as well as a serious appreciation of the humorous aspects of the script, and Shatner gives his best performance of any of the movies. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, (more)
Having crashed to Earth, an extraterrestrial space traveller must assume a human identity lest he be captured by the authorities. The alien (Jeff Bridges) chooses the likeness of the recently deceased husband of Jenny Hayden (Karen Allen). At first dumbstruck, Jenny becomes both hostile toward and frightened of her guest. He gradually wins her confidence, learning a few vital English-language phrases so that he can explain his presence. The "starman" has come to Earth with a message of peace, in response to the similar message sent out on Voyager One. He asks for Jenny's help in transporting him to the Nevada desert, where his fellow aliens are to pick him up and take him to his home planet. Soon he and Jenny form a united front against a mean-spirited National Security Council agent (Richard Jaeckel), who intends to seize the starman and turn him over for scientific scrutiny (and possible extermination). While en route to Nevada, Jenny grows closer to the gentle-natured Starman, eventually making love with him. By the time he is poised to leave, she is carrying his child, leaving the field wide open for a sequel--which was never produced, though a weekly TV version surfaced in 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, Karen Allen, (more)
