Victor Argo

Cult favorite Abel Ferrara directed and co-wrote this story set in New York City in 1993, before Mayor Rudy Giuliani's much-publicized crusade against street crime put a dent in semi-public drug dealing in the city. It's a few days before Christmas, and a Latin American couple living on the city's Upper East Side (Lillo Brancato Jr. and Drea de Matteo) are watching their daughter (Lisa Valens) perform in her school's holiday pageant. Afterward, the couple drop the child off with a babysitter and set out to run some errands. They have two items on their agenda: get their daughter the doll she's been asking for (a nearly impossible task, since the toy has become the must-have item of the season), then head to their work space uptown, where they prepare and package heroin for street distribution. While the wife has her qualms about the ethics of drug dealing, both she and her husband know there's plenty of money to be made in heroin -- more than most Hispanic immigrants could make working legitimate jobs in New York -- and the business has been highly lucrative for them. The couple discovers one of their lower-level dealers may be talking to the police, but they soon have a bigger problem to deal with when the husband is lured to the Bronx by a fence who can get him the toy he's been looking for. The husband finds he's been lured into a trap, and a kidnapper (Ice-T) gives the wife less than a half hour to collect and pay a huge ransom, or her husband will be killed. As in Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant, the audience never learns the names of most of the major characters in 'R Xmas; also like Bad Lieutenant (as well as King of New York and The New Rose Hotel), Ferrara invited pioneering gangster rapper Schooly-D to contribute to the film's score. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Originally titled Vendetta: Secrets of a Mafia Bride, this 2-part TV movie stars supermodel Carol Alt as Nancy, the ward of Mafia don Frank Latella (Eli Wallach). Part One gets off to an explosive start when Nancy witnesses her father's murder. Raised by Latella, our heroine lives for the day that she can avenge her dad's death. Little does she know that her own fiancé (Eric Roberts) was the man who pulled the trigger. Syndicated to local TV stations, Family Matter was first made available on May 13, 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season four of All in the Family commenced with an object lesson about -- what else? -- racial bigotry. Archie is up in arms over the notion of a Latino family moving into the neighborhood. In this, Archie finds himself with an unexpected ally: Henry Jefferson, his black neighbor from across the street, who is likewise averse to allowing "those people" to make their home on Houser Street. This episode served to introduce the Bunkers' new next-door neighbors, Irene and Frank Lorenzo, played by Betty Garrett (replacing Sada Thompson, who reportedly couldn't get along with series star Carroll O'Connor) and Vincent Gardenia. Written by Don Nicholl, "We're Having a Heat Wave" originally aired on September 15, 1973. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Part of Regina Ziegler's Erotic Tales series, the short film Angela is directed by Israeli-born American independent filmmaker Amos Kollek. Victor Argo plays Bob, a professor in Manhattan about to have his 70th birthday. He's longing for one last sexual encounter before calling it quits. Juilliard School graduate Valerie Geffner stars as the young woman named Angela. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

If police lieutenant Harvey Keitel's life could get any more sordid, he could probably sell tickets. The least of his vices is gambling, which has gotten him in Dutch with the mob. He abuses his body with drugs and his soul with hookers, and now he's turned to exploiting teenage girls for sex. Keitel is forced to reassess his life while investigating the rape of a nun. Director Abel Ferrara co-wrote the screenplay with Zoe Lund, who as Zoe Tamerlis starred in Ferrara's cult classic Ms. 45. A soundtrack tune by rapper Schoolly D, which was included in the initial release of Bad Lieutenant, featured a sample from Led Zeppelin which was used without permission; the song has since been excised from the soundtrack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Director Wayne Wang and screenwriter Paul Auster had enough storylines and characters left over from their charming comedy Smoke to make another film, so they shot Blue In The Face immediately after Smoke was completed. The film once again centers on the Brooklyn Cigar Store and manager Auggie (Harvey Keitel), although most of the other characters are different. The store owner's frustrated wife Dot (Roseanne) is one of them, and one of the plotlines follows her attempts to seduce Auggie. Madonna, Michael J. Fox, Lily Tomlin, and Lou Reed (as himself) also put in appearances. Blue In The Face was shot without a complete script and presents a unique combination of distinctive performances, oddball characters, improvisations, and raffish scenes. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

In this gritty prison thriller, a passionate prison guard finds himself intimate with a sexy inmate and trouble ensues. The guard, Dan Cappelli, works in a Philadelphia jail. He has a hair-trigger violent temper and after brutally defending a fellow guard who was attacked by an inmate, is reassigned to the women's block. There he encounters Gidell, a hard-as-nails inmate convicted of money laundering. The two find themselves sexually drawn to each other and an illicit torrid affair ensues, but when Gidell's outside lover comes for a visit and mistreats her, Dan goes off like a bomb and ends up on suspension. He begins drinking and soon begins losing his sanity in the face of his self-imposed solitary confinement. When Gidell tells him she is pregnant, he helps her break out of prison. More mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Celebrated indie filmmaker Eddie Israel (Harvey Keitel) heads to California to shoot his latest movie, Mother of Mirrors, an examination of a marriage in which the wife pressures her husband to abandon their formerly mutual sex-and-drugs lifestyle and seek the same kind of religious conversion she has experienced. Leaving behind his own wife Madlyn (Nancy Ferrara) and his young son, Eddie explains the impetus of his latest project in a series of behind-the-scenes interviews. Meanwhile, Sarah Jennings (Madonna), a TV actress, has taken the wife role in Eddie's film, and her first item of business on the set is to sleep with Francis Burns (James Russo), who is set to play her husband. Things go sour between the two players and their conflicts spill onto the set, adding even more tension to a shoot in which Eddie alternately bullies and cajoles his actors to elicit more authentic performances. Perhaps Eddie manipulates Sarah onscreen because he's ashamed of having bedded his "very L.A." star just minutes before his wife and son arrived early for a weekend visit. Eddie soon finds the existential dilemmas of his film seeping into his own life, forcing him to question the compulsive adultery he practices. One of the first movies overseen by the film arm of Maverick, the record label and media company Madonna founded in the early '90s, Dangerous Game was produced by the singer's longtime manager, Freddy de Mann, alongside Mary E. Kane, who produced several earlier Ferrara efforts. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

This psychological thriller from screenwriter Patrick Smith Kelly reunites him with his A Perfect Murder (1998) star Michael Douglas. Dr. Nathan Conrad (Douglas) is a respected adolescent therapist faced with a nightmarish scenario when his young daughter (Skye McCole Bartusiak) is snatched by Koster (Sean Bean), a criminal with a talent for high-tech surveillance. Conrad learns that the kidnapper is desperate for a critical piece of information known only to Elisabeth Burrows (Brittany Murphy), one of his catatonic pro bono patients. While his wife Aggie (Famke Janssen) remains at home, bedridden due to a broken leg, Conrad races to unlock the secret stored in Elisabeth's fractured mind, while a New York City detective (Jennifer Esposito) inches closer to discovering the Conrads' dilemma. Don't Say a Word co-stars Oliver Platt and Guy Torry and is directed by Gary Fleder, who follows up his suspense smash Kiss the Girls (1997). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Dream House is an opposites-attract TV movie which strives mightily for social relevance. John Schneider plays a Georgia-cracker contractor who journeys to New York for a major building project. Out of love for Manhattanite urban planner Marilu Henner, he scraps his big-bucks assignment. Instead, he endeavors to build a "dream" house in the middle of one of New York City's most rundown ghettos. Dream House coasts merrily along on its star power alone; the storyline is acceptable, but nothing to break a date over. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Amos Kollek directs this quiet, understated comedy about lonely hearts and empty pockets in New York. Pushing 40, Bella (Anna Thomson) works as a waitress at small downtown diner in Manhattan. Her elderly regulars include Paul (Robert Modica), a lovelorn retiree who scours the personal ads and his ill-tempered buddies Seymour (Victor Argo) and Graham (Mark Margolis), who are more than a little disparaging toward Paul's attempts at finding love. Involved in a 12-year relationship with married Broadway theater director George (Austin Pendleton), Bella craves marriage and children. On a blind date set up by her mother, Bella meets Bruno, a divorced cabbie and fledgling novelist with two young children. Meanwhile, Paul meets ready-and-willing widow Emily (Louise Lasser), while Seymour shacks up with Wanda (Valerie Geffner), a stripper with a master's degree. This film was shown in competition at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Though set in Cuba, the made-for-cable Florida Straits was lensed in South Carolina. The film is set twenty years after the Bay of Pigs invasion. Raul Julia, Fred Ward and Daniel Jenkins sneak back into Castroland to search for a fortune in gold that had been buried during the abortive 1961 military action. Their mission is complicated by a woman from Julia's past. Scripted by Roderick Taylor, Florida Straits was first telecast on October 26, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A surreal crime drama told as only Jim Jarmusch could, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai stars Forest Whitaker as Ghost Dog, a hit man living in an unidentified but run-down city in what license plates call "The Industrialized State." Known for his gift of being able to come and go without people noticing him, Ghost Dog is a self-taught samurai who is obsessed with order and his strict personal moral code, drawn from the philosophies of the Japanese warriors. As every samurai needs a leader to whom he swears loyalty, Ghost Dog has devoted himself the service of Louie (John Tormey), a low-level crime boss who once saved his life. When Louie's superiors decide he must be executed, Ghost Dog leaps into action, methodically wiping out his many enemies. Along with a dizzying series of stylized shoot-outs, Ghost Dog also features carrier pigeons, characters who read Rashomon, a French-speaking ice cream man, and a score by RZA from the top-selling hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan, who have their own well-documented obsession with Asian culture. Ghost Dog was screened in competition at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide