Victor Argo Movies

The subject of this urban comedy could be "Two-timing men, and the women that despise them" as it presents the scathing opinions of women observing an adulterous misogynist in action. The adulterer in question is Scott who swears fealty to his beloved fiance, but then goes out and chases anything with ovaries when she is not around. He is cheered on by his equally misogynistic uncle. Scott's many sexploits are interrupted by female observers, who offer their commentary upon his actions. Their comments upon Scott can apply to adulterers everywhere. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A young girl secretly adopts a runaway monkey only to have to deal with the simian's mischief-making tendencies in this family comedy. Young Eva (Thora Birch)'s dreams of having a pet are frustrated by the objections of her mother (Mimi Rogers) and allergic stepfather (Christopher McDonald). When she finds a stray capuchin monkey, she cannot resist it, and she keeps the animal -- which she names Dodger -- hidden in her room. Eva doesn't know that Dodger has just escaped from an evil organ grinder named Azro (Harvey Keitel, playing a regrettable Gypsy stereotype), who had trained the monkey to become an accomplished pickpocket. Old habits prove hard to break, and Dodger begins stealing everything in sight, landing Eva in plenty of trouble. Her problems are only compounded by the actions of the unscrupulous Azro, who wants to find Dodger and use him as part of an important robbery. The standard misunderstandings and slapstick comedy ensue, with the spunky Eva struggling to protect her new pet and herself. While probably too predictable to appeal to many adults, Monkey Trouble's skillful animal antics and resourceful young heroine may prove entertaining to youngsters. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Quentin Tarantino scripted this wild and wooly blend of action and dark comedy, which reached theaters a year before his breakthrough hit Pulp Fiction. Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) is a well-meaning but socially unskilled comic-shop clerk whose idea of a big night out is catching a Sonny Chiba triple-feature at a downtown grindhouse. Clarence is celebrating his birthday in just such a manner when he meets a beautiful girl named Alabama (Patricia Arquette), and it's love at first sight for both of them. Clarence's enthusiasm isn't dampened much when he discovers Alabama is actually a prostitute who was paid by his boss to bump into him; she's only been in the business for a few days, and is more than eager to give up streetwalking to be with Clarence. However, Alabama is certain her pimp, Drexl (Gary Oldman), will not be happy; he's an ill-mannered sort with mob connections and a fondness for violence. Chivalrous Clarence offers to break the news to Drexl and collect her belongings, but he doesn't tell her he also plans to kill Drexl while he's there; a melee breaks out that leaves Drexl and his henchmen dead. Clarence grabs a suitcase that he thinks contains Alabama's clothes, but he discovers it instead holds five million dollars' worth of cocaine. The couple hits the road for California, planning to sell the dope and enjoy the good life in South America with the proceeds, but soon a group of very unhappy underworld characters are after them, as well as the police. True Romance also stars Dennis Hopper as Clarence's father, Christopher Walken as a mob boss who wants his cocaine back, Brad Pitt as a cheerful stoner, and Val Kilmer as the ghost of Elvis Presley. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The frozen body of a baby is found, whereupon the child's mother falls under suspicion for causing the infant's death. The woman insists that the real villain is slumlord Iris Colman (Karen Lynn Gorney), who cites the "rent laws" as her excuse to deny proper heating to her tenants. But another resident of the same apartment building offers up an entirely different story. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Woody Allen's black-and-white curiosity piece is a mixture of influences -- from German silent film expressionism to Franz Kafka's nightmare worlds to the contemporary fables of Wim Wenders. Woody Allen plays the nebbish clerk Kleinman (in a throwback to his characters from Sleeper and Love and Death), who is awakened in the middle of the night by a vigilante group who want him to help capture a serial killer on the loose. Kleinman reluctantly agrees, but when he gets to the street, the vigilantes are gone and Kleinmen spends most of the film wandering the shadowy back alleys in search of the citizen's brigade. Meanwhile, a circus is in town. When sword-swallower Irmy (Mia Farrow) catches her creepy clown husband (John Malkovich) getting familiar with trapeze artist Marie (Madonna), she packs her bags and heads for town, where she meets up with Kleinman. This meeting sets up a number of plot lines that has Irmy befriending a trio of prostitutes (Jodie Foster, Lily Tomlin and Kathy Bates) at the local brothel and accepting $700 from a university student (John Cusack) who wants to sleep with her. She finally meets up with her husband, and they then find an abandoned baby which they decide to raise as their own. ~ Paul Brenner, 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

The gritty underbelly of New York's complex, ethnically divided criminal world is exposed in this dark drama from director Abel Ferrara. Christopher Walken stars as Frank White, a drug lord who's just been released from a long stint in prison. Aware that feeding off of society's depravity has made him a wealthy man, Frank has become determined to give something back to the city, and he hatches a scheme to build a multimillion-dollar public hospital in one of Brooklyn's worst ghetto neighborhoods. Needing the assistance of his fellow criminals to pull it off, Frank and his adjutant Jimmy Jump (Laurence Fishburne) encounter a wall of resistance from every faction, including drug-trade partner Lance Wong (Joey Chin) and temperamental cop Dennis Gilley (David Caruso). Frank's do-gooder efforts ultimately result in a Mob war and in a bloody showdown between the city's various ethnic criminal actions. Ferrara followed King of New York with a similarly themed film that many critics considered his masterpiece, Bad Lieutenant (1992). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Woody Allen spent most of the 1980s and '90s veering between comedy and drama, and he rarely combined the two with greater success than in Crimes and Misdemeanors, in which he weaved together two stories, one deadly serious, one often funny, both ending in sadness. Martin Landau plays Dr. Judah Rosenthal, a prominent ophthalmologist with a successful practice, a loving family, and a reputation for generous charity work. But Rosenthal also has a secret: his mistress, Dolores (Anjelica Huston). What began as a casual fling has become uncomfortably intimate, and as he tries to break off the relationship, Dolores threatens to expose his infidelity to his wife and some unorthodox financial arrangements to his colleagues. Fearful that Dolores will make good on her threats, Judah confesses his secret to his brother Jack (Jerry Orbach), who has ties to organized crime and offers to "make the problem go away." Meanwhile, Cliff Stern (Woody Allen) is a filmmaker working on his pet project, a documentary about philosopher Prof. Louis Levy (Martin Bergmann). However, films about philosophers don't pay the rent, so Cliff's wife Wendy (Joanna Gleason) arranges for him to make a documentary for public television about her brother Lester (Alan Alda), a famous TV comedian whose vapidity is exceeded only by his arrogance. While Cliff tries to bite the bullet and finish the film, he finds himself falling in love with PBS producer Halley Reed (Mia Farrow). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A frustrated writer helps save a woman being railroaded by the law -- or is she? -- in this comic mystery with romantic overtones. Phil Blackwood (Tom Selleck) is a best-selling mystery novelist who has run into a bad case of writer's block. Hoping to find inspiration for his next book, Phil goes to the city courthouse and witnesses the arraignment of Nina Ionescu (Paulina Porizkova), a beautiful Romanian immigrant who is accused of killing a man with a pair of scissors. For Phil, it's love at first sight, and after sneaking into jail disguised as a priest, he makes her an offer. Phil offers to let her stay at his house, and he provides her with an alibi -- she can claim that she couldn't have committed the crime, because she was with him at the time of the attack. Nina agrees, but after Phil encounters a handful of dangerous foreign agents, Nina's acrobatic parents, and a highly suspicious district attorney, he begins to wonder if Nina might have committed the murder after all. Her Alibi also features William Daniels as Sam, and James Farentino as Frank Polito; the song "Falling In Love" was written and recorded for the film by Randy Newman. ~ Mark Deming, 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

In this charming comedy that lives up to its title, Judge Reinhold stars as Joe Gower, a librarian's assistant posing as a police officer and trying to win the heart of a beautiful police officer, Rachel Wareham (Meg Tilly). A complex chain of events is put in place when Joe agrees to help out a good friend who's a policeman by taking his place at an audition for the cop's annual benefit show. Once at the auditions, Joe falls for Rachel, who will be dancing in the benefit. Joe starts hanging out with the choreographer in order to spend more time with Rachel. Unfortunately, this gets him into his borrowed police uniform more than he would like, and soon he's carrying out the duties of a beat cop while wearing his disguise. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

A petite New Jersey housewife finds self-fulfillment through amnesia in this new wave comedy of errors set in New York's hip '80s downtown scene. Rosanna Arquette stars as Roberta, who turns to the personals for vicarious thrills after her four-year marriage to staid hot tub salesman Gary (Mark Blum) grows stale. Her favorite classified ads trace the romance of Jim (Robert Joy), a struggling musician, and Susan (Madonna), a SoHo vamp who's just narrowly escaped being murdered alongside one of her other boyfriends -- a gangster who recently stole some Egyptian jewelry. Through a series of complicated missteps, Roberta ends up losing her memory and convincing both herself and a broodingly handsome young man named Dez (Aiden Quinn) that she's the elusive, adventurous Susan. Soon, Roberta finds herself being romanced by Dez and pursued separately by her husband, Jim, Susan, and by a murderous mobster who's looking for the stolen jewels. For her second feature outing, which was partially inspired by Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating, director Susan Seidelman filled her cast with hipster extras, downtown personalities, and New York thespians. Notable faces include comedian Steven Wright; future indie mainstay John Turturro; future TV stars Michael Badalucco and Laurie Metcalf; punk singer Richard Hell, who also starred in Seidelman's Smithereens; and performance artist Ann Magnunson, who would star in the director's Making Mr. Right. The big dance-club sequence was filmed at Danceteria, the disco that helped launch Madonna's career. The scene, and the film, helped propel "Into the Groove," one of the singer's all-time club classics, into the charts even though it was actually a b-side to the single "Angel." ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Gene Wilder stars as Michael Jordon, an architect on the run from false murder charges, who hooks up with Kate Hellman (Gilda Radner), the sister of a recent suicide victim. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide