Patricia Finnegan Movies
- 2001
The scene is the small Missouri town of Silver Shade in the mid-'60s. Despite deeply ingrained prejudice, black lawyer Daniel Webster Stewart (Louis Gossett Jr.) has managed to achieve success, and is now on the verge of winning an important political race. Things take a startling turn when Stewart's friend Curtis Gallegher (Sterling Macer) is accused of killing the wife of Daniel's white political opponent, Horton Roundtree (Robert Urich). Fearing accusations of "conflict of interest," Stewart at first refuses to defend Curtis in court, but a hitherto unrevealed secret in the past of his own wife Olivia (Lonette McKee) forces him to change his mind. Meanwhile, someone in town is determined to prevent Daniel from taking up Curtis' defense -- and that someone is clearly willing to stop at nothing. A sequel to the 1997 TV movie To Dance With Olivia, which also starred Louis Gossett Jr. and Lonette McKee, For Love of Olivia was telecast by CBS on March 18, 2001. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1997
Goldie Hawn garnered favorable reviews with her TV-movie directorial debut, a family drama set against the backdrop of racism in the American South of the early '60s. While in 1962 the Cuban Missile Crisis generates fears among adults, 12-year-old Lilly Kate Burns (Jena Malone) dreams of a career as a dancer. The problem is how to escape her dreary small-town existence, where she's surrounded by her mother (Mary Ellen Trainor), a stroke victim; her bigoted Uncle Ray (J.T. Walsh), a theater owner; her dejected Aunt Emma (Christine Lahti); and her alcoholic dance teacher Muriel (Catherine O'Hara). In addition to young Billy (Lee Norris), Lilly is also friends with black minister Jediah Walker (Jeffrey D. Sams). Uncle Ray has provided only a single exit in his theater, and when a young black boy dies in a theater fire, the tragedy sparks and inflames local racial conflicts. Uncle Ray is charged with wrongful death, and Lilly contemplates the nature of truth and justice. Filmed on location in Anderson, Texas. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jena Malone, Christine Lahti, (more)
In this made-for-cable thriller, the idyllic life of an upstanding architect is nearly destroyed when his partner attempts to corrupt a city official. When murder ensues, the architect must evade the prying eye of a sleazeball detective. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1986
While Walt Disney's 1961 filmization of Victor Herbert's Babes in Toyland pales in comparison to the 1934 movie version starring Laurel & Hardy, the Disney film is an unqualified classic when compared to the ill-starred 1986 TV version. Adapted for television by playwright Paul Zindel, the 1986 film stars Drew Barrymore as Lisa Piper, a contemporary girl whisked off Wizard of Oz fashion to Toyland. Here her friends and family from the "real" world are reincarnated as villainous Barnaby (Richard Mulligan), Old Mother Hubbard (Eileen Brennan), Jack-Be-Nimble (Keanu Reeves) et. al. Only "March of the Toys" and "Toyland" have been retained from the original Victor Herbert score; the rest of the songs were specially written for this adaptation by Leslie Bricusse-and, suffice to say, these were hardly classics. Irreparably damaging this version was its 180-minute length-over twice as long as the Laurel & Hardy version, and not even half as good. Filmed in Munich, Babes in Toyland was first telecast December 19, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1986
Abuse is the key word of this made-for-TV drama. This time, it is abuse levelled against ageing parents by their own children. As the title indicates, the violence grows from mounting frustrations. Tuesday Weld stars as an emotionally tattered woman who goes off the deep end when her husband Peter Bonerz leaves her. Weld vents her spleen upon her mother, heartrendingly portrayed by Geraldine Fitzgerald. Of special interest is the early appearance by River Phoenix as Weld's teenaged son. Filmed under the title A Family of Strangers, Circle of Violence: A Family Drama originally aired October 12, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1986
Barry Bostwick is top-billed in the made-for-TV western Down the Long Hills, but the largest role in the film goes to Thomas Wilson Brown, playing Bostwick's teenaged son. Travelling westward by wagon train, Brown and fellow teen Lisa McFarlane find themselves the sole survivors of an Indian massacre. The two youngsters head into the wilds of Utah in the company of a magnificent red stallion. The situation is hardly idyllic: Brown and McFarlane must not only elude a pair of rustlers (Bo Hopkins and Michael Wren) who covet the horse, but also must steer clear of a huge, rampaging grizzly bear. In honor of contractual commitments, this film was originally telecast on the Disney Channel cable service under the title Louis L'Amour's Down the Long Hills. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Notable as an early effort from renowned horror filmmaker Wes Craven, this made-for-TV occult thriller was loosely adapted from a novel by Lois Duncan. Star Linda Blair -- whose film career had taken a detour into TV-movie territory after her legendary bow in The Exorcist -- returns to the demon-possession genre as a teenager who can't seem to convince her parents that her visiting southern-belle cousin (Lee Purcell) is an evil witch. Purcell's diabolical meddling seems focused entirely on the innocent Blair, who loses both her prize horse and her boyfriend to the scheming sorceress before the rest of the family catches on. Though Craven's well-known extremism is curbed by the limitations of television, his talent at generating high-intensity suspense is still evident, making this a modestly entertaining horror item. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- 1977
This pilot film for the TV series Big Hawaii stars Cliff Potts and John Dehner as a wealthy father-and-son team of Hawaiian cattle ranchers. Neither character is a candidate for the "Mister Nice Guy" award, especially the wayward Potts, who's recently been chased out of Vegas for cheating at poker. Even nastier is Potts' beautiful but scheming stepmother (Ina Balin), who plans to bulldoze his ailing dad's estate to make way for those stock 1970s villains, the Evil Land Developers. Despite a total lack of audience sympathy for the people on screen, Big Hawaii premiered as a weekly series in the fall of 1977. There were all of seven episodes. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
