Ken Farmer Movies
H.G. Bissinger's best-selling true-life account of a few months in the life of a high-school football team comes to the screen in this adaptation written and directed by Peter Berg. Odessa, TX, is an oil town in the western part of the state that's home to the Permian High School Panthers, the football team with the best winning record in the state. Odessa is a town with more than its share of problems; the decline of the oil business in Texas has set the city's economy into a tailspin, and racial tensions still erupt into violence on occasion. But football is the one thing that brings all the people of Odessa together, and on Friday nights every fall, as many as 20,000 people fill Permian's football stadium to watch Coach Gary Gaines (Billy Bob Thornton) and his boys try to lead the team to victory. As Gaines works to build a winning team in a town where victory is prized above all else, however, his players struggle through the emotional trials common to any teenager and ponder the fact that there is little future in their hometown...and that a championship season can be as much a burden as a triumph. Friday Night Lights also stars Lucas Black, Derek Luke, Jay Hernandez, and country singer-turned-actor Tim McGraw. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Billy Bob Thornton, Derek Luke, (more)
Chuck Norris stars in this made-for-TV thriller as Joshua McCord, a Presidential secret agent. Though still quite virile and limber, McCord feels that he is getting too old for his job, thus he begins training a younger man named Deke Slater (Dylan Neal) as his replacement, using Zen and proper nutrition as primary teachings tools. But McCord springs back into action -- and kicks plenty of serious butt in the process -- when the First Lady is kidnapped by a terrorist organization. First telecast by CBS on April 2, 2000, The President's Man was followed two years later by a sequel, The President's Man: A Line in the Sand. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chuck Norris, Dylan Neal, (more)
- 1992
In a post-apocalyptic world prone to a dangerous virus, roving motorcycle gangs replenish their draining blood supplies by abducting helpless females. A would-be victim (Melanie Kilgour) decides to fight back with her friend (William Smith) and two hippie-rebels (Andrew MacGregor and Joe Maffei). ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- 1991
- Add Another Pair of Aces: Three of a Kind to QueueAdd Another Pair of Aces: Three of a Kind to top of Queue
The original made-for-TV Pair of Aces starred Kris Kristofferson as a Texas Ranger who, while searching for a serial killer, is aided and abetted by introspective safecracker Willie Nelson. The Kristofferson-Nelson combo proved so unbeatable in the ratings that a sequel was immediately commissioned. In Another Pair of Aces: Three of a Kind, Kris and Willie team up to rout out a dangerous vigilante organization, headed by Rip Torn. The "third" of the kind is Joan Severance, playing Kristofferson's unlikely love interest. Written by Rob Gilmer and directed by actor Bill Bixby (Courtship of Eddie's Father, The Incredible Hulk et. al.), Another Pair of Aces was first telecast April 9, 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson, (more)
Lawrence Kasdan's Silverado is a fond hark back to the all-star, big-budget westerns of the 1950s and 1960s. The various plotlines converge at the town of Silverado, held in thrall by crooked sheriff Brian Dennehy and his behemoth "deputies." The four disparate heroes--Kevin Kline, Kevin Costner, Scott Glenn and Danny Glover--prepare to do battle against Dennehy for personal reasons ranging from mercenary to altruistic. Sidelines characters include duplicitous, dandified gambler Jeff Goldblum, frontier widow Rosanna Arquette and gimlet-eyed saloon owner Linda Hunt. The film is stolen hands-down by Kevin Costner, playing an irresponsible young gunslinger who never speaks when hootin' and hollerin' will do. A classic, High Noon-style showdown caps this rousing retro western. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kevin Kline, Scott Glenn, (more)
Ted Kotcheff continues his First Blood fervor with Uncommon Valor. Gene Hackman stars as Cal Rhodes, a former Marine Colonel who has been getting the run-around for ten years from the government concerning the disappearance of his son and his buddies - all Marines who enlisted years prior and served in Vietnam. Rhodes' son was last seen in Laos, where he was fighting in the war and captured as a POW. When word gets back to Rhodes that the men may still be alive and held in prison camps, but the government still has the men listed as missing in action, Rhodes decides to take matters into his own hands. Contacting an old friend, oil baron MacGregor (Robert Stack), Rhodes is granted financial backing to form his own incursion force. He assembles a crack team of men, puts them through an intensive period of training. and heads back with them into the Laotian jungles to search for the MIAs. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gene Hackman, Robert Stack, (more)
- 1982
- R
Sure to generate conversation, this provocative drama tells the story of how a middle-class family is torn apart when their clean-cut high-achieving son, who has the potential of making it on the Olympic gymnast team, suddenly joins a religious cult. The parents become deeply worried and try to get him back. The twist is that, unlike other movie religious cults, the leader of this one is not terribly evil even though he does strongly indoctrinate his followers. The members of his group are good people who do good deeds for others. Unfortunately, the parents don't see it this way and so hire a free-lance deprogrammer to "rescue" their son and force him through a deprogramming process that traumatizes him more than the cult did. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael O'Keefe, Karen Allen, (more)
