Terry Finn Movies
- 1997
- R
Set in a nursing home, this drama is the brainchild of writer and director Duane B. Clark, the son of television legend Dick Clark. Zachary Throne stars as Dean Carter, an aspiring musical composer who is shocked when his own father fires him from a gig writing the score of a period motion picture. Dumped by his girlfriend at about the same time, Dean drowns his sorrows at a pub and decides on a complete change of career. He takes a job working in a financially struggling nursing home, where he befriends a cynical nurse, Anna (Christine Cavanugh). Dean also meets a depressed elderly resident, Mr. Williams (Bill Cobbs), who is terrified of an upcoming surgery that may leave him paralyzed. After Williams attempts to kill himself and Dean intervenes, the two men become friendly, and Dean eventually realizes that Williams is none other than the legendary saxophone player Eddie "Coffee Cup" Williams. Through his dedication to helping Williams regain his musical abilities, Dean rediscovers his own love of music. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Zachary Throne, Bill Cobbs, (more)
- 1995
Actor Bob Hoskins directs this children's fantasy. When Mike (Willy Lavendal) actually finds the end of a rainbow, his friends don't believe it until he shows it to them. After that, they figure out how to find the next time and place for a rainbow-landing, and together they go to it. When they bicycle onto it, they find themselves transported more than a thousand miles away, to Kansas. There, they run afoul of the local Sheriff (Dan Aykroyd) and only make it back to the rainbow and then to their homes in New Jersey in the nick of time. When they tell their parents where they have been, they are quite naturally accused of making it all up. However, strange phenomena begin to occur and color begins to disappear from the world. One of them has taken some golden nuggets from the rainbow, and the nuggets must be returned if the world is to survive. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
Party-hard skydiving teacher Ditch Brodie (Charlie Sheen) has a knack for getting himself into trouble, but his booze-babes-and-planes shenanigans hardly prepare him for an international plot that pits Brodie and a mysterious KGB agent against a post-Cold War Russian villain called Kerr (Chris McDonald) and an American heavy named Ben Pinkwater (James Gandolfini). Aerial set pieces alternate with tongue-in-cheek flirtation and conspiracy-theory suspense as Brodie meets a beautiful new student, Chris Morrow (Nastassja Kinski), then must try to explain to the authorities how he allowed her to fall out of a plane to her death. Soon Brodie -- on the run from both Kerr and the police -- begins to realize that in espionage, as in romance, often nothing is as it seems. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlie Sheen, Nastassja Kinski, (more)
The huge success of the video games featuring animated Italian plumbers the Mario Brothers led to this $42 million live action movie. The two brothers (Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo) live in Manhattan and are chasing Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis), who wears a necklace made from a meteor fragment. Its powers can free a race of reptilian creatures from the city's sewers. The villainous ruler of the creatures, who are descendants of dinosaurs, is King Koopa (Dennis Hopper). Koopa has kidnapped Daisy and taken her to the underworld of Dinohattan, which is rat-infested and strewn with garbage. The Mario Brothers must overcome many obstacles, just as they do in video games, to free the princess. The film spares no expense with its use of animatronic monsters and high-tech special effects. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, (more)
Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey find the two obtuse pals battling The Grim Reaper, God, robots, great philosophical questions, and girls -- although not necessarily in that order. In this loose parody of the Terminator movies, directed by Peter Hewitt, the ultimate has happened -- at Bill and Ted University of the future, for many years now the people of the world have been "excellent to each other." But fed-up with Bill and Ted's peaceful world and even more fed up with heavy metal, the evil De Nomolos (Joss Ackland) decides to do something about it. De Nomolos creates a cyborg Bill and Ted, who travel back in time to kill the original Bill and Ted, win the Battle of the Bands and pave the way for the hellish reign of De Nomolos. In the past of 1990, Bill (Alex Winter) and Ted (Keanu Reeves) are immediately dispatched by the time-traveling cyborgs. And while the cyborgs Bill and Ted make time with the real Bill and Ted's girls (Sarah Trigger and Annette Azcuy) and prepare to take the real Bill and Ted's place in the Battle of the Bands, Bill and Ted are forced to deal with Hell ("Just like an Iron Maiden album cover"), the Grim Reaper (William Sadler), and God himself. When Bill and Ted are asked the secret of the universe, they get it right and as a reward a pair of Martians construct a set of "good" Bill and Ted robots to go head-to-head with the "bad" Bill and Ted robots at the Battle of the Bands. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Keanu Reeves, Alex Winter, (more)
- 1991
Sarah Pillsbury and Midge Sanford, the producing team responsible for the theatrical-movie "sleeper" The River's Edge, were the mentors of the made-for-TV Seeds of Tragedy. Filmed in semi-documentary fashion, the story involves a single cache of cocaine, from creation to consumption. The coca leaves are initially harvested by poor farmers in the Peruvian Andes. The coca moves forward to a small-time Amazon trader; then it is powdered under the supervision of a Colombian gangster, and finally it winds up on the mean streets of LA. Partially filmed in Mexico with a cast of relative unknowns, Seeds of Tragedy was an unusually potent entry in the Fox Network's "Monday Night Movie" series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
