Lamont Arnold Movies

Susan Sarandon and Nick Nolte give brilliant performances as parents trying to save the life of their son in George Miller's harrowing and heartbreaking Lorenzo's Oil. Based on a true story, the film begins as bright young Lorenzo (Zack O'Malley Greenburg) is leading a pleasant life on the Comoro Islands. But things start to go wrong with him -- he collapses, he raves, and he loses his hearing -- so his concerned parents, Augusto (Nick Nolte) and Michaela Odone (Susan Sarandon), take him to a doctor. The diagnosis is a death warrant; they are told that Lorenzo has been diagnosed with adrenoleukodystrophy (ALD), an rare and incurable nerve disease that is always fatal. When Augusto and Michaela are told to be patient as they watch their son sink further into the debilitating illness, they take matters into their own hands and start their own investigation of the disease. Using rapeseed oil, they find their own treatment for ALD. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

An uneven but entertaining blend of graphic horror and black comedy from John Landis, very much in the mode of the director's successful An American Werewolf in London. French actress Anne Parillaud -- star of Luc Besson's acclaimed thriller La Femme Nikita -- plays Marie, a lithe and lovely vampire with a conscience who will not take "innocent blood" and maintains a low profile by dining exclusively on criminals and lowlifes. She finds a virtual smorgasbord in Pittsburgh's criminal underworld, arriving in the thick of a bloody mob war sparked by ruthless kingpin Sal Macelli (Robert Loggia). After preying on one of Macelli's hoods (Chazz Palminteri), Marie fumbles her attack on the boss himself and he manages to escape, eventually transforming into a vampire himself. Macelli soon comes to appreciate his new superhuman condition and hatches a diabolical scheme to control the syndicates by turning his underlings into vampires -- including his beleaguered lawyer, Emmanuel Bergman (Don Rickles). Marie, faced with a new and powerful undead enemy, is forced to take matters into her own claws. To this end she enlists the reluctant aid (and eventual affection) of undercover cop Joe Gennaro (Anthony LaPaglia), whose cover has just been leaked to the press, making him a target for Macelli and his growing army of blood drinkers. Landis has crafted a dark and brooding film, pumped up with bouts of extreme gore and gangland violence -- but where American Werewolf's occasional comic touches helped to ground the story and give the "straight" horror scenes more punch, most attempts at humor here seem jarring and out of place. The film's highlights come from numerous horror in-jokes, including cameos from Sam Raimi, Clive Barker, Dario Argento and Linnea Quigley; Rickles' explosive death scene ranks among the weirdest in cinema history. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Marking the first collaboration between horror legends George A. Romero and Stephen King since 1982's Creepshow, this moody, atmospheric adaptation of King's novel was actually completed in 1991, but the highly-publicized bankruptcy of its distributor Orion Pictures in that same year nearly doomed The Dark Half to distribution limbo. King's story revolves around successful author Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton), whose popularity on the college circuit owes a great deal to the financial success of a series of violent pulp thrillers written under the pseudonym of "George Stark." When he decides to cast aside his disreputable alter-ego by "killing" Stark off in a mock ceremony, it precipitates a string of sadistic murders matching those in his pulp novels, which are discovered to be the work of Stark himself (also played by Hutton). Looking like a maniacal white-trash version of his counterpart, Stark is not so willing to quit the writing game -- even if it means coming after Thad's wife (Amy Madigan) and their baby. It's only a matter of time before suspicions turn to Thad, who is the only one who knows the real origins of his hideous twin. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

In this multiple Oscar-winning thriller, Jodie Foster stars as Clarice Starling, a top student at the FBI's training academy whose shrewd analyses of serial killers lands her a special assignment: the FBI is investigating a vicious murderer nicknamed Buffalo Bill, who kills young women and then removes the skin from their bodies. Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) wants Clarice to interview Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), a brilliant psychiatrist who is also a violent psychopath, serving life behind bars for various acts of murder and cannibalism. Crawford believes that Lecter may have insight into this case and that Starling, as an attractive young woman, may be just the bait to draw him out. Lecter does indeed know something of Buffalo Bill, but his information comes with a price: in exchange for telling what he knows, he wants to be housed in a more comfortable facility. More important, he wants to speak with Clarice about her past. He skillfully digs into her psyche, forcing her to reveal her innermost traumas and putting her in a position of vulnerability when she can least afford to be weak. The film mingles the horrors of criminal acts with the psychological horrors of Lecter's slow-motion interrogation of Clarice and of her memories that emerge from it. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi