Victor Arnold Movies

Raymond De Felitta directs this warm, colorful tale about a blue collar dreamer who gets more than he bargained for after buying a two-family house. Set during the 1950s in Staten Island, the film charts the financial failures of Buddy (Michael Rispoli), a nice-guy entrepreneur who has perpetual bad luck. While he was in the army, he sang songs on stage to bolster troop morale. During one performance, he received a warm reception from none other than Arthur Godfrey, who invited him to audition when he got back to the U.S. After the war, Buddy's crushingly pragmatic wife Estelle (Katherine Narducci,) along with her very traditional parents, dissuade him from a life in showbiz. After a decade of living with Estelle's parents and failing repeatedly at one get-rich-quick scheme after another, Buddy buys a rundown house with the idea of refurbishing the second floor for living quarters and the first for a pizzeria where he can sing. Estelle grudgingly goes along with it, secretly hoping that this plan will fail so disastrously that he will stop dreaming and lead a "normal" life. Not until he finalizes the purchase does Buddy realize that the house has a pair of squatters: Jim (Kevin Conway), a drunken Irish immigrant, and his much younger, very pregnant girlfriend Mary (Kelly Macdonald). Buddy tries to evict the recalcitrant drunkard, but he refuses to leave. Just as matters are about to come to fisticuffs, Mary goes into labor. To the surprise of everyone, the child is of mixed raced -- the product of a brief tryst that Mary had with an African-American man a while back. Disgusted and disappointed, Jim shuffles off never to be seen. Buddy hasn't quite the heart to evict a young single mother, nor the strength to resist his wife's perpetual nagging, so he quietly pays for a room in a neighborhood boarding house. Though Mary is initially very mistrustful of Buddy's intentions, the two slowly realize that they are in fact soul mates. This film was highly praised at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

A corrections officer is murdered, exposing a case involving sex in a woman's prison. A.D.A. Carmichael (Angie Harmon) soon discovers that among the players in this drama is a female inmate whom she'd previously jailed on a drug charge. As the D.A.'s office squares off against aggressive defense lawyer Danielle Melnick (Tovah Feldshuh), a disturbing secret looms ominously over one of the prosecuting attorneys. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Two aspiring mobsters follow a stranger in this drama. A local mafioso assigns free-lancers Dommy, an explosive young man, and Mickey, the inward one, a job following a "mark." They are to tail him until he comes finds a special briefcase; to get that briefcase, they are to use any means. The two novices are inept at their job. Finally, their stalking ends successfully in a shoot-out. Unfortunately they meet with revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The CIA plays footsie with the Mob in Agent on Ice. Secret service boss Clifford David conspires with Mafia chieftan Louis Pastore in a plot to assassinate "inconvenient" political leaders. Young CIA operative Tom Ormeny, who has no inkling of David's plan, is ordered to kill Pastore-who, as it turns out, isn't killed at all. Set up as a fall guy, Ormeny is disgraced and fired from the service. His only hope for redemption is to prove that Pastore is still alive, still doing the CIA's dirty work. Though partially set in Europe, Agent on Ice was filmed entirely in New Jersey-and looks it. John Pastore, who plays the "assassinated" Mafia boss, also produced the film. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this unremittingly serious, undistinguished, yet well-acted tale of the supernatural, two different men are possessed by spirits of Native Americans after they separately wander into a sacred burial ground, angering the spirits enough for them to retaliate. When John (Gabriel Walsh) and Sybil (Susan Strasberg) come home with their son after a trip to the Mojave Desert, they bring an unusual stone back as a memento of the trip. The stone seems to cause strange noises and other inexplicable phenomena, and then one day their son is killed by a truck driver in a freak highway accident. As the father's mental condition deteriorates from that point onward, it is revealed that both John and the truck driver are possessed by angry spirits of Native American warriors, and unless the spirits are exorcised, the two men are destined to meet in a battle to the death. Director John Bender cuts back and forth between the truck driver and the father, which might confuse (or even irritate) some viewers since in the beginning there is no explanation of how or why the two men are connected. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Wolfen, a frightening horror movie based upon a novel by Whitley Strieber, concerns Detective Dewey Wilson (Albert Finney), who gets assigned to investigate the strange murder of a millionaire and his wife in a downtown park. Wilson and his friend, city coroner Whittington (Gregory Hines), aided by criminal psychologist Rebecca Neff (Diane Venora) connect the killing to those of several others, primarily winos, drug addicts and derelicts, all of whom seem to have been mutilated by wild animals. Their search leads them to a group of Native Americans led by Edward James Olmos who tell them of a legend of a superior species that once roamed the area, but now are living and hunting in the slums of New York. The film is engrossing, frightening and intelligent, with sensational special effects. Director Michael Wadleigh uses these effects to great advantage, frequently showing the movements of the characters through the eyes of the "Wolfen." This film is also the screen debut of Hines. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

Norman Jewison's blackly satirical look at the American justice system has gained in stature as one of the more incisive social commentaries of its time. Al Pacino plays Arthur Kirkland, an incorruptible attorney who attempts to initiate reforms in the Maryland justice system. Kirkland is haunted by the fates of two past clients, one of whom committed suicide in jail; the other is still alive but is locked up on a trumped-up traffic violation. The ability of power and money to distort the pursuit of justice becomes all too clear as Kirkland finds out how deeply the rot has spread. He finally retaliates by representing a repulsive judge (John Forsythe) accused of rape. Pacino's and Forsythe's performances are intense and powerful. Many critics found the film biting and almost painful in its razor-sharp indictment of the justice system, while others declared the script too outrageous. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

Kojak (Telly Savalas) is certain that he has finally nailed an elusive heroin dealer when the man is accused of shooting and killing a prominent plastic surgeon. Problem is, the victim may have already been dead when the dealer shot him. Once it is determined that the surgeon did not die of natural causes, Kojak is faced with two unpleasant possibilities: His prize suspect could be entirely innocent, and there may be another, even more slippery murderer on the loose. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Richard Roundtree cuts a startlingly new and powerful heroic figure as John Shaft, "the cat who won't cop out, when there's danger all about" in Gordon Parks' seminal action film, Shaft. John Shaft is a black private eye with a small office near Times Square. On his way there one day, he gets pumped for information by Lt. Victor Androzzi (Charles Cioffi), a friend of his on the police force, about something big going down in Harlem involving black crime kingpin Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn). Shaft can't help him and leaves, only to just miss being waylaid by two of Bumpy's strong-arm men at his office, one of whom ends up dead on the pavement eight floors or so below. Squeezed by the cops, who are holding a potential manslaughter arrest over his head, Shaft contacts Bumpy, who reveals that his teenage daughter, whom he's always kept away from his business, has been kidnapped. There's been no ransom demand and no clue as to who did it, and he wants Shaft to find the culprits, insisting that he start with a group of Harlem-based black militants led by Shaft's onetime friend Ben Buford (Christopher St. John). No sooner does he find Buford, holed up in a decaying part of Harlem, however, than his friend's comrades are mowed down by submachine gun fire, and Shaft and Buford barely escape. With Shaft angry and out for blood, everyone is forced to come clean -- Bumpy knows that it's the Mafia that kidnapped his daughter, as they want in on the Harlem drug trade that he controls; they're holding her somewhere else outside of Harlem, where his men are no good to him, which is why he wanted Shaft to hook up with Buford. Androzzi tells Shaft that a dozen Mob trigger men from out of town have been spotted in Greenwich Village. He doesn't know why they're there, but he does know that if fighting breaks out between Bumpy's men and the Mafia, it's going to look like a race war, and the whole city could erupt. Shaft doesn't like the way he's been manipulated, but he sees Androzzi's point -- he links the trigger men to the kidnapping and finds the girl, but loses her again, getting shot in the process. Even though he's wounded, Shaft heads for a final confrontation with the kidnappers, supported by Ben's friends in an armed assault on the building where they're holed up. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi