Richard Foronjy Movies

A young boy attempts to sabotage his single mother's relationship with her new fiancé in this family-oriented comedy. Ben Archer (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) has become protective of his attractive mother Sandra (Farrah Fawcett) since they were abandoned by his father, and he resents the intrusion of anyone else into their lives. Despite his disapproval, however, Sandra has built up a relationship with district attorney Jack Sturges (an extremely low-key Chevy Chase), who eventually pops the question. Ben decides that marriage is out of the question, and he sets out to drive the lawyer away through a variety of schemes. These plans culminate in an effort to trick Struges into participating in the "Indian Guides," a scouting program involving all sorts of strenuous father-son activities. As one might expect, things do not quite go as Ben planned, as Jack proves himself a more suitable father figure than either expected. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Carlito's Way is a tale of a former hood trying to escape his former life. Al Pacino is Carlito Brigante, a high-level Puerto Rican drug dealer sprung from a three-decade jail sentence after only five years, thanks to a technicality and his sleazy, cocaine-addled lawyer, Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn). Carlito renounces his previous ways and takes a job as the manager of a club that Kleinfeld has invested in, planning to save enough money so that he can eventually move to the Caribbean. But no sooner is Carlito back on the streets of New York than his old life claws at him in the form of both old partners (Luis Guzman) and vicious up-and-comers (John Leguizamo). Nevertheless, Carlito stays clean and even restarts his relationship with a dancer named Gail (Penelope Ann Miller), until he is finally led astray by Kleinfeld, who manipulates Carlito into participating in the murder of a Mafia don from whom Kleinfeld has stolen a million dollars. At that point, the race is on to see whether Carlito and Gail can escape his world for good. The film is based on two novels about Carlito written by New York State judge Edwin Torres. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Fatal Attraction plus Basic Instinct equals Fatal Instinct. We're sure the producers would deny this equation, but listen to the plot. A handsome cop investigates a brutal murder, in which a mysterious, erotically inclinded woman is involved. Before long, he falls prey to the woman's obsessiveness. Viewers can see this one in either an R rated version or an unrated cut. Stars Michael Madsen and Laura Johnson have both been far better elsewhere. This 1992 Fatal Instinct should not be confused with the 1993 Carl Reiner spoof of the same name. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sylvester Stallone gives comedy another try in this farce set in the 1930s. Angelo "Snaps" Provelone (Stallone) is the wealthy and powerful head of the Chicago mob, but his ailing father (Kirk Douglas) doesn't approve of his life in crime, and on his deathbed, Dad makes Snaps promise to go straight. Determined to honor his late father's wishes, Snaps decides to go into banking -- just as his life has fallen into chaos. Anthony Russano (Vincent Spano) informs Snaps that he's hijacked $50,000 of his money and wants to marry his daughter. Snaps discovers that his daughter Lisa (Marisa Tomei) is actually involved with the chauffeur, Oscar (Jim Mulholland), but Anthony's girlfriend Theresa (Elizabeth Barondes) has convinced her beau that Snaps is her father. Snaps hopes to use this misunderstanding as a way of getting his money back, but in the meantime, he has to deal with a wary banking board, rival mob boss Vendetti (Richard Romanus), prissy elocution coach Thornton (Tim Curry), and Snaps' one-time girlfriend Roxanne (Linda Gray). Oscar's stellar supporting cast includes Don Ameche, Chazz Palminteri, Harry Shearer, Eddie Bracken, Yvonne DeCarlo, and Bruce Davison. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Ivan Reitman's sequel to the phenomenally successful Ghostbusters is looser and more self-assured than the original. The film opens with a title reading "Five Years Later" and finds the ghostbusters living in hard times. A restraining order has forbidden the boys to partake in paranormal warfare, and as a result they have had to seek other lines of work. Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) spend their time performing at children's' birthday parties, and Egon (Harold Ramis) is busy conducting experiments investigating the effect of human emotions on the environment, leaving ghostbusting behind. Venkman (Bill Murray) and Dana (Sigourney Weaver) have split up. Venkman now hosts a local cable show called "The World of the Psychic." Dana, now divorced and the mother of a little baby named Oscar, works as an art restorer in a museum -- and this is where the plot kicks in. While Dana is restoring a portrait of a 16th-century tyrant by the name of Vigo the Carpathian, the portrait becomes hexed. The evil Vigo wants to return to life by taking over the body of Dana's little child. Vigo has enlisted Dana's boss, Janosz Poha (Peter MacNicol), to compel Dana to cooperate. Soon dirty sludge and slime flow through the streets of Manhattan, and the ghostbusters have to reunite to save the city from a funky paranormal evil. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this excellent thriller, crisply directed by Sidney Lumet, Alex Sternbergen (Jane Fonda), a washed-up, alcoholic actress who never quite made it, wakes up one morning in an unfamiliar, luxurious loft apartment, only to find the corpse of a stranger next to her in bed. Alex can remember nothing of the night before. In a panic, she tries to flee but is unable to get a flight out of Los Angeles, and short of cash, she hitches a ride with Turner Kendall (Jeff Bridges), a disabled former policeman who happens to be fixing his car in the airport parking lot. Alex tries to get rid of Turner and returns to the loft which she cleans in a futile attempt to get rid of her finger prints. Turner continues to take an unappreciated interest in Alex and keeps turning up unexpectedly, much to her annoyance. Finally, desperate and on the run, and never sure that she didn't commit the murder, Alex allows Turner to help her. Alex also confides in and is helped by her ex-husband and friend Joaquin Manero (Raul Julia), the only man she completely trusts. Despite Alex's suspicion of Turner, she slowly falls in love with him. The movie quickly moves to a surprising conclusion, and creates a good deal of suspense, particularly when Alex is confronted with a corpse that just won't stay put. The highlight of the film is the performance by Jane Fonda reminiscent of her magnificent performance as Bree Daniels in Klute. The Morning After never rises to the quality of Klute, but Fonda's performance was strong enough to earn her an Oscar nomination. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide

When a quintet of college classmates take summer jobs, their adventures lead to comic consequences. Max (Paul Reiser) gets a job working for the Cabrizzi Brothers moving company. Dwight (Robert Townsend) and Byron (Paul Provenza) become caddies, while Woody (Scott McGinnis) waits tables and Roy (Rick Overton) sells vacuum cleaners door-to-door. When all five get fired from their jobs, they combine forces to form a moving company in direct competition with the Cabrizzi Brothers. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

Though some viewers might be put off by its length, graphic violence, and absence of likable characters, Sergio Leone's final film is also a cinematic masterpiece. Spanning four decades, the film tells the story of David "Noodles" Aaronson (Robert De Niro) and his Jewish pals, chronicling their childhoods on New York's Lower East Side in the 1920s, through their gangster careers in the 1930s, and culminating in Noodles' 1968 return to New York from self-imposed exile, at which time he learns the truth about the fate of his friends and again confronts the nightmare of his past. The acting, the re-creation of the time period, the cinematography, and the music are all superb. However, even more important is Leone's ability to make the film work on so many different levels: it's both a criticism of gangster-film mythology and a continuation of the director's exploration of the issues of time and history. Strange as it may seem, the violence and gore in the first half of the film turn into a sad elegy about wasted lives and lost love. The film's strengths emerge only in its full 229-minute version -- the 139-minute and other edited versions don't make nearly the same impact. ~ Yuri German, All Movie Guide

Alex Cox's directorial debut was a wickedly funny and willfully bizarre story that became a major cult item once it began making the art-house rounds a year after its release (an initial run in a string of Southern grind houses and drive-ins, where it was billed as an action film, was a resounding failure). Having lost his job and his girlfriend, punk rocker Otto (Emilio Estevez) meets a guy named Bud (Harry Dean Stanton) who offers him $25 to drive his wife's car out of a "bad area." When a handful of angry people start chasing Otto, he realizes that something is up, and he discovers that Bud repossesses cars for a living. With few immediate prospects, Otto joins Bud at the repo yard and is soon "ripping" cars with the best of them. When an anonymous source posts a $20,000 reward for a missing 1964 Chevy Malibu, it turns out that what's valuable isn't the car itself, but what's in the trunk, which is very hot, glows brightly, and kills anyone who comes in contact with it. A vaguely surreal modern-noir science-fiction comedy with echoes of Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Repo Man is packed with more incongruous sight gags than anyone can absorb in one viewing; keep your eyes peeled for the air fresheners, the generic newspaper box, and the watches without hands. Harry Dean Stanton gives a superb comic performance as the intense but laid-back Bud, Emilio Estevez delivers perhaps the best work of his career as the petulant but goofy Otto, and Tracey Walter is hilarious as the spaced out repo-yard man Miller. Iggy Pop wrote and performed the theme song and The Circle Jerks appear as a lounge band. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Adapted by John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion from Dunne's novel, True Confessions uses the still-unsolved "Black Dahlia" murder as the foundation for a devastating attack on big-city corruption -- in which it appears that many of the perpetrators wear clerical collars. In, 1948 Los Angeles detective Tom Spellacy (Robert Duvall) is assigned to investigate the death of a priest, who apparently suffered a heart attack while being serviced by a prostitute. Meanwhile, Tom's brother, young Catholic monsignor Des Spellacy (Robert De Niro), is reluctantly currying favor with crooked contractor Jack Amsterdam (Charles Durning), the better to finance an expansion of Des' church. The unifying factor between Tom and Des, beyond their sibling relationship, turns out to be the grisly murder of a hooker. The key words in the labyrinthine proceedings are power, ambition, and hypocrisy. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this extremely violent copy of Dirty Harry, a cynical cop tires of seeing guilty crooks get off scott-free and so decides to leave the force and become a one-man vigilante force. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Andrew Robinson, best remembered by Clint Eastwood fans as the maniacal serial killer in the original Dirty Harry, essays another odiously villainous role in this episode. The son of a gangster, Ron Maguire (Robinson) not only steals $250,000 from the Mob, but also murders a fellow hood and a cop in the process. With both the mobsters and the SFPD hot on his trail, the conscienceless Maguire tries to get off the hook by offering his services as a material witness against his own father! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Frank Burns (Larry Linville) blows his ultrapatriotic top when he finds out that wounded patient Pvt. Fitzsimmons (Brian Byers) has shot himself to get out combat. The reaction of Father Mulcahy (William Christopher) is rather different; eager to understand what motivated Fitzsimmons to injure himself, the good Father asks Radar (Gary Burghoff) to accompany him to the front, where he can experience the "shooting war" for the first time in his life. Ultimately, Mulcahy's ordeal by fire results in a lifesaving emergency tracheotomy--performed via radioed instructions from the 4077th. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide