Rob Freeman Movies
- 2001
Escaping from the clutches of Lydecker (John Savage) at Manticore, a nearly dead Zack (William Gregory Lee) tries to contact his genetically engineered sibling Max (Jessica Alba). Along the way, another Manticore refugee, Tinga (Lisa Ann Cabasa), makes her first appearance, thereby laying the groundwork for Dark Angel's first-season finale (which is, of course, still several episodes in the future). At the same time, the growing affection between Max and Logan (Michael Weatherly) is jeopardized by a number of outside influences, not to mention Logan's dissatisfaction with his "new" legs. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2001
In the conclusion of a two-part episode, Max (Jessica Alba) and Zack (William Gregory Lee) assemble an army of X-5 soldiers to bring down Manticore once and for all -- and, incidentally, to avenge the death of their fellow X-5, Tinga. Meanwhile, Max's longtime nemesis Lydecker (John Savage) offers to aid the rebellion, citing his disgust with Manticore director Madame X (Nana Visitor) and her corruption of the originally benign X-5 genetic-engineering program. But can Lydecker be trusted? An apparent victory over the villains suddenly morphs into a tense cliffhanger involving Max's clone -- and viewers will have to wait until the beginning of Dark Angel's second season to see how it all comes out. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This made-for-cable romantic drama was based on the book Fishing with John by Manhattan journalist Edith Iglauer. Jaclyn Smith stars as Iglauer, who is on assignment in British Columbia to write a flippantly satiric piece about the Canadian salmon industry. A "meet cute" scene unites Edith with taciturn, reclusive fisherman John Daly (Tim Matheson). She's sophisticated, he's earthy; she throws up at the sight of a gutted fish, he was born with a fishing pole in his hand; she never stops talking, he never starts. In other words, Edith and John are made for each other, and before the story ends, the two of them have joined forces to save all the other salmon fishermen in the Dominion from ruination and despair. Described by one journalist as the world's first eco-romance, Navigating the Heart made its Lifetime network debut on February 14, 2000. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jaclyn Smith, Tim Matheson, (more)
- 2000
Dark Angel begins its two-season run with a feature-length episode establishing both characters and premise. Back in the year 2009, young Max Guevara (Geneva Locke) escaped from Manticore, a sinister laboratory creating human prototypes with heavy doses of animal DNA. A lab creation herself, Max managed to get away with several of her "siblings" from Manticore's X-5 program. Now it is 2019: The world is in turmoil in the wake of "The Pulse," a seismic phenomenon which destroyed all computer technology. The 19-year-old Max (Jessica Alba) lives in a crime-ridden ghetto with a group of alienated teens and dopers, working as a bicycle messenger by day and a cat burglar by night. (And why not? Max's cat DNA has endowed her with superhuman strength and agility.) She pulls this "double shift" in order to finance an ongoing search for the secrets of her past, and for her genetically engineered brothers and sisters. Enter scruffy cyberjournalist Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), a crusader against the corruption that has engulfed the government and its police. Persuading Max to join his cause, Logan gives her her first assignment: to guard a federal witness and her daughter. But Max may not be around to help -- not if she is tracked down and captured by Manticore minion Donald Lydecker (John Savage), the obsessed scientist who "created" her. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2000
Kendra (Jennifer Blanc) and Original Cindy (Valarie Rae Miller) unwittingly dispose of Max's supply of Tryptophan, the drug which calms her seizures. In desperation, Max (Jessica Alba) tries to steal more of the drug, landing herself in prison, minus her superpowers and at the mercy of a corrupt warden (Alan C. Peterson). After a failed escape attempt, Max is billeted in the lecherous warden's house -- where her salvation may be in the hands of her tormentor's sexually abused maidservant. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Family ties and violent crime make strange bedfellows in the thriller New Blood. Alan White (John Hurt) is a British businessman who is the father of a pair of twins. Alan's son Danny (Nick Moran) has fallen into a life of crime, while his daughter is in the hospital, in desperate need of a heart transplant. One day, Danny appears at Alan's doorstep, bleeding severely, with an unusual proposition. Danny will volunteer his heart for his sister's transplant if Alan will participate in a very dangerous con. Danny and his friends are working for a crime boss named Mr. Ryan (Eugene Robert Glazer), who has arranged the kidnapping of Williams (Rob Freeman), a wealthy but reclusive man. Danny and his boys are not told that Williams is under armed guard, and the attempted kidnapping is a disaster, with Williams accidentally killed. Danny is seriously injured and does not expect to survive, but rather than risk the wrath Ryan would inflict on his friends, Danny asks Alan to take Williams' place -- Ryan doesn't know what the man looks like, so while the scam is very dangerous, it could be pulled off. New Blood is the feature debut from writer-director Michael Hurst. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Hurt, Nick Moran, (more)
- 1995
- NR
In this comic British caper film, an LA computer whiz finds herself recruited by an eccentric British lawyer who wants her to use her skills to defraud a powerful London bank that has been using its money to exploit a Third World country for tourism. She accepts his offer and mayhem ensues. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alfred Molina, Helen Slater, (more)
- 1992
- R
In this exciting sci-fi thriller, a newly designed and extremely expensive android with plenty of strength but neither emotions nor a conscience busts out of a secret government lab and ends up in the hands of terrorists who commandeer the top story of a hospital and hold the daughter of the President hostage. Desperate to stop the mercenaries before they kill, the government must thaw out the frozen form of the criminal who designed the hospital. But they end up thawing out a former football hero instead, who pretends to be the architect. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Martin Kove, Meg Foster, (more)
Lindsay Wagner stars as Paula O'Neill in this made-for-TV miniseries based on the best-selling novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford. Paula's grandmother, Emma Harte, took a failing department store and turned it into the powerful Harte Industries retail empire, and now that Paula has inherited the family business, she is determined to expand their international success by launching a new store in Hong Kong. However, Paula's cousins Jonathan (Christopher Cazenove) and Sarah (Claire Oberman) are determined to wrest control of the company away from Paula, and begin running interference in her plans for global expansion. Paula soon learns that Harte Industries is on financially shaky ground, and her personal life begins to crumble under the strain of keeping Hart Enterprises afloat. As Jonathan uses the firm's financial woes to his advantage, Paula finds that Jack Figg (Anthony Hopkins), the company's head of security, may be her last line of defense against her devious relatives. Originally broadcast in August 1992, To Be the Best was a follow-up to 1983's A Woman of Substance, another miniseries based on a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel, which covered Paula's life before she took over the family business; Diane Baker played Paula in the earlier series. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lindsay Wagner, David Robb, (more)
Kewpie-doll voiced Melanie Griffith does a sexed-up Nancy Drew turn in David Seltzer's adaptation of Susan Issacs' novel Shining Through. Set during World war II, Griffith plays Linda Voss, a spunky New York girl who applies for a job with international lawyer Ed Leland (Michael Douglas). Ed hires her immediately when he finds out that she speaks German fluently. The reason Ed is so interested in Linda's language skills is because Ed is an undercover OSS officer who needs a German translator. Their business relationship translates into love, but when America enters the war, Ed abandons his law practice to become a full-time spy. Utilizing Linda's charms, she travels to Berlin and infiltrates the Nazis as a domestic to try to discover information about "a bomb that can fly by itself." But Linda has personal as well as patriotic motives for agreeing to go undercover, since she has Jewish relatives in Berlin and wants to find out their whereabouts. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Douglas, Melanie Griffith, (more)
"Barley" Scott Blair (Sean Connery) is an alcoholic book editor from a bargain-basement publishing house in Great Britain who'd rather be drinking in Lisbon than attending a book dealers' show in Russia. So he's surprised when a CIA agent (Mac McDonald) pulls him from his boozy holiday. It seems that the CIA has through a book show intermediary received a package from a Russian book editor named Katya (Michelle Pfeiffer) containing amazingly detailed notebooks written by a cynical Russian physicist named "Dante" (Klaus-Maria Brandauer). The notebooks show that Russia's nuclear threat is a joke: Russian rockets "suck instead of blow...and can't hit Nevada on a clear day," in the acerbic words of CIA Agent Russell Sheridan (Roy Scheider). But why is Dante sending the notebooks to Blair? How shall the Western world respond to what could be the end of the nuclear arms race? Blair gets drafted by a British Secret Service agent (James Fox) to go to the new Russia to meet Katya. He must see whether the new Russia is still immersed in the old Cold War and whether the notebooks are genuine or another deadly chapter in the war of the spies. ~ Nick Sambides, Jr., All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sean Connery, Michelle Pfeiffer, (more)
