Allen Garfield

A sportscaster's nightmare occurs when a highly touted prizefight ends after only seven seconds into the first round, leaving the Sports Night crew with the remaining 89 minutes and 53 seconds that was dedicated to the fight. Dan (Josh Charles) and Casey (Peter Krause) fly into super-stall mode, while coming to the realization that their fight commentator Chuck Kimmel (Allen Garfield) is not only vastly underqualified to be on television, but he's also drunk and a complete loon. Meanwhile, Dan's psychiatric well-being meets another obstacle when his father Jay (Peter Riegert) comes to town for a visit and begins berating Dan on nearly every aspect of his life. As the show begins its slow decent into an absurd chaos, Dana (Felicity Huffman) agonizes over what may be a missed romantic opportunity with Casey, who is now smitten with one of the women Dana made him go out on a date with. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

Henri-Georges Clouzot's classic French thriller gets a Hollywood makeover in this glossy remake. Guy Baran (Chazz Palminteri) is the dull, loutish headmaster of a private school that has seen better days. While Guy oversees the day to day operations, the school is actually owned by his wife Mia (Isabelle Adjani), whose spirit has been crushed by Guy's casual cruelty and whose health is frail. Guy has been openly having an affair with one of his teachers, Nicole Horner (Sharon Stone), who has almost as much contempt for Guy as Mia. Mia and Nicole eventually join forces against their common enemy and plan to murder him and conceal the evidence. However, while the killing goes as planned, Guy's body mysteriously disappears from the carefully chosen spot where it was dumped, and when a chatty detective, Shirley Vogel (Kathy Bates) begins asking questions, both women begin to wonder who knows what about their murderous scheme. This was the third remake of Les Diaboliques, following two made-for-TV adaptations, Reflection of Murder and House of Secrets. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this quirky drama, Julian Goddard is stranded in the desert and dying of thirst when suddenly Johnny Destiny drives up and gives him a ride to the ramshackle Marilyn Motel near Las Vegas. There they meet the owner, Harry Thoreau, with whom Julian attempted to rob a bank three years before. It is revealed that Julian is an escaped convict who has returned to get his share of the take and reclaim his former girlfriend Lucille, who is working as a lounge singer at her boyfriend's casino. While Julian endeavors to realize his goal, Destiny frequently appears to guide him and the others along their proper paths. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This sci-fi actioner is set in the year 2074. The story is framed by the war between the two international corporate giants, Pinwheel Robotics and Kobayashi, responsible for manufacturing the cyborgs that 21st century technology has become dependent upon. In fact, most of the world is being run by the sophisticated androids. The conflict turns violent when the Kobayashi cyborgs begin methodically killing their competition. To stop them, the head of Pinwheel, Martin Dunn, creates the perfect computer housed in the body of a beautiful woman. The cyborg, Casella Reese, has a strange fluid flowing within in her that when activated will cause her to literally explode should she have an orgasm; Dunn designed her to infiltrate Kobayashi and assassinate the CEO. The real problems begin when Casella, who is also equipped with human emotions and independent thought, falls in love with her martial arts teacher, Colt Ricks. When she learns of her upcoming suicide mission, she and Colt, with the help of their informer, the cyborg mercenary Mercy, try to reach Mombasa where unlicensed androids can live in peace. Unfortunately, they must first escape their city and the cyborg killers who pursue them. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The discovery of a nude woman's body in a Manhattan elevator, six months after a similar discovery in another state, indicates that a serial killer is at large. The police manage to collar the killer, whereupon assistant D.A. Stone (Michael Moriarty) endeavors to have the accused stand trial in New York. But his efforts may be thwarted by the parents of the killer's previous victim, who intend to have the man tried in their own state -- where the death penalty is all but mandatory in such cases. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this comedy-fantasy, beach-bum Scotty McKay and his buddies are granted their every wish by a luscious genie who has been assigned to do Scotty's bidding. Soon the fellows are carousing in splendor surrounded by their hearts' desires. Unfortunately, it isn't enough for Scotty, who really wants his sexy super-model neighbor Dana. Unfortunately, Jeanie has no power over love. Still she does her best to make him attractive to the shallow cover-girl. It works, but just as Scotty is to get his wish, Jeanie realizes that she is in love with him and that Dana cares nothing for him. She disobeys her commands and interferes with Scotty's wish and all sorts of mayhem ensues until at last true love prevails. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Wim Wenders' sprawling cyberpunk noir epic -- shot in no less than nine different countries -- is set in 1999 and stars Solveig Dommartin as Claire, a young Frenchwoman who comes into contact with a large sum of money stolen during a bank heist; in her travels she picks up a mysterious American hitchhiker (William Hurt), who himself steals some of the money before parting from her company. Upon discovering the theft, Claire sets out on his trail, with both a Hammett-styled German private eye (Rudiger Vogler) as well as her former lover, a novelist portrayed by Sam Neill, in tow. The hitchhiker is really Sam Farber, the son of an underground scientist (Max Von Sydow), and his mission is to travel the globe in order to acquire the funding necessary to develop the technology which will allow his blind mother (Jeanne Moreau) to "see" visual recordings of her family members; the second half of the film takes place largely in the Farbers' compound in the Australian Outback, where Sam, Claire and the others take refuge while attempting to bring the sight project to its fruition, in the meantime pondering earth's future in the wake of a nuclear disaster in outer space. Wenders' most ambitious film to date, budgeted at $23 million, Until the End Of the World is also among his most seriously flawed efforts -- despite a keen sense of cultural perception, a fascinating sci-fi take on life in the near-future and stunning Robby Muller cinematography, the picture never quite gels. Much of the blame seems to fall upon its distributors -- upon its wide release in 1991, the movie was drastically cut to a running time of 2 1/2 hours, resulting in a disjointed narrative that doesn't shift gears so much as grind them as the action moves from country to country. Still, while a three-hour version, issued on laserdisc in Japan, comes closer to realizing the full scope of Wenders' epic vision, rumors of a five-hour director's cut -- said to have been screened to thunderous applause at a handful of film festivals -- continue to persist, suggesting that a masterpiece may well exist here after all. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Warren Beatty directed and starred in this big-budget action comedy featuring Chester Gould's square-jawed, two-dimensional comic strip detective. Ruthless gangster Big Boy Caprice (Al Pacino) touches off a gang war against underworld boss Lips Manlis (Paul Sorvino), with Big Boy and his minions rubbing out enough of Manlis's goons (along with Manlis himself) to take over his nightclub, and a healthy percentage of the city's criminal activities in the process. Caprice also gains proprietary rights to Manlis's girlfriend, nightclub chanteuse Breathless Mahoney (Madonna). Big Boy's next move to is unite the rest of the city's crooks under his command; this wave of corruption attracts the attention of lawman Dick Tracy, who is determined to smash Caprice's criminal network once and for all. As Tracy plots to put Big Boy behind bars where he belongs, Breathless uses her considerable charms in an attempt to sway Tracy from the path of righteousness; this causes no small amount of anxiety for Tracy's long-suffering female companion, Tess Trueheart (Glenne Headly), and the street-smart kid (Charlie Korsmo) they've been keeping an eye on. The various bad guys, heavily made up to resemble Gould's cartoon characters (though Beatty is not made up to resemble Tracy), include Dustin Hoffman, James Caan, R.G. Armstrong, and William Forsythe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Joe Pytka's comedy stars Richard Dreyfuss as Trotter, a cab driver who gets a hot tip on a horse race and soon finds himself on the gambling hot streak of his life. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Detroit cop Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) has seemingly smoothed out his differences with his Beverly Hills superior Bogomil (Ronny Cox), but there's trouble ahead for both men, not to mention two other holdovers from the first Cop film, officers Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John Ashton). The "untouchable" heavy this time out is masterminding a series of violent robberies, committed by leather-freak hoods Dean Stockwell and Brigitte Nielsen. Unaccumstomed to this nastiness, Bogomil entreats street-smart Foley to help find the miscreants. But mean-spirited chief of police Lutz (Allen Garfield) will brook no interference from outsiders-especially the profanely insouciant Mr. Foley. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Set in 1950, this is a convincing, well-acted drama about a young girl's growing up in Las Vegas amidst poverty and a turbulent home life. The 13-year-old Rose (Annabeth Gish) lives with her mother (JoBeth Williams), stepfather (Jon Voight), and two sisters in a working-class home. Trouble is brewing on several fronts: her stepfather is his usual abusive self but is dipping into the bottle more frequently, her glitzy Aunt Starr (Ellen Barkin) arrives for a six-week stay and causes an upheaval in the marriage, and an above-ground nuclear bomb is about to be exploded at the government test site (only 65 miles away). If Rose can survive all this with her health, her sanity, and her clear intelligence intact, it will not be due to her supportive environment. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide