John Glover Movies
A longtime character actor with a reputation for taking on villainous roles with gleeful abandon and a subtle touch of humor, John Glover was once dubbed "the supreme rotter of the '80s" by the late film critic Pauline Kael, thanks to unforgettable performances in such films as 52 Pick-Up, Masquerade, and Scrooged. Always injecting his baddies with an element of quirk and personality, Glover later gravitated away from a life of cinematic crime to success with more sympathetic roles in Love! Valour! Compassion! and Mid-Century. A Salisbury, MD, native who pursued his higher education at Towson State Teacher's College, Glover began an off-Broadway career in the late '60s, which led to small parts in the mid-'70s in such films as Shamus (1973) and Annie Hall (1977). With occasional small-screen roles balancing out his features, Glover began carving out a villainous niche for himself during the '80s in such movies as The Evil That Men Do and 52 Pick-Up. Though Glover's big-screen work served as his bread and butter, more sympathetic television appearances -- as a valiant AIDS patient in An Early Frost (1985) and a dedicated doctor in L.A. Law -- earned the actor a pair of Emmy nominations.As his career progressed, Glover became an increasingly prominent figure on TV thanks to parts in Miami Vice, Murder, She Wrote, and Frasier, and his "villains" became ever more quirky in such high-profile features as Gremlins 2: The New Batch and Robocop 2. Glover's roles were also becoming increasingly diverse. Offering a side of himself rarely seen by audiences, he played artist Leonardo DaVinci in the 1991 made-for-TV feature A Season of Giants, and then portrayed another villain, this time the biggest of them all -- the Devil himself -- in the 1998 series Brimstone. Beginning in 1992, Glover did voice work for the popular superhero cartoon Batman: The Animated Series and, later, Batman: Gotham Nights; he also had onscreen roles in the live-action feature Batman & Robin and the WB series Smallville. Glover often returns to his alma matter (now called Towson University) to work with the drama students at the school's Fine Arts College. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 2002
While rescuing the victim of a hit-and-run accident, Pete Ross (Sam Jones III) stumbles upon the spaceship that brought his friend Clark Kent (Tom Welling) from the planet Krypton. Rather than continue deceiving Pete, Clark reveals his true identity, thereby putting a strain on their friendship. Meanwhile, Lex Luthor's (Michael Rosenbaum) employee Dr. Hamilton (Joe Morton) takes drastic action when he finds out that he is dying from kryptonite exposure. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2002
Unbeknownst to Clark (Tom Welling), his new high-school ring has a red kryptonite setting. The mind-controlling extraterrestrial mineral has an adverse affect on Clark, unleashing all his inhibitions -- and his inborn aggressions. As Clark's behavior dangerously deteriorates, a secondary drama plays out involving fellow high school student Jessie Brooks (Sara Downing), whose father has just escaped from a federal witness-relocation program. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2002
Honor student Ian Randall (Jonathan Taylor Thomas) has the ability to clone himself into any human shape. Ian hopes to use this gift to date both Chloe (Allison Mack) and Lana (Kristin Kreuk) without either girl suspecting that they're sharing the same boyfriend. And on a more sinister note, Ian changes his outer shape in order to kill a teacher who threatens to give him a failing grade. Rest assured that the chameleon-like Ian will have a run-in with Clark Kent (Tom Welling) before the episode's conclusion. Emmanuelle Vaugier makes her first series appearance as Dr. Helen Bryce, anger-management consultant for the hotheaded Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2002
Rachel Dunlevy (Blair Brown) shows up in Smallville claiming to be the biological mother of Clark Kent (Tom Welling). Not only that: Rachel insists that Clark's real father is none other than Lionel Luthor (John Glover). The only way that the matter can be solved is if Clark agrees to undergo a DNA test -- which will, of course, reveal his extraterrestrial origins. Meanwhile, Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) has a disturbing run-in with her own real father. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2002
Introduced in the first-season episode "Stray," Ryan Kelley (Ryan James), a teenager gifted with the ability to read minds, is reunited with his friend Clark Kent (Tom Welling). Upon finding out that an unscrupulous scientist (Martin Cummins) is conducting experiments on Ryan, Clark vows to shield the boy from further exploitation -- thereby bringing the scientist's wrath down upon the Kent family. And in another development, former X-Files regular William B. Davis (aka "Cigarette-Smoking Man") guest stars as Smallville's crooked mayor, with whom Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) has a tense confrontation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2001
It has been 12 years since the meteor shower which all but devastated the rural Kansas community of Smallville in 1989. On that fateful evening, the parents of little Lana Lang were killed; Lex Luthor, son of billionaire business mogul Lionel Luthor (John Glover), was rendered totally bald; and on the farm of Jonathan and Martha Kent (John Schneider, Annette O'Toole), a spaceship landed, bearing a child from the planet Krypton. Now it is 2001: Lana Lang (Kristin Kreuk) is the high school homecoming queen; swinging bachelor Lex Luthor (Michael Rosenbaum) is in charge of his father's local fertilizer plant; and the alien child who crash-landed on the Kent farm has been raised as the couple's own son, Clark Kent (Tom Welling). Aware that their adopted son is possessed of awesome powers far beyond those of mortal men, Martha and Jonathan have raised Clark in a virtual cocoon, prohibiting him from participating in any sort of contact sports; as a result, the boy has the reputation of a gawky nerd, and is extremely self-conscious and full of trepidation about his place in the world. In this opening episode of the Superman-inspired TV series Smallville, teenager Clark Kent becomes a close friend of Lex Luthor after saving the young playboy's life, and also endeavors to protect Lana and the rest of his high school friends from an electrified lunatic who was victimized by a Halloween "hazing" on the same night that the meteors fell. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2001
Inadvertently displaying his awesome superpowers, Clark (Tom Welling) is invited to join the Smallville high school football team by ruthless, "winning is the only thing" coach Walt Arnold (Dan Lauria). Worried that Clark's alien origins will be exposed if he does any sort of contact sports, the boy's adoptive father, Jonathan (John Schneider), refuses to permit Clark to sign up for the team, but Jonathan's wife, Martha (Annette O'Toole), is a bit more pliable. Meanwhile, Coach Arnold has discovered that he possesses a few superpowers of his own -- namely the ability to create deadly flames, a "talent" Arnold intends to use to cover up a potential cheating scandal. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2001
The Kents' former hired hand Earl Jenkins (Tony Todd) comes back to Smallville with an uncontrollable case of "the jitters." Exposed to the kryptonite held in storage at LutherCorp, Earl has not only developed a devastating nervous disorder, but has also killed a man in Metropolis. Things get worse when Earl overpowers a group of police officers at a local hospital -- seriously injuring young Clark Kent (Tom Welling) in the process. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The world of competitive figure skating takes a pratfall in this satiric comedy. Professor Robinson (Chris Hogan) is a documentary filmmaker whose latest project presents an in-depth look at three figure skaters hoping to someday rise from the lowest rungs of amateur competition into the ranks of the U.S. Olympic Team. Robinson's subjects are Veda Tilman (Barret Swatek), a high-strung young woman who suffers from an eating disorder; J.C. Cain (A.J. Langer), a chain-smoking trailer-park refugee with more than her share of attitude; and Wendy Wodinski (Marissa Winokur), whose rotund build would make her seem like an unlikely contender for a skating championship. As Veda, J.C., and Wendy train for their next match, seen-it-all Zamboni driver Phil (Jason Alexander) offers his perspective on the action. On Edge features cameos from noted comic actors Kathy Griffin, Michael McKean, and Wendie Malick, as well as appearances by real-life skating champions Scott Hamilton, Kristi Yamaguchi, Tai Babilonia, Randy Gardner, Steven Cousins, and Peter Carruthers. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jason Alexander, John Glover, (more)
Porter (Mel Gibson) is pulled into a heist by his old friend, Val (Brian De Palma regular, Gregg Henry). As they're stealing $130,000 in laundered drug money from Chinese Triads, no one is going to call the police. Everything goes smoothly until Porter's wife, Lynn (Deborah Kara Unger), shoots Porter in the back. After Val had shown Lynn a photo of Porter in the arms of another girl (Maria Bello), the two planned the double-cross together to pay off Val's mob debts so he could return to "The Syndicate." They didn't plan well enough, though, because five months later Porter's back, a complete sociopath who wants his $70,000. Brian Helgeland, the screenwriter for L.A. Confidential and Conspiracy Theory, makes his directing debut with this adaptation of the novel The Hunter by Donald E. Westlake writing under the pseudonym, Richard Stark. The same novel served as the basis for John Boorman's Point Blank starring Lee Marvin. ~ Chris Gore, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mel Gibson, Gregg Henry, (more)
- 1999
A group of young actors rehearsing a production of Macbeth find their roles are at once reflecting and shaping their personalities in Macbeth in Manhattan. Claudia (Gloria Reuben) and Max (David Lansbury) are a couple living together who both audition for an upcoming New York production of Macbeth. They win the leading roles, but the director (John Glover) decides to recast the title character when a better-known actor, William (Nick Gregory), becomes available, and Max is instead given a smaller role as Macduff. Soon the tensions and interpersonal dramas offstage begin to parallel the events of Shakespeare's Scottish tragedy. Female lead Gloria Reuben will be a familiar face to fans of the TV series E.R., while two other cast members come from notable theatrical families; David Lansbury is the nephew of actress Angela Lansbury, while Nick Gregory's father is noted actor and director André Gregory. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gloria Reuben, David Lansbury, (more)
- 1998
A case of road rage results in the deaths of both drivers. As Kellerman (Reed Diamond) and Munch (Richard Belzer) investigate this tragedy, medical examiner Julianna Cox (Michelle Forbes, in her final series appearance) receives orders from "higher up" to falsify her autopsy report. Meanwhile, the rest of the homicide unit investigate the death of a would-be spy who was smothered while participating in a mock training session. Giardello (Yaphet Kotto) calls in a few favors to crack this case, but not before the perpetrator does his best to kill everyone in the precinct station! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Richard Belzer, Andre Braugher, (more)
The potential witnesses to a mysterious murder all become suspects when a determined detective fails to crack the case in a hard-boiled mystery directed by Edward Vilga and starring Jill Hennessy, Paul Sorvino, and John Glover. When gunshots pierce the black stillness of the night and a body plunges into the icy depths of a deserted pier, an unidentified call to 911 sets into motion a curious series of chilling events. Though a subsequent murder outside of the Polite Persistence debt collection agency adjacent to the pier leads detective Sam (John Glover) to sense a connection between the two crimes, the tight-lipped employees of the agency seem to be taking extra caution to hide something big. Someone has to hold the key to this mystery, and whether it's the mob-connected Harvey (Sorvino), agency black sheep James (Justin Theroux), short-fused Frankie (Patricia Scanlon), anal-retentive Walter (Tony Roberts) or once-shady single mom Kate (Hennessy), Sam vows to crack the tough case even if it costs him his life. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Sorvino, John Glover, (more)
- 1998
In this supernatural thriller TV series, set in NYC, Detective Ezekiel Stone (Peter Horton) murdered his wife's rapist, was killed on duty, and was then sent to Hell by the Devil (John Glover). After 113 evil escapees flee the netherworld and return to Earth, Zeke gets a second chance. If he can track them down, he might make it to Heaven. Filmed in L.A., this series premiered October 6, 1998 on Fox. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Horton, John Glover, (more)
- 1998
- PG13
This adaptation of the classic Shakespearean tale of an exiled ruler who happens to be a very powerful magician is set in a pre-Civil War Mississippi bayou, with the main characters as powerful slaveowners instead of heads-of-state. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Peter Fonda, John Glover, (more)
- 1997
The double trauma of seeing his wife Vivian (Gail O'Grady) walk out on him and having his government funding eliminated causes nuclear scientist Rogers Henry (John Glover) to go off the deep end. But Vivian doesn't know about her husband's insanity when she agrees to deliver what she thinks is his model of a thermonuclear device called Medusa to the Pentagon. Nor do charter pilot Scott Nash (Vincent Spano) and researched Linda McCoy (Lori Laughlin) suspect anything amiss when Vivian boards Scott's plane en route to Washington. Only when the plane is aloft is it discovered that the "model" is a genuine bomb that has armed itself and will explode should it be taken any more than fifteen feet away from Vivian, whose pacemaker is the bomb's "control." Even worse: There's a hurricane threatening Washington, and the plane is unable to land--and someone on board requires emergency heart surgery! Based on the best selling novel by John J. Nance (who appears in a cameo role), the two-part TV movie Medusa's Child first aired November 16 and 20, 1997, on ABC. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
John Larkin (Timothy Hutton would seem to have the ideal life: A great job, a beautiful home, a happy marriage. Nonetheless, John has always been nagged by the feeling that "something is missing." The truth of this suspicion is violently driven home when John is inexplicably kidnapped from his home in the middle of the night by two sinister strangers. Managing to escape, John makes his way back to his wife (Suzy Amis--only to find out that she's not his wife at all, but instead a doctor for a top-secret government agency. Laboriously putting the pieces together, John realizes that he has never truly existed as a human being since he was nearly killed in a car crash: Instead, he is a semi-android, his brain implanted with false and misleading memories--all part of a master scheme to transform him into a "perfect" government assassin! Not dissimilar to such theatrical technothrillers as Total Recall, the made-for-TV Dead By Midnight (you'll have to see the film to understand the title's grim significance) was first aired by ABC on November 23, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Eight friends spend three weekends in the country over the course of a summer as they explore their sometimes conflicting attitudes about love, sex, friendship, life, and death in this screen adaptation of Terrence McNally's award-winning play. Gregory Mitchell (Stephen Bogardus) is a successful choreographer whose skills as a dancer have begun to decay as he slips into middle age. He has a handsome summer home in Upstate New York which he shares with his lover Bobby Brahms (Justin Kirk). Gregory and Bobby often invite several of their friends to join them for holiday weekends: Perry Sellars (Stephen Spinella) and Arthur Rape (John Benjamin Hickey) are a pair of yuppies (complete with a Volvo) who have been a couple for 14 years (as Perry jokes, "We're role models -- it's very stressful"). John Jeckyll (John Glover), a musician and composer with a short temper and a witheringly bitter sense of humor, arrives with his latest boyfriend, Ramon Fornos (Randy Becker), a good-looking dancer who often suffers the wrath of John's foul mood. Buzz Hauser (Jason Alexander) is a witty and flamboyant enthusiast of the Broadway theater who describes his greatest fear as a production of The King and I starring Tommy Tune and Elaine Stritch; he's also HIV-positive, though he stubbornly refuses to discuss his condition with his friends. And John's twin brother James Jeckyll (also played by John Glover) is his brother's polar opposite, a kind and forgiving soul who is now living with AIDS. Love! Valour! Compassion! was directed by Joe Mantello, who also directed the original New York stage production; this film also reunites the show's New York cast, with the exception of Jason Alexander, who stepped into the role created by Nathan Lane. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jason Alexander, Randy Becker, (more)
This was the third follow-up to Tim Burton's Batman (1989), the original revisionist look at the Gotham City legend, as well as the second in the Batman series directed by Joel Schumacher and the first featuring George Clooney as the Caped Crusader; it features not one but two super-villains, and a new heroine to fight crime alongside Bruce Wayne (aka Batman) and Dick Grayson (aka Robin) (Chris O'Donnell). The experiments of Dr. Victor Fries (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to preserve his late wife cryogenically have gone horribly wrong, turning him into the evil genius Mr. Freeze, who must keep his body at sub-zero temperature in order to say alive -- and he wants to put Gotham City on ice. Shy horticulturist Pamela Isley (Uma Thurman) goes a bit wild with a Venus Fly Trap-like creation she's been working on and mutates into Poison Ivy, who wants to kill all the people on Earth so plants can take over. Can Batman and Robin stop these fiends before their plans go too far? Meanwhile, Bruce and Dick's faithful butler Alfred (Michael Gough) isn't feeling well, so his niece Barbara (Alicia Silverstone) comes to pay a visit. When Barbara finds out what her uncle's employers do in their spare time, she decides she wants in on the action, and she joins the crime fighting twosome as Batgirl. Batman & Robin also features Jesse Ventura in a small role as a prison guard; it would be his last film role before becoming Governor of Minnesota in 1998. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Clooney, (more)
This independently produced film, The Broken Giant, depicts the almost affectless life and loves of an eccentric, unpopular preacher in a very remote Maine country community. Ezra Caton (Will Arnett) is the minister with a somewhat drab life, and he is not unhappy to see it disrupted when he grants a young woman, Clio, "asylum" in his church sanctuary. She is on the run from her father for reasons which are unclear. What is clear is that she diverts the preacher's affections from his waitress girlfriend to herself. The two of them then go back to Clio's father's house, where they then have a marathon discussion with her aggrieved father. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
A grieving widower discovers that the kindness of his late wife's best friend is malevolently motivated in this thriller starring James McCaffrey, John Glover, and Leslie Hope. When his wife passed away he thought he had nothing more to live for. Though at first the comforting embrace of a close friend offered a shining light in his darkest hour, things soon turn pitch black when the shattered widower discovers that the woman isn't afraid to resort to murder in order to cash in on the late woman's lucrative insurance policy. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Hired to help locate a missing author, an insurance investigator discovers to his terror that the nightmarish events depicted in the writer's best-selling horror novels are coming true. Wishing to be both a horror film and a parody of the genre, John Carpenter's In the Mouth of Madness combines supernatural thrills with winking references. For instance, the vanished author, Sutter Cane (Jürgen Prochnow), is modeled on writers like Stephen King and Howard Phillips Lovecraft, from his great popularity to his obsession with small-town New England. Indeed, it is to one such hamlet that investigator John Trent (Sam Neill) and Cane's female editor (Julie Carmen) travel, discovering a town filled with terrifying scenes right out of Cane's books, from random axe murders to far worse. Have Cane's fans gone psychotic and begun imitating his writings, or are Cane's stories of an otherworldly evil invading the earth actually true? In the Mouth of Madness's mix of self-referential satire and real frights anticipates the later Scream (1996). ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Neill, Julie Carmen, (more)
- 1994
A kickboxing cyborg security agent accidentally kills a corporate officer who was trying to rape a blonde employee in this sci-fi copy of Die Hard. The head of the corporation orders his security teams to kill both the cyborg and the employee to prevent word of the attempted rape from getting out. The cyborg and the victim must make their way out of the building with two teams of killer cyborgs after them. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Olivier Gruner, John Glover, (more)
