Beth Grant Movies

The comedy-drama TV series, adapted from Elmore Leonard's best-selling novel, is directed by Barry Sonnenfeld, who previously brought Leonard to film as the executive producer of Out of Sight (1998) and the director of Get Shorty (1995). Beau Bridges stars as Judge "Maximum" Bob Gibbs, czar of the courtroom in the tiny Florida town of Deep Water. His wife is former aquarium mermaid Leanne Lancaster (Kiersten Warren), currently working as a psychic possessed by 12-year-old Wanda Grace (RaeVen Larrymore-Kelly), a 19th-century Southern slave. Judge Gibbs develops a strong romantic interest in public defender Kathy Baker (Liz Vassey), and dispatches an alligator to frighten Leanne into a divorce. Honest Sheriff Gary Hammond (Sam Robards) reacts to the loss of his late wife by stepping out as a ballroom dancer, and a dance instructor plots the overthrow of the Castro government. Meanwhile, an unseen character steals and explodes autos to protest pollution. Gibbs also has to deal with the Crowe family (Brent Briscoe, Beth Grant, Paul Vogt, Peter Allen Vogt, William Sanderson) of Southern slackers and yahoos. Filmed in and around Miami, this eccentric series kicked off August 4, 1998 on ABC. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

A young girl finds friendship on the wrong side of the career tracks in this drama. Camelot Gardens is a "gated community" where wealthy people can purchase luxurious (if sterile) homes and a security force ensures that riffraff will be kept away from your door after nightfall. The Stockard family are new arrivals at Camelot Gardens; father Morton (Christopher McDonald) is a businessman who wants to go into politics, while mother Clare (Kathleen Quinlan) busies herself with affairs with younger men. Neither seems to have much time for their 10-year-old daughter Devon (Mischa Barton), who doesn't care for children her own age; Devon's uncle likes to entertain her with stories about a witch named Baba Yaga who lives in the forest, so one day she wanders into the nearby woods looking for Baba. Instead, she finds a trailer that's home to Trent (Sam Rockwell), a 20-something free spirit who scrapes together a living by mowing the lawns of Camelot Gardens. Devon and Trent both have physical and emotional scars to deal with, and they soon become friends and confidantes; however, Devon's parents become upset when they learn that their daughter's best friend is a grown man, particularly one who lives in a trailer and does lawn maintenance for a living. Lawn Dogs won awards at a number of international film festivals in 1997, including the Stockholm Film Festival, the Montreal World Film Festival, and the Catalonian International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Aspiring actress Julia's career prospects look dismal and her roommates are preparing to marry each other and move to Boston. When she receives a marriage proposal on the back of a post card from her ex-flame Mark, who feels that he can finally support her after getting a job with a law firm, she leaves her San Diego apartment to travel up to Spokane, WA to become his bride. This bittersweet comedy chronicles her many misadventures she takes her northward journey. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Patrick Swayze plays Vida Boheme, a classy and long-reigning drag queen. With his understudy Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes), Vida wins a New York drag stage contest and an all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood. But when Miss Chi Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) cries at having lost the contest, soft-hearted Vida cashes in the airline tickets so the three of them can take a car out West. The film becomes a strange sort of buddy road movie, with the three cross-dressers traveling across the American heartland in a shiny yellow Cadillac. First they tangle with Sheriff Dollard (Chris Penn). He stops them for a minor traffic violation, puts the moves on Vida, and Vida knocks him out, so they flee. Later, they are stranded by car problems in a small town in Nebraska. Renting a room in a hotel, they put some life into the town and its annual strawberry festival. They provide a mousy local woman, Carol Ann (Stockard Channing), with new role models of assertiveness. They also insist on chivalrous treatment from the local good old boys and give lessons on courting to a teenage girl. This film was released on the heels of the more outrageous Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which featured Terence Stamp as a drag queen. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

Mitch Robbins (Billy Crystal) returns in this sequel to the original City Slickers that attempts to recapture the first film's warmth and character comedy. Despite feeling re-invigorated when we last left him, Mitch again faces a few personal dilemmas: his radio station job is going nowhere and his schlep of a brother (Jon Lovitz, replacing Bruno Kirby as the third of Mitch's cowboy threesome) has come to stay for a while. Things get really strange when Mitch is haunted by the ghost of cowboy Curly (Jack Palance), who died while leading Mitch and friends on their first cattle-herding adventure. Mitch unexpectedly finds a treasure map in the band of Curly's hat and, together with his brother and his friend Phil (Daniel Stern), heads back to the West to find Curly's lost gold mine. Along the way, they hitch up with Curly's twin brother, again played by Palance. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

If you don't think Speed is the fastest-moving adventure film ever made, we challenge you to find a faster one. Keanu Reeves stars as an LA Bomb Squad specialist whose principal antagonist is elusive bomber-extortionist Dennis Hopper. Seeking vengeance after his latest ransom scheme is thwarted, Hopper presents a personal challenge to Reeves: A wired-for-destruction city bus, which will detonate if the speedometer drops below 50 MPH. Playing the reluctant civilian who is pressed into service as the bus' "substitute driver," leading lady Sandra Bullock became a major star in her own right. Once Speed gets to the meat of its story, the excitement never lets up--not even after the boobytrapped bus is out of the picture. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jonathan Kaplan directs this drama which grafts a nostalgic mood piece with a race-to-the-finish road movie. Lurene Hallett (Michelle Pfeiffer) is an insulated middle-class wife living in Texas in the early 1960s who adores the Kennedys, particularly Jackie, whom she feels is a kindred soul. When she finds out the President and First Lady will be in Dallas on November 22, 1963, she races to the airport to greet the couple. Just missing them, she drives through the Dallas streets and notices a quiet chaos developing. When she finds out John Kennedy has been assassinated, Lureen is determined to get to Washington to be with Jackie for the funeral. When her redneck husband Ray (Brian Kerwin) refuses to give her the car, she gets on a bus, where she meets a black man named Johnson (Dennis Haysbert), with his five-year-old daughter Jonell (Stephanie McFadden). Lureen speaks continually about Kennedy and the rest of the black occupants of the bus roll their eyes. But after an accident with the bus, Lureen uncovers the fact that Mr. Johnson's real name is Cater, and he has kidnapped his daughter from an orphanage and is heading to Philadelphia. With the cops on their tail, the trio steals a car and race northward with the police in pursuit, Lureen hoping to make to Washington in time for Kennedy's funeral. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Marking the first collaboration between horror legends George A. Romero and Stephen King since 1982's Creepshow, this moody, atmospheric adaptation of King's novel was actually completed in 1991, but the highly-publicized bankruptcy of its distributor Orion Pictures in that same year nearly doomed The Dark Half to distribution limbo. King's story revolves around successful author Thad Beaumont (Timothy Hutton), whose popularity on the college circuit owes a great deal to the financial success of a series of violent pulp thrillers written under the pseudonym of "George Stark." When he decides to cast aside his disreputable alter-ego by "killing" Stark off in a mock ceremony, it precipitates a string of sadistic murders matching those in his pulp novels, which are discovered to be the work of Stark himself (also played by Hutton). Looking like a maniacal white-trash version of his counterpart, Stark is not so willing to quit the writing game -- even if it means coming after Thad's wife (Amy Madigan) and their baby. It's only a matter of time before suspicions turn to Thad, who is the only one who knows the real origins of his hideous twin. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

The title of Henry Jaglom's stream-of-consciousness Eating says it all. Three women (Lisa Blake Richards, Mary Crosby and Marlena Giovi), each celebrating a "milestone" birthday, decide to throw a joint party. Attending the revelries is French documentary filmmaker Martine Nely Alard, who becomes fascinated when none of the guests will touch the meticulously prepared birthday cake. As Martine begins interviewing the partygoers, she discovers the importance that food holds in each of their lives. One of the most revelatory improvisational monologues is delivered by a matriarch portrayed by Frances Bergen, the real-life widow of Edgar Bergen and the mother of Candice. Though Eating is not for everyone's taste, for those in tune with the fiercely independent Jaglom, the film is a cinematic smorgasbord. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the conclusion of Hunter's two-part Season Seven opener, Hunter (Fred Dryer) is unable to prevent a murder at the hands of international assassin and professional torturer Kudriescu (Andreas Katsulas), who has exacted vengeance for the deaths of two Romanian immigrants. The criminal Pinder family blames the police for the killings, and unless Hunter can track down the perpetrator, he will escape the country scot-free. With this episode, Darlanne Fluegelbecomes a regular as Metro Division officer Joanne Molenski. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A derivative rehashing of its predecessor (which itself owes a heavy debt to Trilogy of Terror), this sequel details the plight of young Andy (Alex Vincent), who in the previous film narrowly escaped losing his soul to make room for devil-doll Chucky (voice of Brad Dourif). Possessed by the spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray, Chucky had coveted Andy's body as a replacement for his own plastic shell... which ended up beaten and burned beyond recognition. At this film's outset, Andy's mom has suffered a nervous breakdown as a result of the prior human-vs.-doll battle, and Andy has been taken to a foster home. In the meantime, the makers of Good Guys dolls decide to reconstruct the scrappy little toy, hoping to prove the doll's harmlessness and sway public opinion. Alas, this is a major horror-movie no-no, and Chucky staggers obnoxiously back to life, with a renewed interest in body-swapping with Andy. Not awful as horror sequels go, this follows the standard horror-franchise formula (such as upping the gore quotient with each sequel) but manages to throw in a few appreciable scares, particularly at the climax (which echoes that of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining). ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

In this film, the small town of Clyde, Ohio is buzzing with excitement when it is said that the famous Roxy Carmichael is leaving her luxurious Hollywood life to return to her old hometown. Her return causes upheaval in the lives of family-man Denton Webb (Jeff Daniels), her old boyfriend, and an angst-ridden teen, Dinky Bossetti (Winona Ryder), who is convinced that Roxy Carmichael is her natural mother. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide