Kathryn Grody Movies

A powerful political allegory set in an unnamed Latin American country, Men With Guns concerns Dr. Fuentes (Federico Luppi), an elderly physician long involved with a group that trains young people to provide health care for the poverty-stricken citizens of the outlying hill country, where small agricultural communities struggle to survive under primitive living conditions. The doctor has heard rumors that many of his former students are lost and feared dead, so he goes into the hills to investigate. The deeper he digs into the jungle, the more Fuentes finds that the people are menaced by "men with guns'" -- military forces who use torture and execution to intimidate the people, and guerillas from opposition groups whose agenda is only marginally more benign. Accumulating several travelling companions -- a defrocked priest, a deserter from the Army, a boy who survives by stealing, and a woman who has turned mute since she was raped -- Fuentes finds that his journey becomes more revealing but also more perilous the deeper he ventures into the hills. American writer and director John Sayles filmed most of Men With Guns in Spanish (an language he speaks fluently), as well as several indigenous dialects; he claims to have based most of the film's incidents on actual events that have occurred in a number of different Third World nations. Mandy Patinkin has a brief role as an American tourist Fuentes encounters in his travels. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

James Lapine, whose Broadway credits as a writer/director includes work with Stephen Sondheim, made his Hollywood debut with this comedy. Michael J. Fox plays Michael Chapman, who once upon a time was a wise-cracking child star on a situation comedy called "Life With Mikey." Now in his thirties and on the skids, Michael makes personal appearances at grand openings of hamburger stands, and runs an unsuccessful talent agency (specializing in kids) with his brother Ed (Nathan Lane). The agency's only successful client is Barry Corman (David Krumholtz), a fourteen-year-old with an attitude who is known as "the cereal king" for his appearances on television commercials. Ed is trying to talk Michael into closing the agency and Barry is threatening to go elsewhere when a sprightly 10-year-old reprobate named Angie (Christina Vidal) tries to pick his pocket. When Angie delivers a heart-rendering tale of questionable honesty about being an orphan from Queens, Michael realizes that Angie would be perfect for a Sunburst Cookie commercial. She clicks in the commercial, and both her career and the agency's soar. In the meantime, Angie movies in with Michael, and as they bond, Michael realizes how to act like an adult and Angie realizes how to act like a child. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Bill Murray co-directed (along with Howard Franklin) this mixture of The Out-of-Towners and After Hours, concerning Grimm (Bill Murray), a frustrated city planner who is fed up with the corruption and venality of New York City. Getting together a couple of accomplices -- Phyllis (Geena Davis), who admires Grimm for his audacity, and Loomis (Randy Quaid), a follower to Grimm's leader since grade school -- Grimm decides to rob a bank, pocket the money, get out of town and take off to tropical splendor. Dressing in a clown suit, Grimm devises a unique way to rob a bank -- taking a group of hostages at the bank and inviting the police to surround the bank. Amazingly, although pursued by a police chief (Jason Robards), the trio manage to pull off the robbery. However, the problems really start when they try to get from the bank to the airport -- which proves to be more difficult than the robbery. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Grad-school administrative head Marion Post (Gena Rowlands) is in the midst of writing a book. The walls are thin in the apartment she's taken for work purposes, and soon Marion begins listening to the sessions conducted by her neighbor, an analyst. One of the patients is Hope (Mia Farrow), whose marriage is in tatters. As Hope prattles on, Marion begins flashing back to highlights (and lowlights) of her own marriage. Her musings are constantly interrupted by the memory of the man (Gene Hackman) she'd once ardently loved. Later on, chance encounters with old friends force Marion to face the fact that she has lived her life sheltering herself from her true emotions. Director Woody Allen's career-long indebtedness to Ingmar Bergman is underlined in Another Woman via Bergman's frequent cinematographer Sven Nykvist. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Few filmmakers other than Warren Beatty would have had the courage and vision to fashion an epic film from the life of famed American Communist John Reed (who is the only US citizen buried in the Kremlin). The film is an effort to humanize a political movement that has previously been depicted on screen in a series of unsubtle and prejudicial broad strokes. The film begins in 1915, when Reed (Beatty) makes the acquaintance of married Portland journalist Louise Bryant (Diane Keaton). So persuasive is Reed's point of view--and so charismatic is Reed himself-- that Bryant kicks over the traces and joins Reed and his fellow radicals. Among the famous personages depicted herein are Emma Goldman (Maureen Stapleton), Eugene O'Neill (Jack Nicholson) and Max Eastman (Richard Herrmann). The second half of this nearly-200-minute film skims through the years when Reed, now a Russian resident, becomes disillusioned by the harsh realities of Bolshevism. Despite the celebrity line-up of real-life "witnesses" to the events depicted in the film (ranging from novelist Henry Miller to comedian George Jessel!), historians took Reds to task for its oversimplification of events and its laundering of the notoriously promiscuous Louise Bryant. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The rich kids of the title are 12-year-old Trini Alvarado and her intellectual pal Jeremy Levy. Alvarado is down in the dumps because her parents are going through a divorce. She finds a kindred spirit in Levy, whose folks split up long ago. He points out the advantages and privileges of being a child of divorce-and is so persuasive that he almost convinces himself as well as Alvarado. An early project of director Robert M. Young, Rich Kids was produced through the auspices of Robert Altman. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Harry and Walter Go to New York was born of the theory that, the more stars and money that you throw into a film, the better the film will be. The theory has seldom been proven true, and it certainly wasn't in this case. Harry (James Caan) and Walter (Elliot Gould) are a third-rate vaudeville team, playing tank towns in turn-of-the-century USA. Thrown into the hoosegow on a petty-theft charge, our heroes make the acquaintance of big-time crook Adam Worth (Michael Caine). Once they're sprung, Harry and Walter follow Worth to New York, with the intention of pulling off a huge bank robbery. Lissa Chestnut (Diane Keaton), a bird-brained suffragette, is also mixed up in the proceedings though she never seems certain of who or what her character is from one scene to the next. The film's one tangible asset is its meticulous re-creation of 1890s New York, courtesy of art director Harry Horner. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In 1945, private Eddie Slovik, a "born loser" who made no secret of his desire to escape the army in any way possible, became the first American to be executed for desertion since the Civil War. William Bradford Huie's chronicle of this unfortunate wartime episode, The Execution of Private Slovik, was published in 1954. Frank Sinatra optioned the movie rights for the book, intending to cast Steve McQueen as Slovik and to have blacklisted writer Albert Maltz write the screenplay. The US military reluctantly agreed to okay the film on the proviso that Slovik would not be portrayed sympathetically. Out of deference to his friend John F. Kennedy, Sinatra abandoned the project, and that was that -- until the award-winning TV-writing team of Richard Levinson and William Link became intrigued in the Huie book. After a series of convoluted negotiations, Levinson and Link were finally able to put The Execution of Private Slovik on the small screen on March 13, 1974 (Albert Maltz, upset that the pair had decided upon a strict "no villains" policy in their adaptation, washed his hands of the whole affair). Martin Sheen was selected to play Slovik, though for a while Dustin Hoffman was seriously considering taking a cut in salary to essay the role. Abandoning the linear style of Huie's book, the writers adopted a Citizen Kane approach, using flashbacks to illustrate the events leading up to the execution. It is made clear throughout the film that no one, neither the military brass nor Slovik himself, truly believed that the private would ever face a firing squad; the usual custom was to postpone the execution until after the war, then reduce the sentence to a long prison term. Thanks to an unfortunate chain of misunderstandings and snafus, Slovik ended up dying by gunfire in a lonely French courtyard -- a fact long withheld from the public (Slovik's wife Antoinette learned of her husband's true fate for the first time from author Huie). The film's most famous scene, in which Slovik nervously repeats his "Hail Marys" as the hood is being fitted over his head, was Martin Sheen's own idea. Filmed on location in California and Canada, The Execution of Private Slovik won a Peabody award for the NBC television network. Originally running a full 120 minutes, it was re-edited into a 97 minute version for theatrical release overseas. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi