Philip Baker Hall Movies
Primarily a supporting and character actor, Philip Baker Hall has also played the occasional lead on stage, screen, and television. Hall made his film debut playing a priest in Cowards (1970). He then appeared in three television series during the mid-'70s, including Man From Atlantis (1977). He became best known during the '80s for his portrayal of Richard Nixon in Robert Altman's brilliant Secret Honor (1984), for which Hall also wrote the screenplay. Though the film garnered mixed reviews, the actor's portrayal of Nixon was hailed as a tour de force. Through the '80s and '90s, Hall continued to work steadily in films and on television; his talents were perhaps best, and most famously, utilized by director Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast Hall in substantial roles in Hard Eight (1996), Boogie Nights (1997), and Magnolia (1999), the last of which saw the actor in fine form as a game show host dying of cancer. Hall also had a memorable turn as a private investigator who is far too convinced of the infallibility of his own instincts in Anthony Minghella's The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999); that same year, he gave a strong performance as CBS producer Don Hewitt in Michael Mann's The Insider. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide- 1993
Conducting an experiment to confirm his low opinion of the voting public, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) puts a new name on the ballot for an upcoming city-council election -- Woody Boyd (Woody Harrelson), who proves surprisingly electable as the returns come in. Future Frasier regular Peri Gilpin appears as Holly Matheson, while former "Little Rascal" George "Spanky" McFarland shows up for a hilarious cameo. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Pierce Brosnan stars as Danny O'Neill, an FBI explosives expert on the trail of a mad bomber in this made-for-cable thriller. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pierce Brosnan, Lisa Eilbacher, (more)
- 1992
On July 19, 1989, a DC-10 en route from Denver to Philadelphia lost all its hydraulics and broke apart just outside of the Sioux City, Iowa airport, killing 110 of the 285 passengers and a single crew member, and risking the lives of everyone else on board. At that point, the rescue crew, which had spent months preparing for such an emergency, had its mettle tested above and beyond the call of duty. In this made-for-TV reenactment, Charlton Heston plays the jetliner's pilot (reprising a similar role from Airport 1975). The rescuers include Richard Thomas and James Coburn. Also known as A Thousand Heroes, Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232 debuted February 24, 1992. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charlton Heston, Richard Thomas, (more)
- 1992
When a private detective takes on a missing person assignment trying to find an Italian aristocrat's uncle, she discovers a conspiracy of murder and drugs. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Cybill Shepherd, Robert Beltran, (more)
- 1991
Filled with flashbacks to Jerry and George's days in high school, this episode finds both characters haunted by their past as Jerry is hounded by a library cop for a book he allegedly didn't return in 1971 and George is convinced a homeless man is his old atomic-wedgie-giving gym teacher. Meanwhile, Kramer becomes involved with a librarian and Elaine is having trouble impressing her boss. Paul Thomas Anderson-regular Philip Baker Hall guest stars as Lt. Bookman, the library cop. Viewers may wish to note that the role of Elaine's boss, Mr. Lippman is played here by Harris Shore. Richard Fancy would assume the role in all subsequent episodes. Originally airing October 16, 1991, "The Library" was the fourth episode shot for the third season, despite being the fifth one shown. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
Long before she was in Friends, Courteney Cox had to deal with a few enemies in Blue Desert. A rape victim, Cox is given the runaround by the New York police. Fed up with city life, she heads for the wide open spaces of Arizona. Not long afterward, she is propositioned by lowlife Craig Sheffer. She reports this to sympathetic local cop D.B. Sweeney, who replies matter-of-factly that this is not the first time that Sheffer has been accused of a sexual offense. To her amazement, Cox is later visited by Sheffer, who agitatedly warns her not to trust the supposedly sweet-natured Sweeney. Someone is lying about something-and Cox plain doesn't know who to believe. When she finally finds out, it's nearly too late. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Courteney Cox Arquette, D.B. Sweeney, (more)
- 1991
The focus in this episode is on Mort Metzger (Ron Masak), sheriff of Cabot Cove, Maine, and a close personal friend of Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury). When Metzger jails a young man named Bradley (David Lansbury) on a drunk driving charge, he refuses to drop the matter despite the power and influence wielded by Bradley's ambassador father Chandler Hellman (Jack Colvin). Subsequently, Bradley turns up dead, whereupon the vengeful Hellman pulls just the right strings to bring Metzger up on a murder charge. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1989
The made-for-cable Incident at Dark River stars Mike Farrell as a working-stiff family man. When his daughter falls ill, Farrell discovers to his horror that the girl is suffering from toxic poisoning. A local battery factory has been polluting the area with its deadly waste, but when Farrell tries to take legal action, he finds that the law favors the factory. Albert Rubin's slowly paced script leans towards "bad guy vs. good guy" rather than shades of gray, but it successfully hits all the right emotional buttons. The presence of well-known environmentalist Mike Farrell in this sincere, medium-budget effort is a prime example of putting one's money where one's mouth is. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In Peter Yates' crime drama An Innocent Man, Tom Selleck plays Jimmie Rainwood, a stock figure airline maintenance supervisor with a perfect family. Then, one day, Jimmie decides to take a shower. While scrubbing himself clean, two crooked cops are getting themselves dirtier. Mike Parnell (David Rasche) and Danny Scalise (Richard Young) are the kind of bad cops who bust the drug dealers, steal their supply, and sell it back to the local drug lords. On this day, unfortunately for Jimmie, they get the wrong address and bash down his door. When Jimmie comes out of the bathroom wielding his hair dryer, Parnell and Scalise think it is a gun and shoot him. Realizing their mistake, they cover themselves and frame him as a drug dealer. Jimmie refuses to take a plea and he is sentenced to six years in the slammer. In the brutal prison environment, he is taken aside by long-timer Virgil Kane (F. Murray Abraham), who gives him a bleak collection of options to chose from in order to survive prison. After seeing a prison gang rape, Jimmie chooses the kill-or-be-killed selection and stabs to death the nasty black convict who has been bothering him. After three years, Jimmie is released on parole, and he tries to pick up his life again. But Parnell and Scalise return to threaten Jimmie and his family. Realizing that his prison lessons must be carried over into civilian life, he sets up a situation in which the bad cops' drug dealings are revealed, and Jimmie prepares for a final reckoning between the cops and himself. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Selleck, F. Murray Abraham, (more)
Ione Skye plays Diane Court, high-school valedictorian on the verge of heading to England on a prestigious scholarship. This is especially thrilling to Diane's divorced father, James (John Mahoney), who has always shared a special relationship with the girl, less father/daughter than friend/friend. When Diane begins dating irresponsible army brat Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack), her father despairs at her choice of an "underachiever." Pressured by her dad to break off the relationship, Diane spends the rest of the summer being pursued by the lovestruck Lloyd, who does everything he can to win her back. Diane finally realizes there's more to life than perfection when her sainted father comes under the scrutiny of the IRS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Cusack, Ione Skye, (more)
- 1989
- PG
Ivan Reitman's sequel to the phenomenally successful Ghostbusters is looser and more self-assured than the original. The film opens with a title reading "Five Years Later" and finds the ghostbusters living in hard times. A restraining order has forbidden the boys to partake in paranormal warfare, and as a result they have had to seek other lines of work. Ray (Dan Aykroyd) and Winston (Ernie Hudson) spend their time performing at children's' birthday parties, and Egon (Harold Ramis) is busy conducting experiments investigating the effect of human emotions on the environment, leaving ghostbusting behind. Venkman (Bill Murray) and Dana (Sigourney Weaver) have split up. Venkman now hosts a local cable show called "The World of the Psychic." Dana, now divorced and the mother of a little baby named Oscar, works as an art restorer in a museum -- and this is where the plot kicks in. While Dana is restoring a portrait of a 16th-century tyrant by the name of Vigo the Carpathian, the portrait becomes hexed. The evil Vigo wants to return to life by taking over the body of Dana's little child. Vigo has enlisted Dana's boss, Janosz Poha (Peter MacNicol), to compel Dana to cooperate. Soon dirty sludge and slime flow through the streets of Manhattan, and the ghostbusters have to reunite to save the city from a funky paranormal evil. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, (more)
This teen comedy from Savage Steve Holland stars Corey Parker as an underachieving high schooler who hatches a crazy plot with valedictorian Lara Flynn Boyle to gain acceptance into a prestigious university. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Edwards, Corey Parker, (more)
- 1989
Tracey Thurman was a real-life Connecticut housewife who, throughout her marriage, suffered horrendous abuse at the hands of her husband. The beatings culminate in a single bloody night when Buck Thurman stabs his estranged wife 13 times. She survives--barely--and Buck is arrested. Having failed to get proper protection from the local police force, Tracey successfully sued the officers in 1989. The long-range result was the Thurman Law, which called for mandatory arrests in wife-beating cases in Connecticut and several other states. Nancy McKeon, who plays Tracey Thurman in A Cry for Help, starred in the film in the hope that it would prevent Buck Thurman's early release from prison. A Cry For Help: The Tracy Thurman Story first aired on October 2, 1989; Thurman was scheduled for release in 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nancy McKeon, Bruce Weitz, (more)
First airing on television, this campy romantic fantasy stars Vanna White (best known as the "letter turner" on the long-running TV game show Wheel of Fortune) as Venus, the goddess of love. Normally she lives in Mount Olympus with the other Grecian gods, but when a hairdresser accidentally revives her statue, Venus has no choice but to return to the mortal plane. Once there, she must earn the love of a modern man or else she will be forever banished from Mount Olympus. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Director Martin Brest, of Going in Style and Beverly Hills Cop fame, was in charge of Midnight Run. Robert De Niro stars as Jack Walsh, a hard-bitten bounty hunter offered $100,000 to bring in embezzler Jonathan Mardukas (Charles Grodin). Handcuffed to the wimpy Mardukas, Walsh assumes that the extradition trip from New York to Los Angeles will be an uneventful one. But the prisoner hasn't told Walsh the whole story: the embezzler owes $15 million to a mobster (Dennis Farina), and he's been targeted for assassination. It's a toss-up as to what is the most entertaining aspect of Midnight Run: the slam-bang action and chase sequences or the verbal byplay between DeNiro and Grodin. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert De Niro, Charles Grodin, (more)
- 1987
The Spirit is a TV movie based on Will Eisner's celebrated comic-strip crimefighter. The title character's real name is Denny Colt (played by Sam Jones), a police officer who is believed to be have been killed by gangsters. Revived in a shack near the city graveyeard, Colt dons a domino mask and vows to fight crime as "The Spirit." His first job is to thwart the villainous vamp P'gell (McKinlay Robinson), who schemes to detonate a bomb during an important civic event. Intended as the pilot for a weekly series, The Spirit is a misshapen fiasco, bearing little resemblance to its excellent comic strip source material. Apparently the producers were appalled by the results, since the existing 78-minute version of The Spirit gives evidence of being hacked up in the editing room. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The first feature film from director Phil Joanou (State of Grace), Three O' Clock High chronicles a high school nerd's much hyped after-school bout with the infamous class bully. When the impish Jerry Mitchell (Casey Siemaszko) is assigned to interview the new transfer student with a supposedly violent past, Buddy Revell (Richard Tyson), he makes the fatal mistake of touching his subject. Revell, who hates being touched, responds by challenging the unwilling Mitchell to a fight at three o'clock in the parking lot. Spanning the course of the school day, the film follows the disaster-bound Mitchell as he soils his good-boy image through various misguided attempts at averting the fight. Also making noteworthy appearances in the film are Jeffrey Tambor and Philip Baker Hall. ~ Rachel Deahl, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Casey Siemaszko, Anne Ryan, (more)
After resigning in disgrace, Richard Nixon (Philip Baker Hall) sits at a desk in his study late at night, dictating his memoirs. Taking one drink, then another, he rants about Eisenhower, Castro, Khruschchev, Kissinger, the Kennedys, and any number of other people, some real, some imagined, finally cohering into a remarkable explanation of why his fall from grace was actually a supreme and selfless act of patriotism. Robert Altman's film adaptation of Hall's one-man show (written by Donald Freed and Arnold Stone) makes this performance feel more cinematic than one might expect, as the visual rhythms subtly match the ebbs and flows of Hall's performance. While Hall doesn't look or sound much like Nixon, the sheer, paranoid force of his characterization is thoroughly convincing: love Nixon or hate him, Secret Honor will give you plenty of support either way. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Philip Baker Hall
- 1982
When several people are killed in a hotel blaze, the authorities pin the blame on a known pyromaniac. But after a careful forensic examination, Quincy (Jack Klugman) is convinced that the wrong man is behind bars. To help prove this theory, Quincy persuades his old pal, insurance investigator Jake Carter (Gerald O'Loughlin, to come out of retirement. The opening fire sequence in this episode was excerpted from 1978's Inferno, a two-hour TV movie spinoff of the popular Jack Webb series Emergency! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1982
After literally getting away with murder, sadistic small-town bully Harry Moeller (Brion James) is himself shot to death. Six of Moeller's longtime victims step forward and confesses to the crime, which each man claiming to have taken one shot at the man with the same gun. With no way to determine which bullet was the fatal one, police chief Frank Ollano (John Anderson, happy to be rid of Moeller, is willing to write off his killing as self defense. But Quincy (Jack Klugman), who had appeared as a witness as Moeller's earlier murder trial, isn't about to let anyone get away with a second murder--even one that seems eminently justifiable. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1981
No relation to the later cable-TV sitcom of the same name, Dream On is a tale of struggling LA actors seeking out an audience. This talented but impoverished troupe stages a "guerilla theatre" production, wherein each actor takes on a variety of characterizations. Given that the actors include an ex-hooker and a pair of mismatched homosexuals, perhaps the troupe is using their production as a means of escaping the torments of their own lives. Perhaps, nothing-that's just what they're doing. Most of the unknown players in Dream On have remained unknown, with the spectacular exceptions of Ed Harris and Paul "Pee-wee Herman" Reubens. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In The Man With Bogart's Face, an affectionate send-up of the Bogart detective films of the 1940s, Robert Sacchi plays a man who idolizes Humphrey Bogart so much he has his features altered to look exactly like his idol. He then opens up a detective agency under the name Sam Marlowe (an amalgam of the names of Bogart's characters from The Maltese Falcon and The Big Sleep). Sam hires the Duchess (Misty Rowe) as his secretary ("She looked like Marilyn Monroe and made about as much sense as Gracie Allen") and "Sam Marlowe, Private Eye" is in business. Sam gets a meager response until a shooting puts his picture in the paper and business starts to flourish. Particularly attracted to Marlowe's services are a collection of characters -- Gena (Michelle Phillips), an attractive Gene Tierney type; Commodore Anastas (Victor Buono), a Greek shipping tycoon and Sidney Greenstreet lookalike; and the mysterious Mr. Zebra (Herbert Lom doing a Peter Lorre imitation). They are all trying to find the famous Eyes of Alexander -- a priceless set of stones from a statue of Alexander the Great. Also on hand are old Hollywood pros George Raft, Yvonne DeCarlo and Mike Mazurki. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Sacchi, Franco Nero, (more)
- 1980
- R
When a World War II army platoon stages a reunion in the Philippines, where they murdered a Japanese general and his wife forty-five years ago, they are unaware that the sole witness is ready to take revenge. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1980
Back home on furlough, John-Boy (Robert Wightman) has trouble remembering the details of the plane crash that had earlier left him in a comatose state. Even more perplexing are John-Boy's random references to some mysterious person named "Katie Ann." Quick, darting flashbacks to his wartime accident enable John-Boy to put the pieces back together, but it's a far from easy task. Elsewhere on the Mountain, middle-aged Ike Godsey (Joe Conley) is certain that the Army has made a clerical error when he receives his draft notice...until he ends up behind bars. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This made-for-TV thriller is yet another tale of swarming killer bees. A sub-par sequel to The Savage Bees, this time around, a scientist and his cohorts set out to protect some innocent school kids from the attacking insects. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide
