Sonia Hensley Movies

The girl next door learns to love the girl next door in this broadly satiric musical comedy. April Pfferpot (Kirsten Holly Smith) is a young woman from a small town in Arkansas who begins having second toughts on the day of her wedding to insufferable jock Dick Dickson (Michael Dotson). April's second thoughts are extreme enough that she opts to put a bullet through her skull rather than walk down the aisle, but afterward, she awakens to discover that she's not actually dead -- she has instead been magically transported to the (almost) all-female Isle of Lesbos, where she shows up just in time to witness a pagan same-sex marriage and earn the immediate interest of rough-hewn Blatz Balinski (Danica Sheridan). Dick, not the sort of man to take being stood up lightly, tracks April down to Lesbos, where he soon makes the acquaintance of the only man on the island, Lance The Nance, The Fruitball Slave (Alex Boling), whose job is to keep the island tidy. Lance is being held on the island against his will, and he will be released only if a straight male will succumb to his seductive powers, which makes him all the more interested in Dick. Meanwhile, back in Arkansas, a sudden rash of sexual deformities has swept the village, and Dr. Sigmoid Colon (Jeff B. Harmon) is brought in to help. Along the way, the cast treats us to 15 songs, including "Same Sex Love", "Lesbian Rock", and "Mojo Man". ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In this actioner, Eddie Baker is brutally murdered by drug dealers. Later expatriate, reformed drug-dealer Superfly is conned into returning to the US from Paris by federal drug agents. He then must let his former cronies know that he wants back into the drug business. Superfly hasn't been a dealer for over twenty-years, and doesn't realize that drug dealing has become a deadly game. His sudden reappearance rouses the suspicion of the two crooked cops controlling the city's drug flow. They are unsure which side of the law he is on and are not anxious to allow him a piece of the action. Fortunately for "Fly" a good buddy fills him in on modern drug trafficking. He decides to go back to Paris, but then the US agents force him to change his plans. Later Superfly is beaten by the drug lord's men and his lady friend is shot. Now nothing will prevent the enraged hero from getting his revenge. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Combining electric song and dance performances with drama (both on and off screen), Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984) looks back to the 1920s-1930s peak of the legendary Harlem nightclub where only blacks performed and only whites could sit in the audience. Mixing historical figures with characters loosely based on actual people, Coppola and co-writers William Kennedy and The Godfather's Mario Puzo create a panorama of love, crime, and entertainment centered on the Club. Among them are cornet player Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere, playing his own solos), who escapes psycho gangster "benefactor" Dutch Schultz (James Remar) for a George Raft-type Hollywood career as a gangster film star; Schultz's nubile mistress Vera Cicero (Diane Lane), who loves Dixie against her mercenary instincts; Cotton Club Mob owner Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins) and close associate Frenchy Demarge (Fred Gwynne); Vincent (Nicolas Cage), Dixie's no-good Mad Dog Coll-esque brother; Club tap star Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines), who woos ambitious light-skinned Club singer Lila Rose Oliver (Lonette McKee); and cameos by Charles "Honi" Coles and Cab Calloway impersonator Larry Marshall. Complementing the period story, Coppola evokes the style of '30s gangster movies and musicals through an array of old-fashioned devices like montages of headlines, songs and shoot-outs. Conceived by producer Robert Evans as his crowning achievement and directorial debut, Evans had to hand over the troubled production to Coppola, but the budget spiraled out of control as the script was repeatedly re-written throughout the chaotic shoot. By the time it was released, The Cotton Club's epic production story of power struggles, financial bloat, and even a murder overshadowed the "reunion" of The Godfather's creative team. Neither a Heaven's Gate-sized failure nor a wallet-saving hit like Coppola's Apocalypse Now, The Cotton Club got some favorable critical notices (although it drew fire for subordinating the African American stories). It did not, however, find a large enough audience to justify its expense and controversy, becoming another mark against 1970s "auteur" cinema in increasingly blockbuster-driven 1980s Hollywood. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi