Nicholas Hormann Movies

The sixth TV-movie spinoff of the popular family series The Waltons, A Walton Easter manages to reunite all of the surviving cast members--and in so doing, unintentionally reveals why several of those performers hadn't been doing much acting recently. Throwing the orginal series' chronology to the four winds, executvie producer Earl Hamner Jr. would have us believe that the 40th wedding anniversary of John and Olivia Walton (Ralph Waite, Michael Learned) is taking place in the year 1969, which doesn't quite explain how the couple managed to have all those teenaged offspring back in the late 1930s. Once we're past this inconsistency, the story boils down to the Easter reunion of the family at Walton Mountain in West Virginia--and more specifically, the return to the fold of John-Boy Walton (Richard Thomas), now a successful TV news anchorman in New York. John-Boy has not only brought along his pregnant wife Janet (Kate McNeil), but also Aurora Jameson (Sydney Walsh), a Time magazine photojournalist who is covering the reunion. Gradually, the various intrigues of the other Waltons are shunted to the background as the film's Big Question raises its head: Will John-Boy return to New York with his city-bred wife Janet, or will he sentimentally choose to remain at Walton Mountain...with someone else by his side? A Walton Easter debuted March 30, 1997 on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Involved in a very minor traffic accident, Murphy (Candice Bergen) is touched by the sweetness and gentility of Bob and Myrna Bickner (Eric Christmas, Amzie Strickland), the drivers of the other car. But her feelings are slightly different when the Bickners hit her with a lawsuit amounting to $1.5 million! With all this going on, it is rather surprising that Murphy's ex-secretary Robert (Charley Lang) would have the courage to show up again. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Oliver Stone's first directorial effort for a major studio (and his second horror film after the 1974 Seizure) came shortly after the phenomenal success of Midnight Express, which was based on Stone's Oscar-winning screenplay. The director turned to Mark Brandel's obscure thriller "The Lizard's Tail" as source material for what is essentially a silly psychosexual variant on low-budget horror films like The Crawling Hand. The title appendage belongs (for a while, anyway) to smug, conceited artist Joe Lansdale (Michael Caine), who owes his success to a popular comic strip featuring a macho, Conan-type hero. After Lansdale's drawing hand is sheared off in a grisly car accident, his career, dignity, self-control and even his sanity soon begin to abandon him as well. His tenuous relationship with his wife Anne (Andrea Marcovicci) falls apart as she takes steps to improve her own self-worth -- something she had never had the strength to do before the accident. Bitter and paranoid, Joe begins to lash out in anger at everyone around him ... and becomes convinced that his severed hand has come back, wandering in fields and dark alleys and squeezing the life out of everyone it comes in contact with. The question of whether the hand is real or merely a manifestation of Lansdale's rage is never answered, even in the film's "shock" coda. At any rate, it's impossible to take the film seriously -- the crawling-hand effects are laughably shoddy for a major studio production, reflecting none of the skills of effects wizard Carlo Rambaldi, and Caine's sweaty, pop-eyed histrionics are too goofy to be convincing. On the plus side, James Horner's score is remarkably chilling, contributing a great deal to a few effective suspense scenes -- but it belongs in a better film than this. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

The Incredible Shrinking Woman, directed by Joel Schumacher, is an attempted social satire focusing on the position of women in our society and our social values. After being exposed to a bizarre mixture of household chemicals, Pat Kramer (Lily Tomlin) begins to shrink. While this baffles scientists and makes parenting difficult, Pat captures the hearts of the American people. An evil political group who plots world domination kidnaps Pat and performs experiments on her to learn the secret of how to shrink everyone. The screenplay was written by Jane Wagner, Tomlin's frequent collaborator; Charles Grodin plays Pat's husband. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

An incompetent ER doctor (Michael Durrell) panics under pressure, causing the death of a heart attack victim. Though she knows what really happened, nurse Margaret Alldred (Margaret Ladd) is pressured by the doctor and her boss to help them cover up the details of the tragedy--intimating that she will be blacklisted from the medical profession if she doesn't cooperate. In desperation, Margaret turns to an old family friend for help and advice...an old family friend named Quincy (Jack Klugman). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi