Sandy Ignon Movies

Actor Jack Nicholson, writer Carole Eastman, and director Bob Rafelson re-team 22 years after their classic Five Easy Pieces, for this romantic comedy. Nicholson plays Harry Bliss, a small potatoes security expert unhappily married to a Japanese woman (he sarcastically calls her Iwo Jima during therapy sessions). Harry's life is coming apart at the seams -- not only is his marriage on the rocks, but the IRS and assorted creditors are nipping at his heels. Then opera singer Joan Spruance (Ellen Barkin) contacts him. It seems she wants Harry's help in obtaining an attack dog for her apartment, since an unknown person has been burglarizing her home and attacking her with an ax. Needless to say, Harry and Joan fall in love. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

In this suspense drama, a lawyer finds out more than she wanted to know about her friends and lovers. T.K. Katwuller (Barbara Hershey) is a lawyer with a firm command of her career but an unstable hold on her private life; she's more single than she'd like to be, and she's become romantically involved with one of her clients, Steven Seldes (J.T. Walsh), a real estate agent. When T.K. bumps into her college roommate Ellie (Mary Beth Hurt), she discovers that Ellie is Steven's wife, which T.K. hardly regards as welcome news. T.K. then learns that Steven has been accused of financing porn movies dominated by underage actors; after an angry confrontation, she bitterly breaks off the affair. The next day, Steven turns up murdered, and T.K. discovers that Ellie is the prime suspect. She agrees to handle Ellie's case, and Ellie is acquitted. However, T.K.'s conversations with police detective George Beutel (Sam Shepard) begin to plant a seed of doubt in her mind about Ellie's innocence. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Down and Out in Beverly Hills is an updated remake of the 1932 Jean Renoir film Boudu Saved From Drowning. Philandering businessman Dave Whiteman (Richard Dreyfuss) rescues scraggly tramp Jerry Baskin (Nick Nolte) from drowning himself in Dave's swimming pool. Much against his will, Jerry is invited to enjoy the hospitality of Dave, his social-climbing wife, Barbara (Bette Midler), and their sexually ambivalent son, Max (Evan Richards). The hapless hobo bonds only with the family dog, Matisse, which fascinates Barbara to the point that she's willing to share her bed (and a few other things) with him. Dave is twice cuckolded when Jerry makes out with the maid (Elizabeth Peña), with whom he has been carrying on a torrid -- and noisy -- affair. He plans to wreak revenge on the tramp, but several plot twists result in Dave and Jerry becoming bosom companions. Little Richard appears as the family's easily irritated next-door neighbor. Down and Out in Beverly Hills was the R-rated film that compelled Disney to create its adult-oriented Touchstone Films division. The property was later cleaned up for TV consumption and converted into a short-lived Fox-network sitcom. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This romantic, melancholy twist on the Frankenstein formula stars Peter O'Toole as Professor Harry Wolper, a lonely eccentric who has dedicated decades of research to cloning his long-dead wife Lucy from a culture of living tissue. To this end, he enlists the services of likeable Graduate assistant Boris (Vincent Spano), who is initially baffled by the professor's endless rants about God, Science and "The Big Picture." After Wolper posts bills seeking a human egg donor, his wish is granted by the vivacious young Meli (Mariel Hemingway), in whom the professor soon discovers a more willing convert to his grand design... and perhaps a love more immediate and real than the one he lost. Boris eventually manages to come around to "The Big Picture" himself when Wolper points him in the direction of another graduate, Barbara (Virginia Madsen). Despite opting for a platonic relationship to better determine if they are ideally matched, Boris and Barbara soon fall deeply in love, realizing that they are soul-mates as the professor had predicted. Tragedy strikes, however, when a brain hemorrhage renders Barbara comatose, and Wolper's nemesis Dr. Sid Kuhlenbeck (David Ogden Stiers) persuades the university to shut down Harry's private cloning laboratory. Meli forces Wolper to choose between her love and his misplaced longing for his dead wife... and his answer is suddenly made clear when he witnesses Boris's heartfelt determination to bring his own true love back to the land of the living. Written by Jeremy Leven (based on his own novel), this is a flawed but engaging comedy which proves that a well-written story can incorporate traditional science fiction elements as more than a mere plot device and actually enhance the humanity of the characters. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi