Lenore Banks Movies

It's not finishing school or a traditional upbringing that causes ten-year-old Opal to learn about the world outside of her own backyard, but rather a particularly awkward-looking mutt named Winn-Dixie. Based on a novel by Kate DiCamillo, Winn-Dixie and Opal not only become privy to the eventful, if eccentric, lives of their neighbors (including a librarian who fought off a bear with nothing but a novel, a blind woman who claims to "see" with her heart, and a sensitive ex-con turned pet store clerk), but Opal herself manages to reconcile some of the depression left over after her mother had abandoned the family seven years earlier. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

An ex-cop trying to stay away from trouble finds it literally crashing into his backyard in this crime thriller. Dave Robicheaux (Alec Baldwin) is a former New Orleans police detective who, after kicking an addiction to alcohol and confronting some serious problems with his partners, has left law enforcement behind to run a bait shop in a small Louisiana bayou town. One day, Dave and his wife Annie (Kelly Lynch) see a small plane plummet from the sky and crash into the swamp; the pilot dies, but Dave is able to rescue a young Hispanic girl from the wreckage. Dave and Annie take the child in, but as they try to find out more about the plane crash and who the little girl might be, they discover that she's actually an illegal alien from Salvador and that the pilot was involved with a local drug ring. Dave, constitutionally unable to let a mystery go unsolved, begins asking enough questions and making enough trouble that he finds himself on the bad side of his old High School friend Bubba Rocque (Eric Roberts). Bubba is a local crime boss who controls the area's drug traffic, keeps a boxing ring in his front yard, and has a wife Claudette (Teri Hatcher) who enjoys greeting her guests naked. Dave's inquiries eventually become too much for Bubba and his henchmen, and in the midst of a violent raid on their home, Annie is killed. Dave becomes obsessed with bringing Bubba and his men to justice and gets some unexpected help from Robin Gaddis (Mary Stuart Masterson), an exotic dancer with a heart of gold. While it was originally scheduled for release in 1994, Heaven's Prisoners didn't arrive on theater screens until two years later, by which time Teri Hatcher had risen to stardom on the TV series Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

John Woo's first Hollywood feature stars Jean-Claude Van Damme as Chance Boudreaux, a down-and-out Cajun merchant seaman, who, after saving a young woman, Natasha Binder (Yancy Butler), from a gang of thugs on the streets of New Orleans, agrees to help her search for her father (Chuck Pfarrer), a homeless Vietnam vet. They locate local businessman Randall Poe (Elliott Keener), for whom the vet had been working, and learn that her father has become a victim of wealthy sportsman Emil Fouchon (Lance Henriksen), who, along with his cronies, hunts homeless men as a form of recreation. After Fouchon finds out that the girl is investigating the murder of her father, he arranges for she and Chance to be ambushed, but they manage to escape into the backwoods of Louisiana -- his stomping grounds. Realizing he needs to regroup, Fouchon assembles a private army to invade the bayous. They track the pair to the rustic cabin of Chance's Uncle Douvee (Wilford Brimley), and the real fireworks begin. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide

The 1990 made-for-cable remake of Graham Greene's This Gun for Hire stars Robert Wagner as a professional assassin who is tricked into killing a politician who he thought was a New Orleans gangster. On the run, the assassin takes a stripper as a hostage; she happens to be the fiance of the FBI agent on his trail. The assassin and the stripper fall in love and manage to outwit the FBI and police. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

William Blinn's teleplay for The Outside Woman smacks of the most exaggerated of contrivances--but it's all based on truth. Sharon Gless, who tries really hard to look dowdy, stars as a Southern mill worker. Highly susceptible to the possibility of romance, Gless falls for the smooth line of Scott Glenn--a convict at Los Angeles state prison. Her common sense clouded by love, Gless agrees to help hijack a helicopter in order to bust Glenn and a fellow convict out of the slammer. Made for television, The Outside Woman was perhaps deliberately slated for its premiere just before Valentine's Day of 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide