Dennis Kort Movies

Opening well past the point favored by most romantic comedies, director/co-writer/star Albert Brooks' take on the genre begins with a breakup. After exchanging harsh words in a diner, Brooks and Kathryn Harrold go their separate ways. Brooks then spends the next few days attempting to forget his troubles through work, exercise, drugs, and other women, torturing himself at each step. While it's hinted early on that this isn't the couple's first breakup, it eventually becomes clear that the they have cycled through the same events for even longer than expected. Meanwhile, Brooks' character, a film editor assisted by Bruno Kirby, attempts to put the finishing touches on his latest assignment, a none-too-promising space adventure starring George Kennedy and helmed by a details-obsessed director (James L. Brooks). ~ Keith Phipps, Rovi

The Big Bus is set aboard a nonstop, nuclear-powered luxury bus commandeered by Joseph Bologna. Naturally, Bologna is a tortured hero with a deep dark secret (he keeps insisting he didn't eat all those passengers on his last disastrous drive). Stockard Channing and Harold Gould play the designers of the big bus, and of course they have a few skeletons in their closet. In fact, there isn't a passenger on the all-star manifest that isn't hiding something. The supporting cast features contributions by René Auberjonois (parodying his M*A*S*H role), Ned Beatty, José Ferrer, Ruth Gordon (doing a devastating send-up of Airport's Helen Hayes), Sally Kellerman, Richard Mulligan, and many others; Murphy Dunne contributes a memorable bit as a smarmy cocktail pianist. Unfortunately, The Big Bus was dumped onto the summer 1976 release schedule without fanfare by Paramount, and it sank without a trace. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Dutch cult director Rene Daalder's fascinating debut was this unfairly neglected and richly idea-laden political allegory set in an American high school. Derrel Maury stars as David, a new student at Central High School who is shocked at the degree of control wielded by several preppie thugs who run the school with an iron fist. Though accepted into this circle given his connections to one of its members, Mark (Andrew Stevens), David loses favor with Mark's friends when he also begins spending time with the school's social outcasts. The worst is still to come, however, when David threatens the pecking order by foiling the thugs' attempted gang rape of a female student and has his leg crushed for his efforts. Eventually, the crippled David politicizes the underclass to fight their oppressors, and all three are killed by falling (from political power, the analogy clearly suggests). Daalder then takes the film in a different direction, with the newly liberated student body becoming an oppressive force themselves, and David enraged to the point of mass murder, deciding to wipe out the entire school. Stirred to action, it is up to the formerly apolitical Mark and Teresa to stop him. Daalder shrinks the entire political spectrum into the crucible of what seems on the surface to be a standard exploitation film. There are representatives of the extreme left, extreme right, disaffected center, intellectual bourgeoisie, and so forth, and all are nicely sketched without sacrificing the film's visceral appeal. Beyond the portraits, however, Daalder also skillfully shows the transitions which occur in many political movements, notably those which start as populist and develop into oppressively hierarchical castes. Perhaps disheartened by the failure of Massacre at Central High at the box office, Daalder did not direct again for nearly two decades, but returned with two more conceptually challenging (if equally unsuccessful) genre films, Hysteria and Habitat, in the mid-'90s. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

Feeling out of place and neglected, Grady (Whitman Mayo) decides to move out of his old Watts neighborhood. He is immediately installed in the fashionable Westwood home of his daughter Ellie (Carol Cole), his son-in-law Hal (Joe Morton), and his grandchildren Laurie (Rosanne Katon) and Haywood (Haywood Nelson). The result: Poor Grady feels even more like a "fifth wheel" than ever before. Originally telecast as the final episode of Sanford and Son's fourth season, "The Family Man" was actually the pilot for Whitman Mayo's short-lived spin-off series Grady. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi