Michael Lerner Movies

Joy Miller (Fran Drescher) is a beautician who teaches an evening course in hairstyling at a Brooklyn community college. When a cigarette dropped on a wig leads to a fire, Joy saves the lab animals kept in the building and achieves 15 minutes of local notoriety. Grushinsky (Ian McNeice), a representative of the leader of the small Eastern European nation of Slovetzia, is visiting the United States while looking for a tutor for the leader's three children. Thinking Joy teaches science (apparently the Slovetzian government doesn't check the resumes of their teaching staff too closely), Grushinsky offers Joy the job, believing that it would be good PR to have a well-known American educator on hand. Joy takes the job and must now deal with Boris Pochenko (Timothy Dalton), the grim and humorless tyrant who rules Slovetzia. Joy's low-brow fashion sense and broad nasal twang of a voice don't sit well with Boris at first, but the kids love her; in time, she teaches Boris to lighten up and enjoy himself, and romance begins to bloom between the unlikely couple. While Fran Drescher had a number of film roles before her TV series The Nanny, this was her first starring role following the show's success. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The traditions of the western and the gangster film meet head-on in this dark crime drama. Jericho is a small town in Texas that in the 1920s looks much like it did in the 1860s, except that two violent gangs of rival bootleggers have driven away nearly all of the citizens not involved in the booze racket. Strozzi (Ned Eisenberg) leads a gang of Italian rum-runners with the help of his right-hand-man Giorgio (Michael Imperioli), while Doyle (David Patrick Kelly) is the head of an Irish mob, with Hickey (Christopher Walken) serving as his enforcer; the town's sheriff, Ed Galt (Bruce Dern) is powerless to stop the crime in Jericho, and he mainly tries to stay out of the way and keep an uneasy peace between Strozzi and Doyle. John Smith (Bruce Willis) is a ruthless and amoral gunman on the run from the law who passes through Jericho on his way to Mexico. Sizing up the situation, Smith quickly hatches a scheme by which he'll sell his services first to one of the gangs, and then the other, eventually turning the two sides against each other while he stays in the middle and takes the profits generated by both sides. Writer and director Walter Hill based his screenplay on Akira Kurosawa's classic samurai picture Yojimbo, which also inspired Sergio Leone's ground-breaking spaghetti western A Fistful of Dollars. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This is an offbeat romantic comedy that's the directorial debut of TV producer Joshua Brand, co-creator of St. Elsewhere (1982-88) and Northern Exposure (1990-95). John Leguizamo stars as Sergio, a Toronto pastry shop worker who faints whenever he sees Hattie (Sadie Frost), a neighborhood girl with whom he is smitten. Hattie, however, wants to see the world and avoids all commitments. Sergio's employer, the kindly Linzer (Armin Mueller-Stahl), wants his shop burned down so that he can use the insurance money to give his wife (Joan Plowright) the lifestyle she deserves, so he offers Sergio $20,000 to torch the store. Sergio refuses but then one night the bakery is burnt to the ground. The real culprit is Garet (William Baldwin), a wealthy pyromaniac with a limp who's madly in love with Stephanie (Erika Eleniak). The slightly unhinged Garet uses the fire as his public declaration of affection. Although innocent, Sergio also claims culpability so that he can use Linzer's payoff to whisk Hattie away. To protect Sergio, however, Linzer confesses to the crime, and to prevent her husband from being jailed, Mrs. Linzer also claims responsibility. With four people confessing, local constable Sgt. Zikowski (Mike Starr) is at a loss. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

This low-rent Disney comedy mines the Home Alone territory for labored laughs. Brian Bonsall stars as the eleven-year-old Preston Waters, who is low-kid on the family totem pole -- his father Fred (James Rebhorn) lectures him on saving his money, while his older brothers, Ralph (Michael Faustino) and Damian (Chris Demetral), are pushy bullies. The final insult arrives when Preston is invited to a friend's birthday party -- held at an amusement park -- and Preston doesn't have enough money to go on any of the good rides. Preston wishes to the gods in heaven that he had his own money. At that point, on-the-lam criminal Quigley (Miguel Ferrer) takes his cue and runs over Preston's bike with his car. Eager to leave the scene before the cops arrive, Quigley hurriedly gives Preston a half-written check and vamooses. Preston looks down at the check and notices that the amount has not been filled in, so he obligingly completes the transaction by adding six zeroes and a one -- for a million dollars in cold cash. This amount, by a strange coincidence, happens to be the exact amount that Quigley has deposited in a money-laundering bank run by his partner-in-crime Biderman (Michael Lerner). Preston goes to the bank, cashes the check, and purchases a neighborhood mansion with all the toys he has ever dreamed of owning. But Quigley and his gang want the money back, and they are on their way to Preston's new home for a housewarming he will never forget. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

A man from the future fights to survive in a society thrown back to the dark ages in this sci-fi adventure set in 2022. Capt. Robbins (Ray Liotta) is a military man who, after he's convicted of the murder of his superior officer, is sentenced to a high-tech prison ruled by the Warden (Michael Lerner), a cruel taskmaster who enjoys torturing his inmates. After a scuffle with the Warden, Robbins is transferred to a primitive island penal colony known as Absalom, where the civilization is dominated by two groups, the Insiders, a peaceful tribe led by the Father (Lance Henriksen), and the Outsiders, a pack of violent misfits led by Marek (Stuart Wilson). Robbins runs afoul of the Outsiders and is injured in a skirmish; he escapes to the Insiders' camp, where he plots his revenge. No Escape was based on the novel The Penal Colony by Richard Herley. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Erika Eleniak and William McNamara star as a couple of young lovers on the run in this breezy road movie, based on James M. Cain's novella The Enchanted Isle. Mandy Baker (Erika Eleniak) is a bored 17-year-old looking for adventure outside of her small hometown of Paint Rock, Texas. She finds it at a bus station, as she is set to head out for Corpus Cristi. There she meets Rick Davis (William McNamara), a handsome and narcissistic dude in a cowboy outfit, whom Mandy lends $17 for a one-way ticket to the lay-over stop of Utopia. The two get familiar on the bus and, upon arriving in Utopia, she tags along with Rick as he meets his Uncle Pal (Michael Lerner), a two-bit crook, and his weird cohort Bud (Bud Cort). The three hatch a plan for a $5,000 bank robbery, and Mandy is talked into going along with them. The robbery itself is a failure, but Rick and Mandy manage to take off with the money, with Pal and Bud chasing after them. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

After getting booted out of his latest managerial position, a has-been major league baseball player/coach goes to Russia and becomes the coach for their Olympic baseball team. This good-natured made-for-cable television comedy chronicles his endeavors to turn the bumbling, inexperienced team into winners. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The title character, played by John Turturro, is a Broadway playwright, based on Clifford Odets, lured to Hollywood with the promise of untold riches by a boorish studio chieftain (played by Michael Lerner as a combination of Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn). Despising the film capital and everything it stands for, Barton Fink comes down with an acute case of writer's block. He is looked after by a secretary (Judy Davis) who has been acting as a ghost writer for an alcoholic screenwriter (John Mahoney, playing a character based on William Faulkner). Also keeping tabs on Fink is a garrulous traveling salesman (John Goodman), the most likeable, stable character in the picture. And then comes the plot twist to end all plot twists, plunging Barton Fink into a surreal nightmare that would make Hieronymus Bosch look like a house painter. Once more, Ethan and Joel Coen serve up a smorgasbord of quirkiness and kinkiness, where nothing is what it seems and nothing turns out as planned. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

John Savage plays a roving reporter on assignment in Africa. While nosing around in the jungle, Savage stumbles upon an unregenerate Nazi war criminal. As he mulls over what do with this information, the Nazi continues laying the groundwork for a worldwide neofascist conspiracy. Despite the presence of such thespic heavyweights as William Hickey and Ernest Borgnine, Any Man's Death never quite lives up to its potential. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Made for cable TV, Framed top-bills Jeff Goldblum as Wiley, a talented but somewhat naïve art forger. Wiley's big chance to score a con is cleverly foiled by another scam artist, Kate (Kristin Scott Thomas). Eager for revenge, Wiley seeks out Kate for a showdown; instead, the two become partners in crime. The likability of the leading performers keeps Framed alive from start to finish. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Eddie Murphy, in addition to starring as Quick, the son of 1930s Harlem gambling-house proprietor Sugar Ray (Richard Pryor), also wrote and directed the film. The plotline details the combined efforts of Quick and Sugar Ray to prevent white gangster Bugsy Calhoune (Michael Lerner) from muscling in on their operation. The supporting players include Redd Foxx, Danny Aiello and Jasmine Guy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Writer/director John Sayles' dramatization of the most infamous episode in professional sports -- the fix of the 1919 World Series -- is considered by many to be among his best films and arguably the best baseball movie ever made. This adaptation of Eliot Asinof's definitive study of the scandal shows how athletes of another era were a different breed from the well-paid stars of later years. The Chicago White Sox owner, Charlie Comiskey (Clifton James), is portrayed as a skinflint with little inclination to reward his team for their spectacular season. When a gambling syndicate led by Arnold Rothstein (Michael Lerner) gets wind of the players' discontent, it offers a select group of stars -- including pitcher Eddie Cicotte (Sayles regular David Strathairn), infielder Buck Weaver (John Cusack), and outfielder "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) -- more money to play badly than they would have earned to try to win the Series against the Cincinnati Reds. Sayles cast the story with actors who look and perform like real jocks, and added a colorful supporting cast that includes Studs Terkel as reporter Hugh Fullerton and Sayles himself as Ring Lardner. ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

A publishing empire founder discovers that his rise to power was costly. ~ Rovi