Frances Bay Movies
- 1981
Amy Medford (Jenny Agutter) is a dutiful housewife of the early 1900s. But when her husband objects to a wife with a career, Amy leaves her husband and comfortable lifestyle. She goes on to devote her life to teaching sight-and-hearing-impaired students at a tradition-bound special school. This film betrays its Disney-studio origins with an audience-rousing action climax, in which Amy's students take on a team of "normal" kids at a football game. Amy was produced by onetime Hollywood leading man Jerome Courtland. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jenny Agutter, Barry Newman, (more)
- 1980
After 1970's Diary of a Mad Housewife, actress Carrie Snodgress found her career moving in frets and starts rather than barrelling ahead. By 1979, Snodgress was making do with gothic horrors like The Attic. In a variation on a theme previously explored in The Barretts of Wimpole Street and The Heiress, Snodgress plays a shy, withdrawn young woman who is totally dominated by her tyrannical father Ray Milland. At father's insistence, she remains sequestered in her attic room, denied contact with any men. When she finally breaks free, a spectacularly bloody denouement is the result. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1979
- PG
Joan Micklin Silver's writing and direction are at the heart of this wistful recollection of a romance, based on Ann Beattie's novel Chilly Scenes of Winter. The film concerns Charles (John Heard), who recalls his love affair with Laura (Mary Beth Hurt). It has been a year since Laura has left him and returned to her husband Ox (Mark Metcalf) and stepdaughter Rebecca. But Charles thinks about her all the time and even has imaginary conversations with her. Charles met Laura in the filing room at Utah's Department of Development in Salt Lake City, and it was love at first sight. Laura was married but had moved out of her house six weeks before. Charles musters up the courage to ask her out, and soon after they are living together. Living with Charles, Laura has never been happier. But she feels she doesn't deserve her happiness, since she has walked out on a family who had done nothing wrong to her. She can't understand why Charles loves her so much, "You have this exalted view of me, and I hate it. If you think I'm that great then there must be something wrong with you." So Laura decides to move back in with Ox. As Charles muses, Laura is more comfortable with "someone who loves you too little over someone who loves you too much." Charles becomes obsessed with winning her back from her family, watching her pick up her daughter from school, driving past her house, and becoming friendly with her flirtatious fellow worker Betty (Nora Heflin) in order to find out more about Laura. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Heard, Mary Beth Hurt, (more)
As he did in his screenplay for Silver Streak (1974), writer/director Colin Higgins mixes life-and-death melodrama with broad slapstick in Foul Play. Goldie Hawn stars as Gloria Mundy, a recent divorcée whose attempts to start life anew in San Francisco are bollixed up when she is inadvertently swept up in an assassination plot against the Pope. Offering sometimes dubious aid and comfort to Gloria is bumbling federal agent Tony Carlson (Chevy Chase). The film's comedy ranges from the farcical seduction efforts by musician Stanley Tibbets (Dudley Moore) to the zany, gag-filled car-chase finale. Foul Play features character actors Rachel Roberts and Eugene Roche as villains, Burgess Meredith as a martial arts-happy landlord, and Billy Barty as a long-suffering religious bookseller. It also packs in a memorable "throwaway" gag involving a profane Scrabble game played by sweet little old ladies Queenie Smith and Hope Summers. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Goldie Hawn, Chevy Chase, (more)
