Michael McShane Movies

Cinderella's wicked stepmother has tipped the balance of power toward the dark side in Fairy Tale Land, and now it's up to the put-upon princess to restore order and ensure that good triumphs in an animated adventure featuring the voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Freddie Prinze Jr., Sigourney Weaver, and George Carlin. For years, the Wise Wizard has worked hard to ensure that the scales of good and evil were always well-balanced, but as with any hard worker the Wise Wizard needs a relaxing vacation every once in a while. When the Wise Wizard goes on holiday, his faithful assistants Munk and Mambo make the crucial mistake of allowing Cinderella's wicked stepmother, Frieda, come into possession of their master's magical staff. With time fast running out before Frieda casts a shadow of darkness and sorrow over Fairy Tale Land, Cinderella must now awaken from her romantic dreams to take on her fearsome stepmother with a little help from her best friend, Rick, and a virtual army of heroic dwarves and fairies. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Death & Texas mixes humor and drama in order to tell the story of a football player who ends up on death row. However, when his team begins to lose without him there is a movement to get him released. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

A Los Angeles cafe is the setting for this ensemble piece performed largely by a group of San Francisco stage actors. Mark (Mark Boone Jr.) is the cafe's reigning caffeine king, churning out lattes for a group of customers that includes bag lady Ma (Tsai Chin), portly Jerry (Michael McShane), widowed mathematician Jack (Jim Haynie), and on-again, off-again lovers Maria (Regina Byrd Smith) and Hank (Richmond Arquette). Another regular is Clayton (Wood Harris), a part-time delivery man who has abandoned a promising career as an artist. One day, while on his delivery rounds, Clayton discovers a strange young woman cowering in a mud puddle; stopping to help her, he learns that she has been residing there since getting dumped from a car by a callous boyfriend. After getting herself cleaned up, the woman, named Precious (Sarah Lassez), takes up with Clayton, and the two start living together. Meanwhile, back at the cafe, other unlikely romances form, Ma tosses off holy-fool wisdom, and Hank and Maria wallow in lusty indecisiveness. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

When Drew (Drew Carey) begins dating a pregnant woman named Suzanne (Susan Egan), all the pregnant ladies at Winfred-Louder conclude that he is attracted to "their kind", and begin gravitating to his desk for advice, support and affection. At the same time, Steve (John Carroll Lynch) warns Drew that Suzanne merely wants to declare him the father for insurance purposes, but our hero pooh-poohs such a cynical notion--until it is nearly too late to extricate himself from the relationship with life and limb intact. Elsewhere, Lewis (Ryan Stiles) and Oswald (Diedrich Bader) are once again hired as elves for yet another evil department-store Santa...but this time, they're mad as heck and aren't going to take it anymore! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Lasseter, director of Pixar's movie phenomenon Toy Story, has set new standards in computer animation with this effort, another Disney-released children's epic entitled A Bug's Life. Blending classic Disney storytelling characters and the mysterious underground world of bugs, Lasseter has created a film that can be enjoyed by all audiences, and another franchise in the process. A Bug's Life is a computerized retelling of the Aesop fable The Ant and the Grasshopper, made as a cartoon-short by the one-and-only, Walt Disney, in the mid-'30s. However, A Bug's Life has modernized the story with many new twists and celebrity voices. The story focuses on a colony of ants who seasonally gather food for themselves and a wild gang of rowdy grasshoppers. When bumbling worker ant Flik (David Foley) destroys the food supply, the angry grasshoppers, lead by the maniacally warped Hopper (Kevin Spacey), threaten to kill the ants if they don't produce a new supply of food by the time they return -- an impossible feat. Flik leaves the anthill in search of help in the form of bigger bugs, and to wage war against the grasshoppers. What he doesn't know is he has actually discovered a group of down-on-their-luck traveling circus insects in need of a job. When the ants realize that their heroes are really circus performers (and the circus bugs realize these grasshoppers are really big and mean), the situation goes from bad to worse. Ultimately, the ants use their large numbers to overcome the grasshoppers. ~ Chris Gore, All Movie Guide

Once Jerry (Jerry Seinfeld) buys an expensive Wizard organizer for his dad, he finds himself trapped in a vicious cycle. Kramer (Michael Richards) figures he'll never have to work again after a Hollywood producer options his coffee-table book...about coffee tables. Elaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) is involved in an interracial romance -- but is she the "different" race, or is he? And George (Jason Alexander) resorts to a lie (notify the media!) to get out of a commitment to the Susan Ross Foundation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Steve Guttenberg stars in this thriller as a once-respected reporter who has fallen on hard times and is now working for a sleazy tabloid. He happens upon a story that he hopes might put him back in the good graces of better newspapers; in 1939, five people disappeared in an accident aboard the elevator of a luxury hotel. It's believed that their ghosts haunt the old building, and an old woman claims to have the key to their secrets. The cast also includes Kirsten Dunst and Nia Peeples. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This Disney live-action film is a very loose adaptation of Mark Twain's two novels about boyhood friends in Hannibal, MO, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which omits some of the darker themes and undertones in the original books. Television star Jonathan Taylor Thomas (of Home Improvement) is the prankish Tom Sawyer. Tom wants desperately to be friends with the renegade orphan boy Huck Finn (Brad Renfro), who lives on his own on the edge of town. Tom is also smitten with the tomboyish Becky Thatcher (Amy Wright), daughter of the town judge. On an adventure one night, Tom and Huck stumble upon a murder in a graveyard. They see Injun Joe (Eric Schweig) killing the town undertaker to get a map to a treasure. Tom's friend Muff Potter (Michael McShane) is wrongly accused of the crime, but Tom and Huck both know the real killer. Huck has made Tom swear not to reveal the truth and both boys fear that Injun Joe will come after them if they squeal. Tom must choose between his friendship with Huck and his desire to vindicate Muff and get the real killer brought to justice. They try to find the treasure and end up confronting Injun Joe in a cave. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

A purposely outlandish cartoon created in 1953, Harvey Comics hero Richie Rich finally came to the big screen in 1994, when a boy billionaire was not quite as fanciful an idea. Richie Rich (Macaulay Culkin) is the wealthiest boy in the world, but even though he loves his doting parents, Richard (Edward Herrmann) and Regina (Christine Ebersole), he's not happy. Richie wants to play baseball with some neighborhood kids, but his parents instead hire Reggie Jackson to coach him. He wants to go out and play, but instead he gets aerobics training from Claudia Schiffer. When his parents disappear in the Bermuda Triangle, Richie suspects that Laurence Van Dogh (John Larroquette), an employee of Rich Industries, of plotting to take over the company by killing his mom and dad. With trusty butler Cadbury (Jonathan Hyde), eccentric inventor Prof. Keenbean (Michael McShane) and some new friends his own age, Richie puts a plan together to foil Van Dogh's wicked scheme and rescue his parents. Having grown to the point where he was no longer believable in the little kid parts that once made him America's top child star, Culkin took an extended break from acting after the filming of Richie Rich. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

This film is a '90s version of the classic Robin Hood story, with Kevin Costner starring as the good-guy thief. Costner is joined in his efforts against the murdering Sheriff of Nottingham (Alan Rickman) by Morgan Freeman who plays a philosophizing Moor, and by Nick Brimble, who plays Little John (anything but little). After Robin barely survives a watery skirmish with Little John, the two become allies and Robin joins forces with Little John's band of robber thieves to overcome the evils of the dastardly Nottingham sheriff. ~ All Movie Guide

History tells us that would-be automobile mogul Preston Tucker was a silver-tongued con man, who misappropriated his investors' money and played fast and loose with ethics and legalities in the pursuit of his dream. Filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola isn't buying this: to hear Coppola tell it, Tucker was "Mr. Smith Goes to Detroit," a sincere visionary who tried and failed to buck the Big Three auto manufacturers. Moreover, he was a staunch defender of family values, as witness his inseparable relationship with his loyal wife (Joan Allen) and adoring children. It was for his family's sake, rather than any dreams of financial gain, that Tucker created the oddball three-headlight vehicle which he envisioned as the "car of the future". Naturally, the corporate fat cats of 1947 can't abide competition from a rugged individualist; thus, with several politicos in their pockets, they crush the Tucker and the man who built it. We'd have been more inclined to believe the story had Coppola adopted a straightforward Capraesque approach and not utilized all sorts of complicated camera trickery. Somehow, by presenting Tucker in so showoffy a directorial manner, the character comes off more as a sleight-of-hand artist than a bastion of sincerity. Even so, Jeff Bridges does a nice job as Tucker, as does Martin Landau as Tucker's incongruous business partner. Jeff's dad, Lloyd Bridges, appears in an uncredited role as a "bought" senator. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide