Barry Newman Movies

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

Based on a novel by acclaimed crime writer James Ellroy, this film stars Michael Rooker as Fritz Brown, a former L.A.P.D. detective who was kicked off the force due to his drinking. Now struggling to remain sober, Brown works as a private eye when he can, but he makes most of his money repossessing cars. One day, Brown is offered some detective work by Freddie "Fat Dog" Baker (William Sasso), a golf caddy who has some severe reservations about his younger sister, Jane (Selma Blair) and her relationship with Solly (Harold Gould), a wealthy businessman with mob connections who is old enough to be Jane's grandfather. Brown isn't interested at first, but when "Fat Dog" starts flashing an impressive bankroll, he decides to take the case. Brown's investigation of Solly causes him to cross paths with Cathcart (Brion James), the head of L.A.P.D. internal affairs who was responsible for Brown losing his job. Soon Brown runs afoul of a group of hired thugs and several key figures wind up dead as Brown tries to find out the truth about Solly and Jane. Ellroy wrote Brown's Requiem, his first novel, while he was still supporting himself as a golf caddy and breaking himself of a decade-long addiction to drugs and alcohol. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Sylvestor Stallone comes to the rescue in this disaster/adventure picture. A truck containing dangerous chemicals explodes in the Holland Tunnel, trapping those New Yorkers not killed in the explosion. Authorities know there are survivors, but cannot figure out what to do to save them. Ruptured water mains and leaks in the tunnel itself, which is beneath the Hudson River, will cause it to fill with water in a few hours. Of all the colorful characters trapped there, only Roy Nord (Viggo Mortensen), a mountain climber, has any ideas about what to do, but he quickly dies while attempting to save the others. However, Kit Latura (Sylvester Stallone) is a former city Emergency Medical Services director who was in the area of the explosion, and he knows the tunnel's construction quirks. He quickly convinces city officials to let him wend his way through the tunnel's maze of exhaust fans to help the exhausted survivors confront the obstacles that await them. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

This made-for-TV suspenser stars Suzanne Pleshette as famous soap opera writer Carla Webber. Carla turns detective when the cast members of her program begin dying under mysterious circumstances. Barry Newman plays the investigating detective, while Robert Vaughn and Patrick O'Neal are special guest suspects. The film's principal attraction (and a hardly unexpected one) is the presence in the supporting cast of then-current soap opera stars: All My Children's Peter Bergman, General Hospital's Stuart Damon and Robin Mattson, Ryan's Hope's John Gabriel, and One Life to Live's Robert S. Woods. Fantasies was first networkcast January 18, 1982. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this thriller based on a novel by Alistair MacLean, Barry Newman plays John Talbot, an underwater salvage expert who witnesses the murder of his wife and child. After working with the police, Talbot hatches his own scheme to bring the killers to justice; posing as a criminal, he stages the phony murder of a police officer and kidnaps Sarah Ruthven (Suzy Kendall), the heiress to a petroleum fortune. Talbot's false daring attracts the attention of a criminal mastermind who wants to recover the valuables aboard a plane that recently crash-landed in the water; however, Talbot knows that the same man was responsible for his family's death, and he intends to see that he never returns from their exploratory search of the wrecked plane. Watch for Ben Kingsley in a small role, it was his first film, prior to Gandhi in 1982. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Two bad cops rise from the grave in an attempt to go straight in this offbeat comedy. Mike Mattress (Tate Donovan) and Dean Crept (William Forsythe) are a pair of stone-faced FBI agents who are not above stretching the law to their advantage; their double dealings lead to their fiery death in a booby-trapped car, and the two agents find themselves descending into Hell. After a disturbing run-in with Satan (Robert Goulet), Mattress and Crept escape and find their way back to Earth, where they hope to perform some good deeds that might allow them to escape damnation. Starting over as private eyes, Mattress and Crept are hired by millionaire Greydon Lake (Barry Newman), who believes his wife Gloria (Vanessa Angel) has been unfaithful to him. Gloria soon turns the tables by hiring the two gumshoes away from her husband, but things take a sinister turn when Greydon turns up dead. While tracking down leads in Greydon's murder, Mattress and Crept discover he was financing research by the eccentric Dr. Boifford (David Huddleston), whose bizarre talents come in handy when Buster (Bobcat Goldthwait), a leg man for the detectives, is killed while doing research; Boifford is able to transplant his brain into the body of a robot. Meanwhile, Buster's accident attracts the attention of the police, as well as FBI agents Dalton (Zach Galligan) and Langdon (Gary Busey), who are hot on the heels of the formerly dead lawmen. G-Men From Hell is based on characters from the comic book Grafik Musik, created by Michael Allred. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Two down-on-their-luck meat salesmen struggling to make a buck find that sometimes you have to grill your clients to secure the sale in this rib-tickling comedy that teams King of Queens star Kevin James with Everybody Loves Raymond star Ray Romano. Maurice (Romano) and Dave (James) have been issued an ultimatum by their frustrated boss: move some meat or hit the street. Now forced to make the sale of a lifetime or face a grim fate working behind the counter of the local butcher, the two hapless meat-slingers set their sights on a foolproof prospect that promises to provide just the funds needed to keep them afloat. Unfortunately for Maurice and Dave, their perfect plan leads them into the company of some very bad men, and now with their jobs on the line and their lives hanging in the balance, these two scheming salesmen must finalize the big deal and get the money back to the boss before they end up in the freezer with the rest of the dead meat. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

One man's insatiable appetite for sex begins upending his life in this biting independent comedy. Jack (Nestor Carbonell) is a photographer known to his friends as "Jack the Dog," thanks to his compulsive womanizing; Jack seems incapable of staying with one partner for long before he finds himself attracted to someone else, and given his good looks and easy charm, Jack doesn't have much trouble convincing the women he meets to spend the night with him. Deep inside, Jack wants to change, and he tries to put himself on the straight and narrow by marrying Faith (Barbara Williams). Jack and Faith soon have a son, Sam (Andrew J. Ferchland), whom Jack dotes upon, but Faith turns out to be a poor advertisement for long-term monogamy; she's not especially warm or forgiving, and she's started to show her age, which only intensifies Jack's taste for younger women. Jack soon slides into chronic infidelity, and Faith leaves him, relocating to London and leaving Sam behind. This is good news as far as Jack's concerned, but as he tries to watch over his son, while also seducing an endless parade of beautiful women, Jack finds himself increasingly puzzled by the opposite sex, and he wonders if he might have a problem he hasn't learned to deal with. Jack the Dog received its world premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When Jill (Janeane Garofalo), the sister of reformed womanizer and former high-profile fashion photographer Jack (Nestor Carbonell), leaves her 17-year-old son with his uncle in an unstable bid to find herself, her brother and sister face an increasingly uncertain future in this dark drama from director Bobby Roth. Bored of working an endless string of weddings and bar mitzvahs and longing to return to the success he experienced before his luck took a nosedive, Jack attempts to connect with both his teenage son and nephew while pulling his life into focus. To make matters even more complicated, Jill's jobless ex-husband, Eli (John Ritter), has also decided to move in with Jack. Will the hapless photographer be able to keep his sanity as his dysfunctional family forces itself into virtually every aspect of his increasingly chaotic life? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

J.C.Brandy is cast as teenage tennis star Louise Henderson, whose father--and manager--Lane Henderson (Leon Russom) is notorious for his domineering attitude towards his daughter. So rattled is Louise by her father's relentless badgering that begins suffering nightmares, and ultimately stands up to Lane and refuse to follow his orders any further. Shortly afterward, Lane is found murdered--and Jessica (Angela Lansbury) steps into court (the tennis court, that is) in hopes of proving that Louise is not the killer. This is the final episode of Murder, She Wrote's 11th season. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Mariette Hartley stars in this groundbreaking TV movie as Gail Springer, a widowed mother on the horns of an outwardly familiar romantic dilemma. Equally in love with two different people, Gail has the devil's own time choosing between them. What made this film unique (at least when it initially aired over the ABC network on April 7, 1986) is that one of Gail's amours is her late husband's business partner Ben Taylor (Barry Newman)--while the other is Gail's female best friend, Marjorie Lloyd (Lynn Redgrave). Impeccably tasteful in its treatment of a potential volatile subject, and refreshingly honest and uncompromising at its conclusion, My Two Loves was filmed on location in San Antonio, Texas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Season six of NYPD Blue begins with a story arc designed to prepare viewers for the inevitable departure of series regular Jimmy Smits (Detective Bobby Simone). It all begins as Bobby's dentist asks the detective to check up on the dentist's daughter, whose boyfriend is a slimy drug dealer. When the boyfriend is stabbed, disreputable private eye Mike Roberts (Michael Harney), currently the bodyguard of the victim's father, asks the cops to give the case "special" handling -- much to the disgust of Bobby's partner, Andy Sipowicz (Dennis Franz), who despises Roberts. Elsewhere, a false-alarm rape investigated by Bobby's wife and co-worker, Diane Russell (Kim Delaney), turns out to be the real things; John Irvin (Bill Brochtrup), returning to the precinct after his business folds, strikes up a friendship with new PAA Dolores Mayo (Lola Glaudini); and, on a more ominous note, Bobby begins to exhibit signs of a potentially serious illness. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide