Jeff Nichols Movies
An assemblage of young Hollywood actors poised for stardom marked this tale of anti-Semitism at a 1950s prep school. Brendan Fraser stars as David Greene, a working-class Jewish quarterback from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who is offered a senior year scholarship to a prestigious New England academy. It's David's ticket to an Ivy League education and a way out of his Rust Belt hometown, but there's one condition: the school's elders ask him to be discreet about his religion. At first willing to do so, David struggles with his silence about his faith as his popularity grows. David strikes up a friendship with his roommate Chris Reece (Chris O'Donnell) and a possible romance with Sally Wheeler (Amy Locane), a student at a nearby girls' school. When jealous classmate Charlie Dillon (Matt Damon) learns David's secret at an alumni party, he exposes the school's new gridiron hero, and David faces the full force of religious intolerance from the prejudiced WASP institution. Also featuring early performances from Ben Affleck, Anthony Rapp, and Cole Hauser, School Ties was loosely based on the real-life experiences of producer Dick Wolf, creator of TV's popular series Law & Order. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brendan Fraser, Matt Damon, (more)
Bette Midler stars as Stella Claire, a working class, fun-loving barmaid in northern New York State. A brief affair with handsome Stephen Dallas (Stephen Collins) produces a daughter, Jenny (Trini Alvarado), who Stella insists upon raising alone, despite Dallas' marriage offer. As the years pass, Stella and Jenny are a happy pair. Stella gives up bartending to sell cosmetics, supported by her friend Ed (John Goodman), a bartender developing a crush on her and a problem with alcohol. Dallas has stayed involved with his beloved daughter from afar and is now a urologist in New York City, engaged to a book editor (Marsha Mason). As Jenny reaches adulthood, Stella becomes aware that life with her father would provide her daughter with opportunities that she'd never have otherwise, so she devises a painful, self-sacrificing scheme to drive Jenny from the nest. Although functional as a tearjerker, many of the themes in Stella simply don't make as much sense in a modern age of healthy, fractured families, muting the drama of the tale's earlier versions, specifically Stella Dallas (1937). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bette Midler, John Goodman, (more)
