Michael Morris Movies
- 1998
Christophe Smith made his directorial debut with this media satire, set on December 14, 1999, about a TV news network in cahoots with Washington on Operation Crazy Guru -- a plan to get a U.S. president re-elected for a third term. Griffith (Mickey Rooney), head of the Miami-based international World News Company, decides inept Paris correspondent Michael Kael (Benoit Delapine) is gullible enough to report the staged events, so Kael is sent off to Africa to cover a two-day fest in Katango. International nets air nuke threats by a Japanese nutcase, made on tapes sent from Katango. Kael, of course, has been unwittingly set up as WNC's key reporter, but everything goes haywire once Kael deduces that it's all being faked. The screenplay, by Delapine, is an expansion of comedy sketches that originated on two popular French cable TV shows. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi
- Starring:
- Benoit Delepine, Marine Delterme, (more)
- 1992
- R
In this political thriller, an ambitious press secretary discovers that the opposing political candidate has feathered the nest of his campaigns with terrible lies. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Judd Nelson, Justine Bateman, (more)
- 1992
- R
In this exciting sci-fi thriller, a newly designed and extremely expensive android with plenty of strength but neither emotions nor a conscience busts out of a secret government lab and ends up in the hands of terrorists who commandeer the top story of a hospital and hold the daughter of the President hostage. Desperate to stop the mercenaries before they kill, the government must thaw out the frozen form of the criminal who designed the hospital. But they end up thawing out a former football hero instead, who pretends to be the architect. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Martin Kove, Meg Foster, (more)
- 1992
In this adaptation of Hitchcock's 1946 classic, a CIA agent's cover is endangered by her sister-in-law who begins to suspect her true identity. This could be fatal as the agent married an arms-dealer to get information from him. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Shea, Jenny Robertson, (more)
- 1988
An American filmmaker travels to modern day Berlin to make a film based on a real-life incident from 1942 in which 13 Jewish prisoners from a concentration camp were promised freedom if they appeared in a German propaganda film. Unfortunately, the Germans lied. The psychological process undergone by the modern filmmaker while shooting the story provides the basis of this arty and challenging film. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tony Curtis, Matthias Habich, (more)
Following the disastrous Pirates (1986), director Roman Polanski got back on creative track with this finely-wrought thriller that, while failing to impress at the box office, was nevertheless his most critically well-received film of the decade. Harrison Ford stars as Richard Walker, an American doctor who has come to Paris, where he's scheduled to deliver a paper to a medical conference. Richard has brought along his wife Sondra (Betty Buckley), because Paris was the site of their honeymoon 20 years earlier. Sondra picks up the wrong suitcase at the airport, which leads to her kidnapping and an ever-more complicated quest that takes Richard into the seedy and dangerous underworld of European drug smuggling and terrorist arms sales. Along the way, he is rebuffed by skeptical officials at the American Embassy and meets Michelle (Emmanuelle Seigner), a sexy courier who agrees to help him in exchange for the money she's owed for trafficking in narcotics. Playing cleverly on American fears about Europe's Byzantine politics and "decadent" society, Frantic received, from many observers, perhaps the greatest compliment possible for a thriller, comparison to the work of Alfred Hitchcock. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi
- Starring:
- Harrison Ford, Emmanuelle Seigner, (more)
- 1984
This run-of-the-mill police comedy drama focuses on two policemen, René (Philippe Noiret), a somewhat grubby plainclothes policeman who has lived on bribes and minor racketeering for the last 20 years, and his new partner François (Thierry Lhermitte), especially honest and certainly naive. René is too accustomed to the good life with his lover, a former prostitute, and too much addicted to the racetrack to give it all up because of a straight-arrow partner. And so he fixes François up with the gorgeous Natasha (Grace de Capitani), herself a high-class prostitute whose charms leave the young cop besotted and whose expensive tastes leave him broke. Driven by love above all other concerns, François not only joins René in his schemes, he eventually gets an idea for swiping enough money to retire them both for life. Both Noiret and Lhermitte give top-notch performances that help to compensate for the otherwise predictable script. Ripoux was awarded 1984 Cesars for "Best Film" and "Best Director." ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Philippe Noiret, Thierry Lhermitte, (more)
- 1984
An unsuspecting novelist is the target of international extortionists in this well-acted suspense story directed by Claude Pinoteau. Lino Ventura stars as Bastien Grimaldy, a man driven to heightened anxiety as the plot against him begins to take effect. Bastien's personal relationships give him enough cause for anxiety -- between his new lover Laura (Elisabeth Bourgine) and a feisty mother (Lina Volonghi), life provides its own insecurities. When he goes to the police with his problems, Bastien is assigned an off-beat inspector to protect him (Roger Planchon) but is still faced with skepticism about his dilemma. In the end, Bastien goes to Berlin, as this conventional storyline moves towards the closing credits. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi
- Starring:
- Lino Ventura, Lea Massari, (more)
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