Ellen Parker Movies
- 1997
Writer-director Jon Resnik's debut feature film is set in a small, secluded New England town in which seemingly everyone is obsessed with a beautiful young woman named Rachel (Arija Bareikas). There are three separate episodes, the first involving an over-the-hill boxer, The Champ (Adrian Pasdar), who is smitten with Rachel, though she does not return his affections. The second segments centers on another Rachel admirer, Bucyrus (George Dickerson). To Bucyrus, Rachel is the reincarnation of his wife, whose violent death drove him insane and into the mental hospital. The final part of the film centers on a lesbian minister who is plotting with a local shopkeeper to get revenge on the townspeople who hounded her out of the ministry. They plan to use Rachel as part of a plot to expose the hypocrisy of the citizenry. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- 1994
A private adoption racket is exposed when a woman claims that she fainted in a taxi and awoke to find baby missing. In the course of their investigation, detective Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Logan (Chris Noth) encounter all manner of human anguish and desperation. Particularly compelling are Debra Elkins (Angie Phillips), the woman who insists that her child was stolen, and Dorothy Baxter (Ann Dowd), who wants a baby at any price -- and never mind the consequences. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The Desperate Hours directed by Michael Cimino, is an attempt to remake the Humphrey Bogart classic of the same name with indifferent results. Bosworth (Mickey Rourke), a brutal criminal on the run with his partners, takes over a house occupied by an unhappily married couple Nora (Mimi Rogers) and Tim (Anthony Hopkins) and their young son and daughter. Bosworth has escaped from jail with the help of his defense attorney Nancy Breyers (Kelly Lynch). The film focuses on the interactions of the family and Bosworth as he plans his escape to Mexico. Cimino wastes little time in developing the characters or explaining the implausible premise that Bosworth would chose an occupied house and hold an innocent family captive when the logical choice would be to lay low and wait for his chance to escape. Both Hopkins and Rourke, usually excellent actors, give wildly over-the-top performances, aided by the lurid, over-written dialogue of the screenplay and the badly paced, ill-conceived direction by Cimino, which instead of creating tension and suspense, simply confuses the already muddled and incomprehensible plot. The Desperate Hours is a pale example of the original with little to recommend it. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mickey Rourke, Anthony Hopkins, (more)
- 1986
- R
Director Alan J. Pakula does the best anyone can with this complicated tale of what happens when the dream state and the waking state are confused and intermingled. While at home alone one day, Kathy Gardner (Kristy McNichol) defends herself against an intruder by stabbing him in the back. Now when she tries to sleep she keeps on having nightmares about the incident. Enter Michael Hansen (Ben Masters) a dream researcher who postulates that the actions in a dream state can be channeled into real but controlled actions. These real actions then harmlessly release tension or anger or whatever is at issue. The problem is that his research is not thoroughly tested, and Kathy may not be the best subject to use as a guinea pig. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kristy McNichol, Ben Masters, (more)
- 1980
- R
The protagonists are secondary and uni-dimensional in this unlikely actioner about a divorced father (James Brolin) tearing through New York chasing the man who kidnapped his daughter (Abby Bluestone). Sean Boyd (Brolin) is an ex-cop with an enemy on the force out to kill him. Between dodging his would-be assassin, fighting off street thugs, and getting crashed into by one car after another, Boyd is not about to give up or get seriously hurt. In the meantime the police themselves are too inept to catch the kidnapper (Cliff Gorman), and the winsome Marie (Julie Carmen) has decided to hang out with Boyd and help him find his daughter. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- James Brolin, Cliff Gorman, (more)
Robert Benton's Oscar-winning adaptation of Avery Corman's bestseller takes on contemporary problems of divorce and shifting gender roles, as a jilted husband learns how to be a nurturing father. Manhattan housewife Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep) walks out on her workaholic ad man husband Ted (Dustin Hoffman), leaving their young son Billy (Justin Henry) in Ted's less than capable hands. Through trial and error, Ted learns how to take care of Billy, devoting more energy to his family than to his work, and finally losing his high-powered job because of his new priorities. When Joanna returns with her own lucrative job and the intent to take custody of Billy, Ted finds employment that won't interfere with his paternal duties. Even though he proves that he can do it all, Joanna still wins in court. Joanna, however, rethinks her desires when she finally grasps how close father and son have become. Addressing the male side of the self-actualization question, previously explored from the female perspective in such 1970s movies as An Unmarried Woman (1978), Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), and The Turning Point (1977), Kramer focuses on Ted's evolution from absent parent to ideal father, as he learns to balance domestic and professional lives in the shifting late-1970s social landscape. Joanna's attempt to achieve the same, however, gets buried; only Streep's sensitive performance prevents Joanna from seeming an unsympathetic harridan. Critics praised the film's realistic depiction of Ted's travails, as well as the three lead actors' work; and audiences, perhaps facing the same questions of divorce and self-realization, turned it into a box-office smash. It went on to win five Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dustin Hoffman, Meryl Streep, (more)
A group of classmates from Mount Holyoke College meet for an informal reunion circa 1978, some seven years after graduation. Designated "uncommon" because they were predicted by friends to be "amazing" before they were 30, we seein flashbacks how these women conducted themselves in their senior year, what their goals were, and how they were set -- or not -- on the path to achieving them. Seventies feminism found its most acclaimed dramatic voice in this first play by Wendy Wasserstein, which seems to be trading in stereotypes, but only because the kinds of characters it deals with -- collegiate feminists -- became such a commonplace and predictable stereotype of popular culture in the years that followed. The 1978 production from the Phoenix Theater in New York was originally broadcast on public television. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- 1958
On a boiling hot night in the middle of a steaming New York summer, Detective Mike Reardon is on his way to work when he is shot down execution style. His fellow officers at the 87th, led by detectives Steve Carelli (Robert Loggia) and Mike Maguire (Gerald S. O'Laughlin), can't come up with a motive. The investigation has barely started when Reardon's young partner Foster is ambushed and gunned down as well. Carelli and Maguire are the lead investigators on the double police homicide, tracing potential suspects and following up clues that all lead to blind alleys. Meanwhile, Miller, a reporter, does some investigating on his own and nearly gets a young detective killed by a street gang led by smart-mouthed punk Joe Sanchez (Jerry Orbach). Amid this chaos, Carelli tries to carry on a romance with a deaf-mute author named Teddy (Ellen Parker) and Maguire attempts not to neglect his wife too badly. Maguire is gunned down by the same shooter that killed the other two detectives, only he makes sure the killer leaves behind a few clues before he dies. Carelli can't make the pieces fit together -- the only thing that the three victims had in common was that they worked in the 87th Precinct and they were all cops. He begins wondering if the fact that they were all police officers was relevant to the killings, but not the motive. Looking for a story, Miller reports Carelli's private suppositions, suddenly putting Teddy in jeopardy. Not knowing that the shooter is a step ahead of him, the detective races to her home. Carelli breaks the case and discovers that only one of the murders had an actual motive, one much closer to home than anyone on the squad would ever have guessed. ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Loggia, Gerald O'Loughlin, (more)
- 1958
The final film of director William Berke (his son, Lester William Burke, took over shooting following his father's death during filming) , The Lost Missile is a very cleverly constructed low-budget sci-fi thriller with some fascinating twists. A rogue missile, apparently from outside our solar system, ends up plunging into the Earth's atmosphere -- driven by atomic power, it cruises at an altitude of five miles and a speed of 4,000 miles per hour, generating a temperature of one million degrees in its wake, in a field five miles across, destroying anything and anyone it passes over; most of the planes that try to shoot it down miss and are destroyed, and no missile within range can get near enough to damage it with conventional explosives. Starting from the Bering Strait, the rogue missile lays waste to ever more populated real estate as it heads in an arc that will carry it over Ottawa and then New York, 63 minutes away; what's more, if it isn't stopped, the missile will lay waste to the entire surface of the Earth in the weeks that ensue as it arcs across the skies. Only one missile, the Jove (obviously a stand-in for the real-life army ballistic missile the Jupiter-C), still in the experimental stage, may be able to intercept it, and it doesn't have a warhead. The only answer is a "baby warhead," using the plutonium trigger projected by the American booster fast enough and exploded close enough to destroy the rogue -- but can the hero (Robert Loggia) assemble and launch it in time? ~ Bruce Eder, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Loggia, Ellen Parker, (more)
