Gary Parker Movies

Peter Davison stars as bespectacled, aristocratic private detective Albert Campion in this two-part adaptation of Margery Allingham's novel Mystery Mile. An American judge named Crowdy Lobbett (Brian Greene) has been targetted for extermination by a criminal organization known as "Simister" (clearly the villains are dangerous but illiterate). Heading from the US to England, Lobbett crosses the path of Campion, who offers his services. Before this case has reached its conclusion, our hero has been confronted with not one but two sudden and mysterious disappearances. In America, "ystery Mile" was telecast November 22 and 29, 1990, as part of the PBS anthology Mystery! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Director Bernard Rose and screenwriter David Yallop were inspired by the real-life Hulten/Jones murder case of 1944, famously known as The Cleft Chin Murder Case, after a London cabbie was found murdered. It was a sensation in England, where American soldier Karl Hulten and British showgirl Elizabeth Maud Jones became household names -- even beating out news of the war. In the film, Karl Hulten (Kiefer Sutherland), is an American GI who is stalking the black market of London after stealing an army truck and going AWOL. There he meets up with Betty Jones (Emily Lloyd), a stripper with a deluded fantasy world view formed by watching a steady stream of Hollywood film noir and gangster pictures. Seeing Karl, who claims he is Chicago Joe doing advance work in London for encroaching Chicago gangsters, Betty takes the opportunity to set her fantasies to life as she connives Karl into a crime spree of petty crimes. With luck on their side, the spree keeps escalating, until Betty urges Karl to commit the ultimate crime -- murder. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Loretta Lynn was one of the first female superstars in country music and remains a defining presence within the genre; with her strong, clear, hard-country voice and tough, no-nonsense songs about husbands who cheat and wives who weren't about to be pushed around, Lynn introduced a feminist mindset to Nashville years before the phrase "women's liberation" became common currency. Coal Miner's Daughter is a screen adaptation of Lynn's autobiography, starring Sissy Spacek as Loretta Lynn. One of eight children born to Ted Webb (Levon Helm), a coal miner raising a family despite grinding poverty in Butcher's Holler, KY, Loretta married Dolittle "Mooney" Lynn (Tommy Lee Jones) when she was only 13 years old. A mother of four by the time she was 20, Lynn began singing the occasional song at local honky-tonks on weekends, and at 25, she cut (at Mooney's suggestion) a demo tape that earned her a deal with an independent record label. Loretta and Mooney's tireless promotion of the record (including a long road trip through the south in which they stopped at every country radio station they could find) paid off -- Loretta's first single, "Honky Tonk Girl," hit the charts and earned her a spot on the Grand Ole Opry. Stardom called and Loretta never looked back, but success brought with it both joy (a long string of hit records and sold-out concerts and a close friendship with Patsy Cline) and sorrow (a nervous breakdown brought on by overwork and a great deal of stress to a marriage that endured -- but just barely). Sissy Spacek won an Academy award for her vivid, thoroughly natural performance as Loretta (she also did her own singing), and Levon Helm (drummer for the legendary rock group the Band) made an impressive screen debut as her father. Ernest Tubb makes a cameo appearance as himself. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi