Lisa Jane Persky Movies

Written and directed by Jacques Thelemaque, The Dogwalker follows the lives of two very different women who find themselves in equally dire positions. When Ellie (Diane Gaidry) finally leaves her violent boyfriend, she takes the first flight out of her home in Buffalo, New York, and ends up in Los Angeles, where she's promptly robbed of all her possessions and reduced to living on the streets. After a failed attempt at prostitution, Ellie wakes up in a public park and meets Betsy (Pamela Gordon), an older, professional dogwalker with a rather abrupt personality. Eventually, Ellie learns that Betsy is dying of cancer, and ends up helping the older woman's failing business in exchange for temporary shelter. Fragile Ellie and gruff Betsy turn out to have one thing in common--both have left abusive relationships. Betsy's final days unfortunately mark the return of Ellie's former boyfriend, and Ellie is forced to use the disciplinary strength she has had to learn as a dogwalker and newly independent woman.



~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Forced into a bank vault during an armed robbery, Monica (Roma Downey) is trapped therein by an earthquake, along with bank president Max Chamberlain (Jack Scalia) and pregnant bank officer Alison Craig (Lisa Jane Persky). It turns out that the holdup man is Alison's husband Jackson Spears (Lisa Jane Persky), who had intended to get even with Chamberlain for his shady financial finagling. Now Jackson demands that Monica and Alison be freed--but that Chamberlain be left entombed in the vault. The crisis reaches its peak when Alison goes into labor! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Although she knew from the outset that she'd never be a "traditional" mother, Murphy (Candice Bergen) nonetheless is willing to shed her unorthodox approach to parenthood when she concludes that she hasn't spent enough quality time with baby Avery. This explains how Murphy came to join a group of new mothers who are dedicated to such old-school customs as singing nursery songs and playing games with their offspring. Of course, it doesn't take long for Murphy and the other moms to get on each other's nerves in a spectacular fashion. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A film that captures the steamy, colorful essence of New Orleans, this crime thriller tells the romantic story of a classy detective whose investigation of a gangland murder lands him in trouble with the city's new District Attorney, a woman with a rigid penchant for following the letter of the law. Despite their differences, the two manage to work together and eventually fall in love. Unfortunately all of this leads them to have to fight for their lives when their investigation into the case and the corruption surrounding it gets them bumped up to the top of a hit man's list. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In the early 1980s, Procter and Gamble teamed with Commworld Productions for a series of taped two-hour TV movies, to be syndicated throughout the US. The Commworld Prime Time Showcase yielded only two efforts: Emergency Room and Desperate Intruder. The latter film was the old chestnut about a blind woman (Meg Foster) at the mercy of two escaped convicts (Claude Akins and Nick Mancusco). The handsomer of the two fugitives falls in love with the woman and endeavors to keep her from being murdered. Desperate Intruder made its first appearance in most markets on July 31, 1983. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, the movie concerns a young unmarried girl who must decide whether to have an abortion. With the help of her own mother (Susan Clark), she tries to make the right decision. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

This romantic drama features a relationship between Sam (James H. Jacobs), a Jewish New York cabbie, and Corinne (Diane Sommerfield), an African-American mother with a young son, Davey (Malik Murray). After Davey hops into Sam's cab one day, he manages to bring Sam and his mother together. She is a bank clerk and handling her own life quite well but neither she nor Sam can deny the attraction that begins when they meet. Cultural and racial differences are handled with understanding as Corinne and Sam are accidentally involved in a drug scam that could get them into serious trouble. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

An outwardly successful woman teeters on the brink of emotional collapse in this psychological drama. Evelyn Stevens (Tilda Swinton) is a skilled and well-regarded attorney who is being considered for a prestigious judicial appointment. However, she's plagued by self-doubt and neurotic obsessions (the "perversions" referenced in the title), including an obsession with expensive clothes and cosmetics, lingering fears about her relationship with her lover John (Clancy Brown), an exaggerated sense of competition with the new lawyer in her office, and an intense sexual curiosity about Renee (Karen Sillas), the psychiatrist who has just moved into her building. Evelyn is forced to put her own problems on hold for the moment when she learns that her sister Madelyn (Amy Madigan), a Ph.D candidate struggling to complete her doctoral thesis, has been arrested again for shoplifting. In time, the two sisters realize that they have to come to terms with the psychic damage inflicted upon them in their childhood. Female Perversions was based on the best-selling novel by Louise J. Kaplan. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this independent drama, Vivian Saunders (Elizabeth Pena) comes home one day to an unusual surprise: her boyfriend Reggie (Andrew McCarthy) is lying on the kitchen table with a large sword sticking out of his body. At first Vivian thinks this must be some sort of joke, but she discovers that Reggie is indeed dead, and as she calls her best friend Louise (Paige Turco) to figure out what might have happened and what to do, it occurs to her that she blacked out after too much wine the night before and isn't sure what she did before she passed out. After a few phone calls, Vivian's women's support group arrives, and what to do about Reggie soon takes second place to what Vivian should do for herself. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Four cops make the painful discovery that not everyone on the force is upholding the law in this crime drama. Frank Daly (Brian Dennehy), Wayne Gross (Joe Pantoliano), Ricky Rodriguez (Jeff Fahey), and Howard Jones (Bill Patxon) are four undercover cops with the Los Angeles Police Department who work as a team to solve the cases that their colleagues consider too tough to handle. Under Daly's supervision, the four are trying to get the goods on a drug dealing operation working out of a meat packing plant. However, a raid on the plant uncovers little practical evidence, and Daly, a moody and hard-drinking loose cannon, is sharply criticized by his superiors for planning the bust without the input from the department heads or the FBI. Convinced that there's more to the case than they've been able to find so far, the four men begin looking into the matter on their own time. The deeper they dig, the more shocking the evidence becomes, as they learn that the police, the FBI, and even the Federal Government are involved in the smuggling operation, and the parties involved are perfectly willing to use violence and murder to keep troublemakers out of their way. After Jones is murdered while collecting evidence on a businessman in on the operation, the other three quit the police force, determined to see justice done even if they have to overstep the boundaries of the law to do it. Last of the Finest was also released under the titles Blue Heat and Street Legal. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Combining electric song and dance performances with drama (both on and off screen), Francis Ford Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984) looks back to the 1920s-1930s peak of the legendary Harlem nightclub where only blacks performed and only whites could sit in the audience. Mixing historical figures with characters loosely based on actual people, Coppola and co-writers William Kennedy and The Godfather's Mario Puzo create a panorama of love, crime, and entertainment centered on the Club. Among them are cornet player Dixie Dwyer (Richard Gere, playing his own solos), who escapes psycho gangster "benefactor" Dutch Schultz (James Remar) for a George Raft-type Hollywood career as a gangster film star; Schultz's nubile mistress Vera Cicero (Diane Lane), who loves Dixie against her mercenary instincts; Cotton Club Mob owner Owney Madden (Bob Hoskins) and close associate Frenchy Demarge (Fred Gwynne); Vincent (Nicolas Cage), Dixie's no-good Mad Dog Coll-esque brother; Club tap star Sandman Williams (Gregory Hines), who woos ambitious light-skinned Club singer Lila Rose Oliver (Lonette McKee); and cameos by Charles "Honi" Coles and Cab Calloway impersonator Larry Marshall. Complementing the period story, Coppola evokes the style of '30s gangster movies and musicals through an array of old-fashioned devices like montages of headlines, songs and shoot-outs. Conceived by producer Robert Evans as his crowning achievement and directorial debut, Evans had to hand over the troubled production to Coppola, but the budget spiraled out of control as the script was repeatedly re-written throughout the chaotic shoot. By the time it was released, The Cotton Club's epic production story of power struggles, financial bloat, and even a murder overshadowed the "reunion" of The Godfather's creative team. Neither a Heaven's Gate-sized failure nor a wallet-saving hit like Coppola's Apocalypse Now, The Cotton Club got some favorable critical notices (although it drew fire for subordinating the African American stories). It did not, however, find a large enough audience to justify its expense and controversy, becoming another mark against 1970s "auteur" cinema in increasingly blockbuster-driven 1980s Hollywood. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide