Pamela Reed Movies
Although her earthy and somewhat plain appearance might have prevented her from landing the sort of glamorous parts Hollywood seems to reserve for A-list beauty queens, actress Pamela Reed still managed to maintain a healthy career with a series of winning supporting roles. A Washington native who spent the majority of her childhood in Maryland, Reed moved back to the Northwest for an opportunity to work on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. There, she began to study drama at the University of Washington, where she stood out amongst her classmates due to her age (she was nearly 30 when she graduated and began seeking out roles in New York and L.A.). She later appeared off-Broadway in Curse of the Starving Class and impressed audiences with her performance in Aunt Dan and Lemonand her skillful interpretation of Shakespeare in All's Well That Ends Well. In 1978, Reed made her Broadway debut in a production of The November People. With a solid stage resumé, the actress moved to the screen in Walter Hill's 1980 Western The Long Riders. Reed could bring style and depth to even the most threadbare of roles, and in the years that followed, she made a name for herself by essaying key supporting parts in such films as Eyewitness (1981) and The Right Stuff (1983); though her characters rarely broke the mold of supportive wife/girlfriend, her performances were always graceful and believable.Reed took a turn toward the small screen with a role in the 1990 comedy series Grand, and alternated frequently between film and television for the remainder of the decade. From her scene-stealing turn alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in Kindergarten Cop (1990) to her performance as a housewife with a history in the made-for-TV mystery Woman With a Past, Reed proved equally adept at both comedy and drama. Following a memorable role in Tim Robbins' 1992 political satire (and directorial debut) Bob Roberts, the actress returned to television in 1995 for the short-lived comedy series The Home Court. She built a sturdy fan base of Lifetime viewers with such made-for-cable features as The Man Next Door (1995), and continued to appear in such hit features as Bean (1997) and Why Do Fools Fall in Love (1998). Reed later starred in the 2000 blockbuster Proof of Life, and appeared in the small-screen drama Book of Days (2003) and Glory Days in 2004. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning American author Ernest Hemingway (Stacy Keach) begins his family and career in Europe, survives combat and marriages, struggles with a ragingly out of control lifestyle, and returns to Idaho where, at age 61 and with his best writing behind him, takes his life. He leaves behind a legacy of great literature and a great legend. ~ Buzz McClain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Stacy Keach, Josephine Chaplin, (more)
- 1988
Written by Garry Trudeau and directed by Robert Altman, this is an amusingly vicious squint at the American electoral process. Michael Murphy plays Jack Tanner, Democratic Presidential nominee. Also featured are Cynthia Nixon as Jack's teenage daughter Alex, and Pamela Reed as campaign manager T. J. Cavanaugh. Despite the mocking nature of the material, the "cinema verite" style and inclusion of real-life political figures (Bruce Babbitt, Kitty Dukakis) in cameos led some impressionable viewers to believe that Jack Tanner was an actual candidate--resulting in quite a few write-in votes in November! Originating as a two-part special, Tanner was expanded into twelve chapters, which ran irregularly from February 15 through August 27, 1988, on the HBO cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Murphy, Pamela Reed, (more)
- 1987
- PG13
Rachel River is a small town in Minnesota. When local "looney tune" Aileen Cole dies, the town comes to the slow realization that the reclusive Cole has in fact touched the lives of virtually every citizen--and nearly always in a positive manner. That realization is so slow because, immediately after Cole's demise, everyone is more concerned with scrambling to recover a buried treasure rumored to be on the old woman's property. The very thin plotline is fleshed out by individual episodes involving some of the town's more visible denizens: Cole's slobbish nephew Craig T. Nelson, Nelson's viper-tongued sister Jo Henderson, elderly Viveca Lindfors, local radio personality Pamela Reed, covetous undertaker James Olson, and "village idiot" Zeljko Ivanek, whose top billing in the opening credits is justified as the story develops. Rachel River premiered in June of 1989 as a PBS American Playhouse telecast, then enjoyed a brief theatrical distribution. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Zeljko Ivanek, Pamela Reed, (more)
Small-town banker Robin Williams has never been able to live down the fact that he dropped an important pass during a crucial high-school football game. Likewise tainted for life is the team's star quarterback Kurt Russell, now a garage owner. Fed up with living his life under a cloud, Williams hits upon a brilliant idea: he will stage a rematch-13 years after the fact--with the members of the rival team. Trouble beckons when Williams' father-in-law announces that he's rooting for the opposition. Williams is determined to win, and in pursuit of that goal he pushes his former teammates to hitherto untapped brilliance. Directed by Roger Spottiswood, The Best of Times was written by Ron Shelton, future writer/director of such delightful sports films as Bull Durham, White Men Can't Jump and Tin Cup; it was Shelton, in fact, who directed most of Best of Times' climactic football game. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robin Williams, Kurt Russell, (more)
Cinematographer Michael Chapman directed this John Sayles adaptation of Jean M. Auel's best-selling ode to Cro-Magnon women. The story begins at the moment in pre-history when the last of the Neanderthal men were becoming extinct and the superior race of Cro-Magnons were starting to supersede them. Focusing on a tribe of wandering Neanderthals who adopt a young girl named, Ayla (played as an adult by Daryl Hannah). She grows tall, lithe, and smart. The Neanderthals quickly accept her into their tribe, but once a tribal member, Ayla begins to question the tribe's male chauvinistic presumptions. Unable to conceive of why only men are given weapons, she takes it upon herself to learn how to use a slingshot. She then questions the tribe's assumptions concerning sexual politics. She learns to count and becomes the assistant to the local medicine expert. As the seasons wear on, the tribe utilizes Ayla's knowledge for their own good while Ayla's continues to try the patience of the tribe with her unspeakable feminist demands. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daryl Hannah, Pamela Reed, (more)
- 1985
Burt Lancaster is eminently hissable as a tabloid publisher in the made-for-TV Scandal Sheet. The current target of Lancaster's smears is alcoholic actor Robert Urich, who is on the verge of making a comeback through the auspices of his movie-star wife Lauren Hutton. Ruthlessly going after Urich merely for the purpose of selling newspapers, Lancaster "persuades" impoverished reporter Pamela Reed, the best friend of Urich and Hutton, to help him wield the hatchet. Sublimely trashy, Scandal Sheet is held together by the despicably dynamic performance of Burt Lancaster. The film was of course made long before tabloid publishers were being lauded as "news analysts" on TV talk shows. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1983
This drama is adapted from the true story of Barbara Graham, a woman sentenced to die in the mid-1950s after she allegedly committed a murder during a robbery. Graham pleaded innocent until the day she died in the San Quentin gas chamber. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1983
Written for television by Gary Devore, Heart of Steel concentrates on a societal dilemma that has only gotten worse since 1983. Second-generation steelworker Peter Strauss loses the job he's held all his life when the mill closes down. Unable to find work, Strauss takes to drink, then vents his frustration on his family. A personal tragedy snaps Strauss out of his self-pity and renews his will to survive. Only the "feel good" ending strikes a false note in the otherwise grimly persuasive Heart of Steel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Covering some 15 years, The Right Stuff recounts the formation of America's space program, concentrating on the original Mercury astronauts. Scott Glenn plays Alan Shepard, the first American in space; Fred Ward is Gus Grissom, the benighted astronaut for whom nothing works out as planned; and Ed Harris is John Glenn, the straight-arrow "boy scout" of the bunch who was the first American to orbit the earth. The remaining four Mercury boys are Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin), Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank), Wally Schirra (Lance Henriksen) and Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid). Wolfe's original book related in straightforward fashion the dangers and frustrations facing the astronauts (including Glenn's oft-repeated complaint that it's hard to be confident when you know that the missile you're sitting on has been built by the lowest bidder), the various personal crises involving their families (Glenn's wife Annie, a stutterer, dreads being interviewed on television, while Grissom's wife Betty, angered that her husband is not regarded as a hero because his mission was a failure, bitterly declares "I want my parade!"), and the schism between the squeaky-clean public image of the Mercury pilots and their sometimes raunchy earthbound shenanigans. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, (more)
- 1983
- PG
Playwright Herb Gardner's patented combination of cynicism and sentimentality that worked so well in his A Thousand Clowns didn't quite jell in his subsequent The Goodbye People. This film version, adapted and directed by Gardner, stars Martin Balsam, who'd won an Oscar for his work in the 1966 cinemazation of Thousand Clowns. Based on Gardner's own childhood memories, the film casts Balsam as fiftysomething Max Silverman, who gets a new lease on life after surviving heart surgery. Ignoring the pleas of friends and family, Max decides to fulfill a life-long ambition by opening up a combination hot dog and tropical drink stand on a remote public beach. The only person other than Max to have faith in this benighted project is Arthur Korman (Judd Hirsch), who like Max has spent most of his life in a dead-end job. Somehow, Max and Arthur's unquenchable optimism draws a few other misfits into their plans. Striving hard for whimsy, The Goodbye People seems more like a 104-minute visit to a home for aging high-school geeks (not that there's anything wrong with that!) ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judd Hirsch, Martin Balsam, (more)
In this comedy, a group of randy young interns turn City Hospital upside down with their romantic liaisons and their blunders. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael McKean, Sean Young, (more)
Fresh off the success of Breaking Away(1979), writer Steve Tesich and director Peter Yates re-team on a thriller starring a young William Hurt as a janitor infatuated with television reporter Sigourney Weaver. When she arrives at his building to interview the tenants about a murder that's occurred on the premises, the janitor, having discovered the body, implies that he knows more than he's saying in order to keep the newswoman interested. Although he reveals nothing more, she does become interested in him, and when her nefarious aristocratic boyfriend (Christopher Plummer) learns from the unwitting woman that there's someone with knowledge of the murder, he's more concerned about what Hurt might know than about her relationship with him. Meanwhile, his paranoid, loose cannon of a friend James Woods has managed to get himself incriminated, although he had no involvement in the case. Hurt and Weaver continue to investigate the murder together, and as they become more closely entwined, both of their lives are put in jeopardy. ~ Michael Costello, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver, (more)
- 1981
This ABC TV movie is set in an experimental coed prison, presided over by progressive warden E.F. Crown (Shirley Jones). The wisdom of incarcerating men and women together is placed in doubt when white-collar criminal Roy Matson (Perry King) falls in love with hard-boiled, streetwise Jane Mount (Kate Jackson). In addition to Shirley Jones, Tony Curtis pulls special guest star duty as Flanagan, a two-bit hoodlum who aspires to "class." Inmates: A Love Story debuted on February 13, 1981. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The hook in Walter Hill's mythic retelling of the James-Younger outlaw legend is in the casting; the James, Younger, Miller, and Ford Brothers are played by a string of acting brothers, the Keachs, the Carradines, the Quaids and the Guests. The film begins as outlaws are robbing a bank. After the robbery, Ed Miller (Dennis Quaid) finds himself kicked out of the gang for needlessly killing a man during the robbery. Jesse James (James Keach) hands over Ed's share of the money and tells him to leave, a feeling held mutually by Ed's brother Clell (Randy Quaid). After the killing the gang decides to split up for awhile. The James boys return to their wives and farms, while Cole Younger (David Carradine) travels to Texas with his prostitute girlfriend Belle Starr (Pamela Reed). After the brief respite, the gang reunites to rob a well-stocked bank in Northfield, Minnesota. The robbery turns out disastrously, with most of the gang either wounded or dying. The James boys are the only ones not seriously hurt, and they leave the rest of the gang behind, escaping while they can. After the James boys leave, the remnants of the gang are captured. But trailing the Jameses is a relentless posse. Frank and Jesse manage to keep one step ahead until the Ford brothers (Christopher Guest and Nicholas Guest) make a deal with the Pinkerton detectives trailing the outlaws. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Carradine, Keith Carradine, (more)
Jonathan Demme's breakthrough movie featured the shaggy energy and affection for marginal American eccentrics that marked his earlier Citizens Band (1977) and such later films as Something Wild (1986) and Married to the Mob (1988). Melvin Dummar (Paul LeMat) is a barely-getting-by Nevada milkman. One day in the early 1970s, while driving down a lonely highway, Melvin picks up a shaggy, bearded bum (Jason Robards Jr.) and offers him a ride into town. Melvin gives the bum a quarter at the end of the ride, and that, so far as Melvin is concerned, is that. The story goes off on a new tangent, involving the on-and-off marriage between Dummar and his contest-happy wife Lynda (Mary Steenburgen). During one of the multitude of financial crises endured by the Dummars, Melvin discovers that the tramp he picked up was none other than billionaire Howard Hughes -- and when Hughes dies, Melvin inherits $150 million. The movie's wide acclaim included Oscars for Steenburgen and Goldman's script and New York Film Critics Awards in almost all major categories, including Best Picture and awards for Demme, Goldman, Steenburgen, and Robards. Demme would gain even greater attention in the 1990s as the director of The Silence of the Lambs (1991) and Philadelphia (1993). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Le Mat, Jason Robards, Jr., (more)
