Bill Reimbold Movies

1992  
 
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Lindsay Wagner stars as Paula O'Neill in this made-for-TV miniseries based on the best-selling novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford. Paula's grandmother, Emma Harte, took a failing department store and turned it into the powerful Harte Industries retail empire, and now that Paula has inherited the family business, she is determined to expand their international success by launching a new store in Hong Kong. However, Paula's cousins Jonathan (Christopher Cazenove) and Sarah (Claire Oberman) are determined to wrest control of the company away from Paula, and begin running interference in her plans for global expansion. Paula soon learns that Harte Industries is on financially shaky ground, and her personal life begins to crumble under the strain of keeping Hart Enterprises afloat. As Jonathan uses the firm's financial woes to his advantage, Paula finds that Jack Figg (Anthony Hopkins), the company's head of security, may be her last line of defense against her devious relatives. Originally broadcast in August 1992, To Be the Best was a follow-up to 1983's A Woman of Substance, another miniseries based on a Barbara Taylor Bradford novel, which covered Paula's life before she took over the family business; Diane Baker played Paula in the earlier series. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

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Starring:
Lindsay WagnerDavid Robb, (more)
1986  
PG  
Set during the last days of the old west, this zany adventure follows the exploits of a pair of cow-poke bankrobbers her are captured and then given the choice between going to jail or going overseas to fight WW I. They choose the latter and end up in France where they eventually join a squadron of British pilots. The fliers have been assigned to gun down a well-protected, gigantic German zeppelin that has been causing many headaches for the Allies. Unfortunately, the attempts take a heavy toll on the planes and slightly addled British plane mechanic Fritz is having increasing difficulties piecing the planes back together. Tables turn for the better when the two unwilling soldiers learn to fly the planes themselves. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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Starring:
Scott McGinnisJeff Osterhage, (more)
1985  
PG13  
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Meant to be a parody of the recent invasions of Grenada and the Falkland Islands, this comedy about the laid-back governor (Michael Caine) of "Cascara," a fictional British island somewhere in the Caribbean, and the international parade of characters who come through his territory is a pastiche without a clear center. Among these multinational characters are an American industrialist out to exploit the island's rich source of mineral water -- also the source of all the subsequent trouble on the island -- some inexplicable French-German visitors, a singing revolutionary with ties to Fidel Castro, and various parodies of Brit diplomats and politicians, Margaret Thatcher included. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

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Starring:
Michael CaineValerie Perrine, (more)
1983  
PG  
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In a major departure from the tone of the preceding two Superman adventure films, this mix of vile deeds and fantasy heroics drops the "S" out of cosmic and goes for comic instead. Right at the starting gate, Gus Gorman (Richard Pryor) and a subsequent slapstick sequence upstage (Christopher Reeves again), who later develops an identity crisis. Gorman, newly trained as a computer whiz, starts working for a conglomerate run by the corporate nemesis Ross Webster (Robert Vaughn), intent on world domination. Gorman is sent to Superman's small town of Smallville to wipe out Columbia's coffee crop by fiddling with the computer side of a weather satellite. Clark Kent is in town for his class reunion, leading Superman to clash with Gorman, which in turn, leads Gorman to develop a hybrid red Kryptonite. Unwittingly, since Gorman's wits are always in doubt, the Red Kryptonite causes Superman to split into a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde schizophrenia -- but in two separate bodies. As the evil Superman swaggers around town, megalomaniac Ross Webster has other tricks in mind -- and in one of the more memorable action scenes (interspersed with a video game sequence), Superman is chased through the Grand Canyon by a fast-flying, very determined missile. Lana Lang (Annette O'Toole) is on hand for romantic interest (Margot Kidder only appears briefly -- she was growing tired of Lois Lane). ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

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Starring:
Christopher ReeveRichard Pryor, (more)
1981  
PG  
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E. L. Doctorow's novel Ragtime was a sprawling fictional account of American manners and mores in the years between 1900 and 1913. Among the mosaic of colorful factual and fictional characters in the novel were escape artist Harry Houdini and radical Emma Goldman. Both characters are all but eliminated in the film version, which only concentrates on three of Doctorow's many plot threads: The story of an immigrant artist (Mandy Patinkin) who becomes a movie director; the saga of "Gibson Girl" Evelyn Nesbit Shaw (Elizabeth McGovern), for whose sake playboy Harry K. Thaw (Robert Joy); kills architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer) and a lone black man's (Howard Rollins Jr.) quest for justice when his car is destroyed by a racist fire chief (Kenneth McMillan). This last subplot consumes most of the film's running time, to the overall detriment of the pacing. There are also several scenes involving an unnamed upper-middle-class family (headed by James Olson and Mary Steenburgen) who are evidently meant to be the audience's eyes and ears, but are frankly not terribly interesting. Back in 1981, Ragtime was given plenty of press coverage as the "comeback" picture for James Cagney, after twenty years in retirement. The problem is that Cagney's character (a police commissioner) isn't in the book, and his inclusion not only throws the story off balance, but necessitates the removal of several potentially interesting characters and events. Another detriment is the gratuitous (and illogical) nudity in the Evelyn Nesbit scenes, which earned the film its "R" rating. An ornate misfire, Ragtime is of interest today only for its remarkable cast of veterans and stars-to-be, including Pat O'Brien and Eloise O'Brien, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Allen, Moses Gunn, Jeff Daniels and Fran Drescher. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Starring:
James CagneyBrad Dourif, (more)
1981  
PG  
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Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is no ordinary archeologist. When we first see him, he is somewhere in the Peruvian jungle in 1936, running a booby-trapped gauntlet (complete with an over-sized rolling boulder) to fetch a solid-gold idol. He loses this artifact to his chief rival, a French archeologist named Belloq (Paul Freeman), who then prepares to kill our hero. In the first of many serial-like escapes, Indy eludes Belloq by hopping into a convenient plane. So, then: is Indiana Jones afraid of anything? Yes, snakes. The next time we see Jones, he's a soft-spoken, bespectacled professor. He is then summoned from his ivy-covered environs by Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) to find the long-lost Ark of the Covenant. The Nazis, it seems, are already searching for the Ark, which the mystical-minded Hitler hopes to use to make his stormtroopers invincible. But to find the Ark, Indy must first secure a medallion kept under the protection of Indy's old friend Abner Ravenwood, whose daughter, Marion (Karen Allen), evidently has a "history" with Jones. Whatever their personal differences, Indy and Marion become partners in one action-packed adventure after another, ranging from wandering the snake pits of the Well of Souls to surviving the pyrotechnic unearthing of the sacred Ark. A joint project of Hollywood prodigies George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, with a script co-written by Lawrence Kasdan and Philip Kaufman, among others, Raiders of the Lost Ark is not so much a movie as a 115-minute thrill ride. Costing 22 million dollars (nearly three times the original estimate), Raiders of the Lost Ark reaped 200 million dollars during its first run. It was followed by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1985) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), as well as a short-lived TV-series "prequel." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

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Starring:
Harrison FordKaren Allen, (more)
1976  
 
An all-star female cast (Glenda Jackson, Melina Mecouri, Geraldine Page, Sandy Dennis, Anne Jackson, Anne Meara, and Dame Edith Evans) enliven this satirical treatment of the Nixon Watergate scandal, Nasty Habits -- based on Muriel Sparks's novella The Abbess of Crewe. When a dying abbess (Dame Edith Evans) of a Pennsylvania convent is ready to name Sister Alexandra (Glenda Jackson) as her successor, Sister Alexandra and her two flunkies (Sandy Dennis and Anne Jackson) try to get the abbess to sign a document of intent. But their plans are dashed when liberal Sister Felicity (Susan Penhaligon) arrives and wants to change the institution. Her arrival delays the signing of the document of intent, and before the abbess can sign the paper she dies.Now the job of running the convent is up for grabs, with Sister Alexandra employing Nixon-like techniques of surveillance and dirty tricks to get the goods on Sister Felicity. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

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Starring:
Glenda JacksonMelina Mercouri, (more)

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