Antonia Rey Movies

Miguel Pinero became a leading figure in New York's art scene during the 1970s as a poet, actor, and playwright whose vibrant, often pointed, work spoke directly to the lower classes and to disenfranchised minorities. As a founder of the influential Nuyorican Poets Cafe, his poetry soon became recognized as a forerunner to rap and hip-hop music. TV screenwriter turned director Leon Ichaso spins this impressionistic biographical look at this artist. Raised in an abusive family, Pinero (Benjamin Bratt) turns to streets for solace. Soon he is engaging in petty crime, drug dealing, and addiction. When he finds himself in Sing-Sing, he turns his experiences in prison into the play Short Eyes, which eventually garners him seven Tony awards in 1974. Uncomfortable with his new fame, he clings to his girlfriend, Sugar (Talisa Soto), and his childhood buddy, Miguel Algarin (Giancarlo Esposito), who is a literature professor and who co-founded the Nuyorican Cafe. Though Pinero makes cameos on such shows as Kojak, his art begins to suffer as he starts to succumb to his drug addictions. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a young professional photographer, Diane Di Sorella, must suddenly return to her long- abandoned family home in New Jersey after her mother unexpectedly dies. Once back amongst her fellow Italian-American neighbors she begins to rediscover the heritage she rejected some many years before. She also begins to remember her embittered mother whom she abandoned. This is a tough time for Diane and she finds support with the best friend of her late grandmother who gives her a secret journal kept by Diane's mother. It is in Italian so the woman must read it to Diane. Passages from it are illustrated via live action vignettes and through puppet shows. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

My Summer Story is the video title for It Runs in the Family. Based on the writings of humorist/raconteur Jean Shepherd, the film was the long-awaited sequel to the 1984 "sleeper" A Christmas Story. Set in the 1940s, the story is told from the point-of-view of Ralphie Parker (Kieran Culkin), who watches in bemusement as "The Old Man" (Charles Grodin) carries on a long-running feud with their hillbilly neighbors, the Bumpus family. Mary Steenburgen is cast as Ralphie's ditsy mom. Also appearing is yet another celebrity sibling, Christian Culkin. Jean Shepherd himself narrates, as he did in the earlier film, while the direction is in the hands of A Christmas Story's Bob Clark. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Temistocles Lopez's Chain of Desire, based on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, plays like an AIDS-era version of The Yellow Rolls Royce, in which a series of unrelated amorous lovers are connected by a "chain of desire." The film begins as Alma D'Angeli (Linda Fiorentino) flees from a lover and runs into a church, where she finds solace and a young Latino worker, Jesus (Elias Koteas). They make love. Then Jesus comes home to his wife Isa (Angel Aviles) and gets intimate with her. The next morning, Isa goes off to see Dr. Jerald Buckley (Patrick Bauchau), with whom she is having an affair. After seeing Isa, Jerald heads off to visit Linda (Grace Zabriskie), a sexy dominatrix. Linda returns home to her husband, Hubert (Malcolm MacDowell), a harried television commentator. After an unsatisfactory interview with women who claim to have had affairs with John F. Kennedy, he relieves his tensions by seeking the arms of Keith (Jamie Harrold), a teenage hustler. And the trail continues on as gay social worker Ken (Tim Guinee) offers Ken a place for the night, followed by Ken's lover David Bango (Dewey Martin) and hot dancer Diana (Holly Marie Combs), who wants David to deflower her. Coming on the scene after that is famed artist Mel (Seymour Cassel), who has a tryst with Diana, but he finds that he has to answer to his vindictive wife, Cleo (Assumpta Serna). At the end, all the characters arrive at a hip nightclub, where Alma, the singer at the club, has learned that the lover she had spurned at the beginning of the film has been diagnosed with AIDS. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

A tortured man finds himself caught in a middle-ground between hallucination and reality in this supernatural thriller, scripted by Bruce Joel Rubin of Ghost (1990) and My Life (1993).
Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins) is a soldier stationed in Vietnam who undergoes a traumatic experience on the battlefield - the nature of which is initially unclear. The film then moves into his post-Vietnam experience in 1970s New York, where he feels consistently traumatized, but can never quite remember exactly what happened to him in Southeast Asia or to free himself from his anxieties over the recent tragic death of his young son (Macaulay Culkin). Though well educated, Jacob works as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service and has become romantically involved with one of his co-workers, Jezzie (Elizabeth Pena), after divorcing his wife. Soon, Jacob's tenuous hold on reality starts to slip as horrifying events befall him; he is nearly run over by a subway train, pursued by faceless demons in cars, and spots reptilian tails and horns protruding from the bodies of those he encounters. Jacob also suffers severe panic attacks related to the chaos that may be reality, or may exist only in his mind. He seeks counsel from Louis (Danny Aiello), a kindly chiropractor, as his ex-wife Sarah (Patricia Kalember), fellow Vietnam vet Paul (Pruitt Taylor Vince), and enigmatic stranger Michael (Matt Craven) all try to help the tortured soul. Jason Alexander, Ving Rhames and Eriq LaSalle highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this comedy, a young German woman named Elaine Hines (Hanna Schygulla) moves to New York City with dreams of becoming a writer. Elaine becomes entangled in a mystery and falls in with a group of gangsters who lead her through a series of crazy adventures. Released on video under the title Crazy Streets, this movie featured an appearance by Deborah Harry and was Alec Baldwin's first screen appearance. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Robin Williams stars as Vladimir Ivanoff, a Russian sax player working in a circus whose home life with his warm and colorful family does not compensate for his feelings of repression and lost opportunity in his native land. When the circus comes to New York, Williams goes on a shopping trip to Bloomingdale's -- where he suddenly announces his intention to defect. Befriended and given a place to stay by security guard Lionel Witherspoon (Cleavant Derricks), Vladimir makes the slow and sometimes painful transition from Russian to American citizen, helped along by his lady love (and fellow immigrant), Lucia Lombardo (Maria Conchita Alonso), and immigration attorney (and onetime Cuban refugee) Orlando Ramirez (Fernando Rey). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jon Chardiet plays a Puerto Rican youth who targets subway walls for his graffiti renderings. For a while, it looks as though Chardiet's problems will carry the plotline, but before long the film's true raison d'etre comes to the surface. Rap-music deejay Guy Davis, in tandem with such like-minded individuals as music student Rae Dawn Chong, endeavor to stage a huge breakdancing presentation, featuring several musical artistes of the period. Harry Belafonte served as coproducer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, The Gentleman Bandit stars Ralph Waite as a popular priest whose life is shattered by a case of mistaken identity. Waite is fingered by a witness as a holdup man; during a lineup, several other witnesses confirm this. Despite his protestations, Waite cannot account for his actions during the crime, and is vilified by the newspapers and by his own superiors. Only the priest's parishioners believe him--but that may not be enough to keep him out of prison. Based on the real-life ordeal of Baltimore priest Fr. Bernard Pagano, Gentleman Bandit was filmed under the title The Bandit Priest. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Peter Medak's The Changeling is among a handful of films, including The Haunting (1963), Ghost Story (1981), and Lady in White (1988), that have successfully recreated the intimate, drawing-room atmosphere of supernatural horror fiction. After his wife and daughter are killed in a snowbound car accident, classical composer John Russell (George C. Scott) relocates from New York to Seattle to teach at his alma mater. Looking for a quiet place to rest and continue writing music, he is referred Claire Norman (Trish Van Devere) at the Seattle Historical Preservation Society. Claire shows John a large, sparsely furnished estate in the outlying countryside. He takes the house, appreciating its remoteness and the solitude it might afford, and diverts himself by renovating and settling in. He even starts to compose, putting aside his older work in favor of a new, sentimental piece for the piano. It is not long, however, before he begins having nightmares about the accident that killed his wife and daughter. Possibly because of this trauma, he is open to communications from the house's ghostly occupants. Pursuing a loud, repetitive pounding noise in an upper room, he stumbles on the apparition of a young boy drowning in a tub. Working together with Claire, John discovers frightening parallels between this vision and buried events from the house's past. Horror writer M.R. James once said that his goal as a writer was to make the reader feel "pleasantly uncomfortable." Those looking for a similar experience in movies will appreciate The Changeling as a gem in the horror genre. ~ Anthony Reed, All Movie Guide

Not surprisingly, this fascinating dissection of Gypsy life in America was vilified by several ethnic special-interest groups, who'd previously delivered their mimeoed missives to novelist Peter Maas, on whose book the film was based. Sterling Hayden is the "king" of a New York-based gypsy tribe, who on his deathbed passes his crown to his reluctant grandson, Eric Roberts. Roberts' scuzzy father Judd Hirsch, envious that he's been passed over, begins plotting the demise of his own son. It appears at first that the boy, a thoroughly assimilated Manhattanite, would be more than willing to give up his invisible throne to Hirsch, but there's something about his heritage that always draws him back to his own people. Several genuine gypsies took part in the film as extras, bit players and technical advisers; reportedly, they also spent much of the shooting time trying to cadge a few dishonest dollars from cast and crew. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A young thug needs money, so he visits his girlfriend while she's baby-sitting. While there, he plans to tie up the girl, kidnap the child, and hold him for ransom in the hope that his wealthy father will pay up. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

A roman a clef depicting the Wylie-Hoffert murders, this is the first of the made for TV movies introducing the Kojak character and was essentially the pilot for the long-running crime series. When a black ghetto youth is accused of two bizarre murders, Kojak takes it upon himself to find the real murderer. ~ Tana Hobart, All Movie Guide