Miguel Sandoval Movies
- 1992
A U.S. general confronts the struggle of her lifetime when she decides to run for president in this drama. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1991
This police story chronicles the true story of two partners who started out as best friends and later became the bitterest of enemies when one of them becomes corrupted. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Spike Lee defines "jungle fever" as sexual attraction between members of two races. In his film Jungle Fever, he examines the repercussions of an interracial affair upon two very distinct communities. Wesley Snipes is Flipper, a happily married and successful architect, and Annabella Sciorra is Angie, an office temp. When she starts working in Flipper's Manhattan office, one day they look at each other and are soon having sex over a blueprint-strewn desk. Their liaison causes an explosion on both homefronts. Flipper's family consists of his father Doctor Purify (Ossie Davis), a former preacher; his mother Lucinda (Ruby Dee); his violent, crackhead brother Gator (Samuel L. Jackson); and his wife Drew (Lonette McKee), whom he loves, despite his sexual attraction to Angie. Angie's family is a typical Italian-American household from Bensonhurst. She's engaged to Paulie Carbonne (John Turturro), who works in a deli owned by his father Lou (Anthony Quinn). When the two families find out about Flipper and Angie's affair, their shock leads to recriminations and racial animosity. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, (more)
Ricochet, a suspenseful, exciting police thriller that loses its way at the end, is the story of a good cop whose life is destroyed by an obsessed psychotic criminal whom he sent to prison years before. Nick (Denzel Washington) is a successful happily married police officer with a distinguished record. He is drugged, kidnapped and framed by Blake (John Lithgow) who has never forgiven him for arresting him years before. Nick must redeem himself both to the police force, his family and the public who had come to love and respect him. Denzel Washington is excellent in his role of the good man in an impossible situation. John Lithgow, while always interesting, is completely over-the-top as the psychotic criminal, and the film looses plausibility during an extended and highly improbable and unbelievable final chase sequence around the Watts Towers. Despite these flaws, Ricochet is an exiting suspense film with a fine performance by Washington and worth watching despite its disappointing conclusion. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Denzel Washington, John Lithgow, (more)
- 1991
- PG
The two-part, four-hour TV movie Switched at Birth is based on an actual event which began unfolding in Wauchula, Florida in 1978. Brian Kerwin and Judith Hoag play the new parents of a baby girl; a few days later, another couple, played by John M. Jackson and Bonnie Bedelia, have a baby at the same hospital. Kerwin and Hoag's baby is healthy; Jackson and Bedelia's baby has a heart defect. Switched at Birth traces the lives of the two girls over a period of eight years--up to the point of a tragedy which opens the possibility that the girls may not have been given over to the correct parents at the hospital. The four parents involved find themselves in court, battling over custody of the surviving child. This intensely personal problem is bloated into a cause celebre by the press and by parents' rights pressure groups. Edward Asner and Caroline McWilliams appear as the opposing attorneys. Those who'd been following the two-part Switched at Birth during its first telecast in April of 1991 may have found themselves in family conflicts of their own, inasmuch as Part Two was shown opposite the network TV premiere of Die Hard. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bonnie Bedelia, Brian Kerwin, (more)
- 1990
- R
Jay Underwood plays Jeff Sherman, a teenage movie fan who idolizes the classic films of Humphrey Bogart. Jeff's Uncle Ben (Vince Edwards) owns a small detective agency, and Jeff asks if he could have a job working there to earn some extra money. Ben warily agrees, assigning Jeff the most rudimentary of tasks. But when a gangster client comes to the agency, needing someone to spy on his fiancee, Rita Benson (Tracy Scoggins), whom he suspects is cheating on him, Jeff is given the assignment. Hiding out in a closet in a hotel room, Jeff documents an assignation between Rita and her lover Glenn (Charles Lucia). But then strong-arm men push their way into the room, pump Glenn with tranquilizers, and carry him off. Jeff proceeds to fall out of the closet, and Rita asks Jeff for help. They immediately go to the police to report the crime. Unfortunately for the luckless duo, the police and the kidnappers are in cahoots, and soon Jeff and Rita are on the run from both the gangsters and the cops. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jay Underwood, Tracy Scoggins, (more)
In the made-for-cable El Diablo, Anthony Edwards plays a bespectacled Eastern schoolteacher who is bullied and cowed by the wild westerners all around him. Soon, however, he is forced to summon up his courage to expedite the rescue of his prettiest female student (M.C. Gainey), who has been kidnapped by the notorious bandit leader El Diablo (Robert Beltran). Louis Gossett Jr. is on hand as the down-to-earth gunslinger who teaches Edwards the rudiments of frontier survival. Coproduced and cowritten by John Carpenter, El Diablo debuted July 22, 1990, over the HBO pay-cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
This USA Cable network offering stars Carl Weathers as a none-too-ethical security expert. Weathers gets mixed up with high-profile gangster Billy Dee Williams. If he'd stopped there, he'd be on safe ground: Trouble is, romance develops between Weathers and Williams' wife Lonette McKee. The cool, state-of-the-art cars driven by the protagonists are sometimes more fascinating than the by-the-numbers plotline. Dangerous Passion premiered March 25, 1990. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1989
While on the trail of an alien smuggling ring, Gordon Lynch, the immigration-officer husband of policewoman Dana Lynch (Julia Montgomery), turns up murdered. At first, Hunter (Fred Dryer) follows the obvious leads and tries to get the goods on the crooked garment manufacturer who was the brains behind the smugglers. But Hunter's investigation goes off on a whole new tangent when he learns that Dana was a frequent victim of spousal abuse--and that her partner Glen Cates (Scott Jaeck) is secretly in love with her. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Director Spike Lee dives head-first into a maelstrom of racial and social ills, using as his springboard the hottest day of the year on one block in Brooklyn, NY. Three businesses dominate the block: a storefront radio station, where a smooth-talkin' deejay (Samuel L. Jackson) spins the platters that matter; a convenience store owned by a Korean couple; and Sal's Famous Pizzeria, the only white-operated business in the neighborhood. Sal (Danny Aiello) serves up slices with his two sons, genial Vito (Richard Edson) and angry, racist Pino (John Turturro). Sal has one black employee, Mookie (Spike Lee), who wants to "get paid" but lacks ambition. His sister Jade (Joie Lee, Spike's sister), who has a greater sense of purpose and a "real" job, wants Mookie to start dealing with his responsibilities, most notably his son with girlfriend Tina (Rosie Perez). Two of Mookie's best friends are Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), a monolith of a man who rarely speaks, preferring to blast Public Enemy's rap song Fight The Power on his massive boom box; and Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), nicknamed for his coke-bottle glasses and habit of losing his cool. When Buggin' Out notes that Sal's "Wall of Fame," a photo gallery of famous Italian-Americans, includes no people of color, he eventually demands a neighborhood boycott, on a day when tensions are already running high, that incurs tragic consequences. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Aiello, Spike Lee, (more)
This bizarre comedy spoof on spaghetti westerns was made in a hurry on location in Almeria, Spain. Simms (Joe Strummer), Willy (Dick Rude), and Norwood (Sy Richardson) are inept hitmen who decide to rob a bank. They encounter the MacMahon's (The Pogues), a quintet of caffeine-addicted gunslingers who ride motorcycles across the range wreaking havoc. Elvis Costello has a reoccurring role as a waiter who is always ready with a new tray of coffee. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sy Richardson, Joe Strummer, (more)
Alex Cox directed this hallucinatory bio-pic starring Ed Harris as 19th-century American adventurer William Walker, who abandoned a series of careers in law, politics, journalism, and medicine to become a soldier of fortune and eventually a Nicaraguan dictator. When his deaf wife (Marlee Matlin) dies of cholera (but not before she utilizes sign language to tell Walker "To Hell with Manifest Destiny"), Walker is backed by multi-millionaire banker Cornelius Vanderbilt (Peter Boyle) to lead a band of mercenaries to Nicaragua in 1855 to make the country safe for Vanderbilt's steamships. When Walker subdues the Nicaraguan opposition, he sets himself up as president and rules the country with unfeeling repression. Finally the Nicaraguans rise up against him, figuring out that "the mad gringo is ripping us off." ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ed Harris, Marlee Matlin, (more)
In this sci-fi comedy from executive producer George Lucas, Howard the Duck is an extra-terrestrial fowl who is accidentally beamed to earth by physicist Dr. Jenning (Jeffrey Jones) and his assistant Phil (Tim Robbins). The two go looking for Howard and find him in the home of Beverly Switzer (Lea Thompson), who was rescued by the interstellar duck from some mean-looking thugs. Beverly and Phil are friends, and when the government finds out about Howard, she helps Phil and Dr. Jenning hide him from the authorities until they can zap him back home. In the meantime, several wild chases and spectacular special effects keep the picture rolling along. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lea Thompson, Jeffrey Jones, (more)
Punk rock's first great embodiment of the motto "live fast and die young," Sid Vicious joined The Sex Pistols when they were already established as the most controversial rock band in British history; and it soon became apparent that he couldn't play his instrument, had a magnetic attraction to chaos, and possessed a dangerous thirst for booze, drugs, and violence. Sid and Nancy opens shortly after Sid (Gary Oldman) joined the band, when he meets an obnoxious American punk groupie named Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). Nancy claims that she can get drugs, and Sid naively gives her his money. Nancy doesn't show up with the goods, but when Sid runs into her a few days later, she has a tall tale about getting ripped off - and Sid sympathizes with her. Before long, Sid and Nancy have fallen in love, and while they argue with uncommon vehemence, they also depend completely on each other. When The Sex Pistols break up, Sid has few prospects and an increasingly voracious appetite for heroin, and Nancy's attempts to "manage" his career only hasten his downhill slide. Former Clash leader Joe Strummer wrote the film's theme song, "Love Kills," and The Pogues, The Circle Jerks, and Pray for Rain contributed to the soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Gary Oldman, Chloe Webb, (more)
- 1984
Convicted murderer Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald had hoped that, by telling his side of the story to investigative journalist Joe McGinniss, the authorities would be persuaded of MacDonald's innocence. Instead, McGinniss ended up unswerving in his belief of MacDonald's guilt, and the result was the devastating best-seller Fatal Vision. In this two-part TV adaptation of McGinniss' book, Gary Cole plays MacDonald, a former Green Beret officer, while Frank Dent essays the role of McGinniss. MacDonald's wife and two children are brutally murdered in their Fort Bragg, North Carolina home on February 17, 1970. The prime suspect, MacDonald insists that the killings were committed by a gang of stoned-out hippies, a story that at first is accepted in toto by the doctor's father-in-law Freddy Kassab (Karl Malden). But after MacDonald is officially exonerated, Kassab notices several holes in his son-in-law's story, and becomes convinced that MacDonald was in fact the murderer. Through Kassab's persistence, as well as the uncovering of new forensic evidence, MacDonald is ultimately convicted for all three murders in 1979. Since the TV premiere of Fatal Vision on November 18 and 19, 1984, there has been a growing movement by MacDonald's sympathizers to discredit McGinniss' book and to retry the case--a movement that has been hampered time and again by MacDonald's own erratic behavior. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, (more)
- 1983
- PG
- Add Timerider to Queue
Given the off-the-wall premise in this sci-fi western -- that a motorcyclist rides his bike through a time warp right into the Wild West, into the middle of a gang of outlaws, and cannot figure out what happened -- the glitches and gaps in the plot fit right in with the spirit of the adventure. When the outlaw Reese (Peter Coyote) catches sight of the macho bike, he decides that several hundred horsepower are better than his one and is out to rustle the vehicle any way he can. Unfortunately, the bike does not run on high-octane hay -- an issue that bites the dust when pistol-packing Clair (Belinda Bauer) appears on the scene. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Fred Ward, Belinda Bauer, (more)
