Michael Schneider Movies
- 1994
- R
This British romantic comedy examines a trouble relationship between a behavioral psychologist and a paleontology lecturer with serious sexual hang-ups. Currently Dr. Daniel Becker is holding seminars for teaching body language to executives. Katie, the lecturer, seems to defy all he seems to know with her habit of knocking out any male she suspects of harboring sexual thoughts about her. They go out on a dinner date. Immediately, Katie-the-mind-reader smacks the waiter. Intrigued, Daniel blindfolds her to see if she really can read thoughts. Katie, who sees no future in their relationship, plans to go on a research trip to India with her peer, Sandip. Daniel tries to thwart her plans. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Amanda Pays, Mark Frankel, (more)
Based on a true story, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils, using flattery and bribes to win military contracts, and brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory. By staffing his plant with Jews who've been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops, Schindler has a dependable unpaid labor force. For Stern, a job in a war-related plant could mean survival for himself and the other Jews working for Schindler. However, in 1942, all of Krakow's Jews are assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, overseen by Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), an embittered alcoholic who occasionally shoots prisoners from his balcony. Schindler arranges to continue using Polish Jews in his plant, but, as he sees what is happening to his employees, he begins to develop a conscience. He realizes that his factory (now refitted to manufacture ammunition) is the only thing preventing his staff from being shipped to the death camps. Soon Schindler demands more workers and starts bribing Nazi leaders to keep Jews on his employee lists and out of the camps. By the time Germany falls to the allies, Schindler has lost his entire fortune -- and saved 1,100 people from likely death. Schindler's List was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture and a long-coveted Best Director for Spielberg, and it quickly gained praise as one of the finest American movies about the Holocaust. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liam Neeson, Ben Kingsley, (more)
An ambitious female reporter finds herself unable to remain an objective, third party observer while covering the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in this made for television war drama starring Faye Dunaway. Upon arriving Israel on her first foreign assignment, American photojournalist Faye Milano is greeted by David (Amos Kollek), an Israeli reserve officer and writer is also the nephew of Jerusalem Mayor Kollek. Later, while conducting a series of interviews with actual political representatives on both sides of the issue, Faye discovers the identity of David's uncle and skillfully manipulates him into getting her an interview with the mayor. The resulting story, which runs with a photograph of an Israeli police officer clubbing a young Palestinian girl, raises the ire of authorities - who deplore the reporter's penchant sensationalizing the details and seldom bothering to confirm the facts. When Faye learns that a young Palestinian boy was recently shot after hurling a brick at an Israeli soldier, she travels to Jerusalem in order to meet with Mustafa (Mohammad Bakri), the dead boy's brother. As tensions begin to thicken and Mustafa is arrested, Faye snaps a candid shot of the boy being taken into custody. Faye's press credentials are subsequently revoked, however, when the arresting officer is discovered with his throat slashed and the authorities place the blame for the killing on her photograph, which clearly shows the arresting officer's face. After submitting a story about an injured Palestinian boy who had actually suffered from a household accident and not in the conflict as she read leaders to believe, the inexperienced reporter finds that she has unexpectedly gotten in far over her head. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Faye Dunaway, Amos Kollek, (more)
The highlights of this classic children's story are the performances of Diana Rigg as the Mean Queen and Billy Barty as Biddy the Dwarf. The seven-year-old Snow White is played by Nicola Stapleton, with Sarah Patterson portraying the princess at age 16. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Diana Rigg, Billy Barty, (more)
This live-action version of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast stars Rebecca De Mornay as the woman who learns to see the charm and love beneath the exterior of a boorish beast who imprisons her in his castle in order to collect a debt from her father. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rebecca De Mornay, John Savage, (more)
Billy Barty, one of the world's biggest little people, stars in this musical children's fable from the Brothers Grimm. Rumpelstiltskin (Barty) promises the miller's daughter Katie (Amy Irving) that she will be able to spin straw into gold in order to win the love of the Prince (John Mouler-Brown). After the marriage, Katie gives birth to a son that the nasty gnome abducts. Rumpelstiltskin agrees to give the child back to Katie if she can guess his name. An excellent performance from Billy Barty who began his career in the silent film era. Amy Irving's brother David provides the direction. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Amy Irving, Billy Barty, (more)
- 1986
Albane Guilhe stars in this French-Canadian film as Anne Trister, a brilliant but emotionally unstable painter/ sculptor. After the death of her father, Anne returns from Switzerland to her home town in Quebec. Setting up a studio, she becomes obsessed with her work, to the extent that she grows farther and farther from her Swiss lover. Anne enters into an affair with her childhood friend Louise Marleau, which also takes second place to her art. While hospitalized due to a fall from her scaffold, Anna discovers that her studio has been condemned and demolished--and with it her life's work. Somehow this disaster, coupled with her ongoing relationship with Marleau, enables Anne to find inner peace at last. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Albane Guilhe, Louise Marleau, (more)
This WW II drama is set in a Czech village and centers on a strong 30-year-old Jewish woman who must marry a man she dislikes to avoid being sent to a work camp. Eventually the stress of the marriage, the racism, and the war itself builds up and begins to slowly erode the woman's will and mind. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lisa Hartman, Rosemary Leach, (more)
When the residents of a small Jewish village come together to stage their annual adaptation of the Book of Esther, life imitates art in this Israeli musical comedy that will have the whole family laughing. Though generally a traditional play, this year's performance gets a contemporary twist as the actors merge their own personalities with the actions of their characters to offer a unique take on an age-old tale. Adapted from the classic Yiddish play by Itzik Manger. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 1983
In this emotional film related to the Yom Kippur War of 1973, an American woman and an Israeli journalist both have husbands who do not return from the fighting, and each woman is convinced that the same prisoner who appears in a film taken in an Egyptian POW camp was her husband. At first the women are antagonistic but as they continue to wait and wait with no word, they begin to empathize with each other's trauma and a deep friendship develops. Whenever the POW in question is released, one of the women may be facing a tragedy spared the other. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kathleen Quinlan, Yona Elian, (more)
