Sylvia Short Movies

Director Mike Nichols teams up with his former partner/screenwriter Elaine May for the first time in many years and for the first time together in films to create this sophisticated, remake of the phenomenally popular French musical farce La Cage aux Folles that stars Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman and Diane Wiest as two dramatically disparate couples who manage to reconcile their vast differences for the sake of their children who are getting married. Williams plays Armand Goldman, the owner of a popular South Beach drag club known for putting on elaborate showcases starring his long-time lover/wife Albert (Lane) who appears as "Starina." Lately poor flamboyant, flighty Albert has been in crisis over the inexorable onset of middle age. He has been moody, paranoid and unbearably. When he gets too inconsolably distraught, handsome but clumsy houseboy Agador quietly slips Albert "Pirin" tablets (which he explains to Armand are simply Aspirin tablets with the "as" scraped off). Still though Albert can be a royal pain, Armand dearly loves him and the two live happily in their splendiferous apartment above the club. One day Armand's son Val (the result of Armand's single foray into straight sex) comes visiting with joyous news: he has found his dreamgirl and is getting married. The only trouble is, Barbara Keeley's father is the blustery ultra-religious right-wing Senator Keeley (Hackman), the founder of the Coalition for Moral Order. Senator Keeley and his colleagues are not as upright as they seem and when his closest associate is found dead beside a black, underage prostitute, Keeley finds his house surrounded by ravenous newshounds, hungry for dirt. Knowing that they are poised to ruin him, Keeley and his proper but slightly addled-wife (Wiest) decide that a big, elaborate, church wedding will be just the ticket to save his reputation. Barbara has neglected to tell them that Val's parents are gay, preferring to claim that they are members of the South Beach social elite. In a panic, she panics and calls Val who breaks the bad news to Armand and begs him to make the apartment less flamboyant and worst of all to hide Albert (who functioned as Val's mother while the youth grew up) during the visit. Armand is angry, but loving his son, finally, reluctantly agrees, knowing that he will deeply wound his companion. Unfortunately, Albert finds out and as a compromise tries to learn how to be macho so he can pretend to be Val's uncle, he is too much the Great Dame to ever pass as one of the guys and so is banned from the party. Armand then locates Catherine and asks her to masquerade as his wife. She agrees to show up later that evening. Meanwhile their friends busily redecorate the apartment until it looks as if it were done in "Early Inquisition." During the fateful dinner party, Catherine is late and Albert gets uproarious revenge. Achingly comic chaos ensues as Armand tries to hold the increasingly tenuous evening together while outside the newshounds bay and threaten to make even more trouble for Senator Keely. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Embracing the supposed nihilism and cynicism of the "slacker" generation, S.F.W. (1995) caused nary a blip on the media-saturated cultural radar screen that it criticized. Stephen Dorff stars as Cliff Spab, an aimless, hard-drinking youth. Spab becomes a national hero when he is one of several people held hostage by gun-toting terrorists in a convenience store. He doesn't care much about his own life or anything else, and his attitude of "So f---ing what?" translates into debates with his terrorist captors and gloomy pronouncements that charm viewers. After a month-long siege, a crisis erupts when the store runs out of beer and junk food, so Cliff finds himself a free man whose celebrity image is emblazoned on t-shirts and whose presence is requested at a rock concert where he is required to do nothing other than appear. In the meantime, Spab's girlfriend Wendy (Reese Witherspoon) becomes a ubiquitous talk show guest. Ostensibly a satire of the celebrity-obsessed culture of the 1990s, the film was withheld from distribution for a year because of thematic similarities to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers (1994). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

The owner of an aircraft salvage company (Viggo Mortensen) is reported killed in a crash. However, his wife (Andie MacDowell) knows better, and she decides to find him and his secret bank accounts. She travels around the world, and winding up in Cairo, she meets Liam Neeson, who helps her uncover her husband's smuggling scheme. ~ All Movie Guide

In 1988, Nancy Klein, the pregnant wife of Long Island accountant Marty Klein, was involved in a car accident that left her comatose. Convinced that Nancy would never recover if she went to full term with the baby, Marty asked the doctors to perform an abortion. Almost immediately, Nancy Klein became a cause celebre for pro-life and pro-choice activists alike. Made for television, Absolute Strangers recreates this traumatic event and the drawn-out courtroom litigation that followed. Henry Winkler, who produced the film, returned to acting after a long absence to play Klein; others in the cast include Jennifer Hetrick as Nancy, Richard Kiley as Dr. R. J. Cannon, Karl Malden and Audra Lindley as Nancy's parents, and Patty Duke as a lower-court judge. Though it is clear that the filmmaker's sympathies are clearly on Marty Klein's side, the script remains even-handed throughout, observing that the pro-choicers can be just as narrow-minded and contentious as the "absolute strangers" who wish to usurp Marty Klein's rights concerning his wife's wellbeing. Written by playwright Robert Anderson (Tea and Sympathy, I Never Sang For My Father), Absolute Strangers premiered April 14, 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Scott Spencer, Endless Love details the doomed romance between 17-year-old David (Martin Hewitt) and 15-year-old Jade (Brooke Shields). Banished from Jade's home by her daddy Hugh (Don Murray), David obsessively cooks up a scheme to get back into the family's good graces. Since this plan involves setting Jade's house on fire, one can easily predict that the puppy-love romance is in for a bumpy ride. Jailed for arson, David heads directly to Jade the moment that he's released, with tragic results. Posting respectable earnings thanks to the popularity of Brooke Shields, Endless Love was also the film debut of Tom Cruise, billed 18th in the cast list. A young James Spader lends a supporting role. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide