Linda Sorenson Movies

A writer who was dumped at the alter attempts to impress his flaky ex-fiancee by helping her father movie in this dialogue-driven comedy from Canadian writer/director/actor Benjamin Ratner. Gene Maxwell (Ratner) was preparing to exchange his wedding vows when his fiancée Liz (Elizabeth Berkley) vanished without a trace. Three years later, Gene has published a best-selling novel entitled "Fear Knot." Gene lives at home with his dysfunctional parents and autistic sister, and when Liz appears on his doorstep the broken-hearted writer can't help but hope that the flame will be rekindled. But all Liz wants is for Gene to help her elderly father Malcolm (John Neville) move while she jets off to Prague to act in a low-budget sci-fi flick. But while any hope of continuing his romance with Liz proves less likely with each long-distance telephone call he receives, Gene does manage to form a warm bond with Malcolm over the course of the move. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this delightfully lachrymose Barbara Taylor Bradford confection, Maggie Sorrell (Victoria Principal) moves to a different town after she is dumped by her cheating husband. Within what seems to be a few minutes, Maggie has carved out a new career for herself as an immensely successful interior designer. She then meets Jake Cantrell (Adrian Pasdar), a much-younger man who, unbeknownst to Maggie, has likewise been abandoned--but not divorced--by a faithless spouse. Beyond the expected May-December complications, the plot also manages to incorporate a car accident, a fatal illness, and a side trip to Scotland (Well, why not Scotland?). Barbara Taylor Bradford's Love In Another Town originally aired October 19, 1997 by CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The made-for-TV Lies He Told is based on one of those true stories that most producers would reject outright as ludicrous and impossible were it offered as fiction. Feeling confined by his marriage to wife Cindy (Teddi Siddall) and his family and military responsibilities, USAF Sgt. Major Davis Bay (Gary Cole) senses the opportunity to start life all over again when he meets and falls in love with Alyson Haywood (Karen Sillas). Faking his own death, Bay then weds the unwitting Alyson, assuring her that he'll be able to support her once his Air Force pension comes in -- which of course it never will, since he's officially deceased. Over the next few years, Bay is forced to feed Alyson and her family a pack of outrageous falsehoods to keep from being exposed as a deserter and a bigamist, not least of which is the claim that he's on a "covert mission" for the government. When all else fails, he resorts to a series of bank robberies to support himself and his new bride. Meanwhile, Bay's mother, who has never believed that he is truly dead, comes closer and closer to shattering his wall of lies. Originally filmed for the ABC network, Lies He Told first aired March 17, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A cuckolded wife finds renewed happiness in the arms of another after leaving her faithless spouse. But when the husband becomes deathly ill, she agrees to take care of him, even though it could mean losing her new lover. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Good Fight is a made-for-cable film about a small-town lawyer (Christine Lahti) who fights a tobacco company when her son's best friend is stricken with mouth cancer, due to his frequent use of chewing tobacco. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Hauled before a federal grand jury, Murphy (Candice Bergen) gallantly accepts a jail for refusing to reveal a source. After preparing to go into full martyr mode while serving her time, Murphy is a bit disappointed when she is sentenced to a luxurious "Club Fed" minimum-security facility. Her cushy incarceration quickly turns out to be too much of a good thing--and it looks like it will be a long, long time before her appeal comes through. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Returning to Toronto to attend a family reunion, a recently-jilted man gives a lift to an attractive young hitchhiker. Confusion abounds when the man's family members take the hitchhiker for his former fiancee. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

Every so often, the Internal Revenue Service randomly targets an "average" taxpayer for an excruciatingly meticulous audit -- usually to meet a quota, or simply (as in the case of this seriocomic TV movie) to ram the fear of God into the rest of America. One such unlucky target is Bud Robinson (George Segal), owner of a moderately successful sporting goods store, whose life is thrown into utter chaos by a renegade IRS administrator. Unwilling to merely bend over and take it when he is slapped with a bill for 28,000 dollars, Bud vows vengeance against his local tax office -- and he gets it, albeit in an extreme manner that might not meet approval with contemporary, post-9/11 viewers. Made for television, the breezily satirical Many Happy Returns was originally telecast by CBS, not (as one might assume) on April 15, but instead on September 19, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this frothy drama, the "heavenly bodies" belong to Samantha (Cynthia Dale), a woman determined to open a dance instruction school, and the people who come to learn dance there. Once the deserted warehouse-cum-dance-studio is refurbished, Cynthia's first class already has as much finesse as Fred Astaire at his apogee, so when Cynthia's ideal world is threatened by the owner of a rival health club, it is fairly easy for her students to come to the rescue with their deft dance routines. Life never seems to delve much below the balletic, athletic, or aerobic surface as the adventures of Cynthia, and her students continue along a self-absorbed course. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This drama is based on Dr. R. Adams Cowley's true story of how he and his colleagues developed the very first medical shock trauma unit. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This is a fast-paced, standard crime story with Sgt. Boyd (Richard Crenna) as a lone cop out to clean up the neighborhood. Kurtz (Paul Williams) is a wild gangster who manages a ring of prostitutes, and right now he has problems. Someone is shooting his hookers. A few of the undercover cops get killed as they try to infiltrate the hooker trade, so Sgt. Boyd is more or less alone in bringing in the sniper and giving Kurtz his due. While he is focusing on those tasks, prostitute Monica (Linda Sorenson) is focusing on him. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Written by Loring Mandel, Breaking Up stars Gena Rowlands as a middle-aged housewife who, after 16 years of marriage, is asked for a divorce by husband Granville van Dusen. Once overcoming the shock and the bitterness, Rowlands must determine the future course for herself and her two children. Her efforts to set up her own fashion design business and to enter the dating pool are almost as traumatic as the initial separation. Adding to the dilemma is an increasingly large rift between Rowlands and her teen-age daughter, who holds her mom responsible for the marital discord. Breaking Up was telecast January 2, 1978 as an ABC Theatre presentation. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Our Man Flint had scored in 1966 as a high-gloss spy movie spoof starring James Coburn as Derek Flint, maverick operative of the Zonal Organization for World Intelligence and Espionage (or Z.O.W.I.E.). When the film spawned its inevitable TV-pilot spin-off, Ray Danton was Derek Flint and the project was shorn of all traces of humor or satire. Danton's Flint is just another well-tailored international gumshoe, assigned in the pilot film to rescue an oil company executive who has been kidnapped by a "liberation" movement in a mythical mideastern sheikdom. Our Man Flint: Dead on Target had so little to do with its source that the film was originally telecast under the pared-down title Dead on Target, with no hint of Flint until one tuned in the program. ABC evidently had no faith at all in the film; it was shunted away to a late-night slot on the network's anthology series Wide World Mystery. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide