Laura Albert Movies
Set adrift in the vast waters of the North Atlantic for a luxury New Year's Eve party staged in the ship's magnificent ballroom, the massive ocean-liner Poseidon receives an unexpected jolt when a rogue, 100-foot wave rolls it completely upside down, forcing the surviving passengers to fight their way to safety in Das Boot director Wolfgang Petersen's waterlogged blockbuster. Trapped beneath the waterline and implored by the captain to remain in place until a rescue team arrives, the panicked survivors struggle to keep their cool as the water begins to rush in, infernos blaze all around, and a loss of electricity plunges the doomed vessel into total darkness. Seasoned gambler Dylan Johns (Josh Lucas) isn't willing to wage his life on the prompt arrival of help, though, and as he attempts to navigate the treacherous, inverted maze of death, he is flanked by desperate band of like-minded seafarers including eight-year-old Conor (Jimmy Bennett) and his mother, Maggie (Jacinda Barrett), reticent stowaway Elena (Mía Maestro), suicidal Richard (Richard Dreyfus), and concerned father Robert (Kurt Russell), whose missing daughter may still be somewhere onboard along with her frightened fiancé. With a little luck and a little help from onboard waiter Marco (Freddy Rodriguez), the desperate team may just live to see the morning after. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Josh Lucas, Kurt Russell, (more)
An inept cop suddenly gets a new partner in the person of a cabbie with attitude in this high-rolling comedy. Washburn (Jimmy Fallon) is a police officer who becomes the laughingstock of the department after a series of traffic accidents cause him to lose his driver's license. One day, Washburn gets an urgent call to head out to the location of a bank robbery; unable to drive himself there, he hails a cab. As it happens, the taxi is being driven by Belle (Queen Latifah), a single mom who, after making a name for herself as the fastest pizza delivery person in New York, has moved up to driving a hack. What begins as a wild ride to the scene of the crime gets even wilder as Washburn and Belle become unexpected allies while following the trail of a team of beautiful but reckless female bank robbers led by Vanessa (Gisele Bundchen). Adapted from a popular French action comedy with the same name, Taxi was Jimmy Fallon's first big-screen vehicle after leaving the cast of the popular sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Queen Latifah, Jimmy Fallon, (more)
Former X-Files writer James Wong makes his sophomore feature as a director at the helm of this science fiction thriller that's reminiscent of Timecop (1994). In the near future, a technology called "quantum tunneling" allows human beings to travel between parallel universes. The abuse of this ability by criminal elements has led to the formation of the Multi-Verse Authorities or "MVA," an agency of quantum traveling cops who apprehend violators of inter-dimensional laws. The MVA faces its greatest crisis when a former agent named Gabriel Yulaw (Jet Li) goes renegade, traveling between one universe and the next, murdering his own parallel selves and gaining enormous power with each slaying. It is believed that when Yulaw has become "the one," the only version of himself to exist, he will be omnipotent, but the final Gabriel Yulaw exists in our plane of existence (the "magna universe") and is also becoming stronger, though he doesn't understand why. Hot on the evil Yulaw's trail are his former partner Harry Roedecker (Delroy Lindo) and Harry's new colleague Evan Funsch (Jason Statham). Created with Wong's longtime writing and producing partner Glen Morgan, The One (2001) co-stars Carla Gugino. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jet Li, Carla Gugino, (more)
Wes Craven's Scream (1996) was a half-parody/half-tribute to the first wave of slasher films of the 1970s and 1980s, and since most of them spawned a large number of sequels, it's only appropriate that Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson produced a third installment of their Scream franchise. Sidney Prescott (Neve Campbell), traumatized by the brutal murders of her friends, has left her hometown of Woodsboro and is working in California as a crisis intervention counselor. Meanwhile, "Stab," the novel by Gale Weathers (Courtney Cox Arquette), is spawning a series of successful horror films, and as Stab 3: Return to Woodsboro is being filmed in Los Angeles, a lunatic has gotten his hands on a copy of the script, and is murdering the characters in the same order that they die in the movie. But predicting who will die next is not as simple as it might seem, since the producers have circulated three different screenplays, with different endings. In addition to Campbell and Cox-Arquette, David Arquette returns from the first two films as less-than-bright "Dewey" Riley; new members of the cast include Parker Posey, Patrick Dempsey, Scott Foley, and Jenny McCarthy. Kevin Williamson wrote the original story, but the screenplay was penned by Ehren Kruger. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- David Arquette, Neve Campbell, (more)
- 1994
A kickboxing cyborg security agent accidentally kills a corporate officer who was trying to rape a blonde employee in this sci-fi copy of Die Hard. The head of the corporation orders his security teams to kill both the cyborg and the employee to prevent word of the attempted rape from getting out. The cyborg and the victim must make their way out of the building with two teams of killer cyborgs after them. ~ Brian Gusse, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Olivier Gruner, John Glover, (more)
A Navy SEAL gets himself tossed into a seething Filipino prison after his attempts to stop a gang rape fail and he is accused of killing the girl. This low-budget martial arts actioner chronicles his struggle to survive and escape the hellish jail. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1991
- R
In the early '90s, Brian Bosworth made the seamless transition from football bad boy to onscreen bad ass. In Stone Cold, the Boz plays cop Joe Huff, a brute force specialist. The FBI contracts him to take down a biker gang known as the Brotherhood, who have been implicated in drug trafficking and several murders. Joe assumes the personality of John Stone and goes undercover. His mission seems not to bust the gang but rather to kill with excessive force. Before he can take the law into his own hands, however, he has to get in with the gang's leader, the impressively tough Chains. The Boz doesn't disappoint, and he gets his chance in the final confrontation where he takes on several score of the Brotherhood in the street battle to end all street battles. ~ Brian Whitener, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brian Bosworth, Lance Henriksen, (more)
- 1990
When some locals get whomped in a baseball game by a traveling team of femmes, they blame the team for the murder of their town rapist and proceed to hunt them down in the neighboring wilderness. After their numbers are significantly reduced, the bodacious babes begin to bat back. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
Love, treachery, and broken furniture are the hallmarks of this rollicking action drama. Dalton (Patrick Swayze) has a Ph.D., but rather than make a living teaching Socrates at some university, he's opted to become a top-drawer "cooler" -- an expert barroom bouncer who can break up fights without getting himself killed in the process. Dalton is hired to keep the peace at the Double Duce, a rough-and-tumble honky tonk in Jasper, Missouri, where beer-soaked free-for-alls are a nightly event. Dalton is hurt on his first night on the job, and he is patched up by "Doc" Clay (Kelly Lynch), a beautiful woman working as the town's physician. Dalton and Doc immediately hit it off, but Dalton learns that another man, Brad Wesley (Ben Gazzara), already has his eye on her. Wesley is a man used to getting his way; he's an extortionist and crime boss who has nearly everyone in Jasper under his thumb, and he sets out to teach Dalton a lesson, while Dalton is determined to clean up the town like he breaks up brawls at the Double Duce. Sam Elliott plays Dalton's mentor Wade, and Red West, a one-time member of Elvis Presley's "Memphis Mafia," appears as Webster; Canadian blues-rock guitarist Jeff Healey leads the Double Duce house band. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Patrick Swayze, Kelly Lynch, (more)
- 1989
- R
Sharing little in common with Robert Wiene's expressionist classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (aside from the name and a series of stills from the film during the opening titles), this brain-damaged, perverse fever dream is set in the Caligari Insane Asylum (CIA), a nightmare labyrinth of impossible angles and colors, within which the fabled mesmerist's kinky granddaughter (Madeleine Reynal) rules with an iron hand, a phallic-looking syringe, and a hot-pink PVC dress. Caligari's associates -- including a leering therapist (Fox Harris) and a clone-like doctor/nurse team -- are loonier than their own patients...and in this place, that's saying a lot. Most of the unnameable experiments taking place have to do with the doc's desire to transplant her grandfather's synaptic fluid into her own brain to acquire his genius. She also has a peculiar fascination for prize patient Mrs. Van Houten (Laura Albert), a repressed housewife with horrifying sexual fantasies involving doors with giant tongues and razor-wielding madmen. (When asked to describe her life in two words, Van Houten replies matter-of-factly, "unending torment.") Basically a catalogue of surreal, psychosexual shock images, this is the second feature from director Stephen Sayadian (aka Rinse Dream), whose porno epic Cafe Flesh also melded sci-fi themes and post-modern expressionism; this is essentially more of the same, minus the explicit sex. One wonders why he bothered. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Madeleine Reynal, Fox Harris, (more)
Filmed on location in Tamil, India, Bloodstone stars Brett Stimely and Laura Albert as a pair of newlyweds, honeymooning in the Middle East. Unbeknownst to our billing-and-cooing couple, villains have slipped a valuable stolen ruby into their luggage. It isn't long before the anticipated cross-country chase has commenced. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Brett Stimely, Anna Nicholas, (more)
- 1988
In this the third in the "Angel" series, former hooker Angel is reunited with her mom just long enough to make friends (her mom left when Angel was a baby) and learn that she has a half-sister somewhere. Mom is soon the victim of some sort of hit squad and Angel decides to find her half-sister and avenge her mom's death. Her half-sister, it turns out, is a prostitute, and former-hooker Angel, virtuously "born-again," is dead-set against prostitution so she's out to save her sibling. Unlike its predecessors, there's lots of nudity in this film. ~ All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mitzi Kapture, Mark Blankfield, (more)
- 1988
- R
Teenagers find an old movie script from an abandoned film project and learn the terrifying reasons it was scrapped in this horror outing. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1988
- R
College students from Miskatonic University who retreat to an early 18th-century mansion for a weekend of lust are stalked by a fatalistic female in this horror film taken from a story by H.P. Lovecraft. The demon delights in tearing the limbs off her human victims to carry out a centuries-old family curse. Bloody graphic violence and nudity is combined with some campy comedy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Charles Klausmeyer, Mark Kinsey Stephenson, (more)
This comical, erotic sci-fi adventure is every nerd's fantasy come true as it tells the story of ultra-geeky Wesley Littlejohn who readily volunteers to participate in his voluptuous substitute biology professor Ms. Xenophia's (an alien from outer space) extra credit research experiment. Once in her lab, Drax, her faithful assistant jabs him with a needle and suddenly wimpy Wesley becomes the campus stud-muffin and finds himself surrounded by cooing crowds of scantily clad coeds. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Judy Landers, Olivia Barash, (more)
When a pair of inept thieves, Todd (Will Egan) and Bo (Steve Donmeyer), break into the mansion of a famous Hollywood producer, their criminal activities are disturbed when a group of attractive young women mistakenly show up for an audition. Taking advantage of the situation, the crooks pose as movie makers in order to run the auditions for an X-rated film. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Julia Nickson, Will Egan, (more)
