Morgan Upton Movies

Penny Marshall directed this serio-comic story, based on the memoir by Beverly Donofrio, about a young woman who finds her life radically altered by an event from her teen years. Born in 1950, Beverly (Drew Barrymore) grew up bright and ambitious in a working-class neighborhood in Connecticut; her father (James Woods) was a tough but good-hearted cop with an understanding ear for his daughter's problems, and her mother (Lorraine Bracco) was a nervous woman eager to imagine the worst. From an early age, Beverly displays a keen intelligence and an interest in literature, and she dreams of going to college in New York and becoming a writer. However, she also develops a precocious interest in boys, and at 15 finds herself madly in love with a boy from her high school. However, an attempt to get his attention leads to an embarassing incident at a party, and Ray Hasek (Steve Zahn), a sweet but thick-headed 18-year-old, steps forward to defend her. Beverly and Ray end up making out, and after one thing leads to another, Beverly discovers she's pregnant. Telling Ray is only marginally less difficult than informing her parents, and at 16, Beverly is a wife and mother. Against the odds, Beverly is determined to still finish high school and go on to college, but that goal becomes more difficult with time, especially after Beverly's marriage begins to fall apart; while Ray tries to do the right thing, he has trouble holding a job, and circumstances become all the more difficult when Beverly learns her husband is addicted to heroin. Riding in Cars With Boys also stars Brittany Murphy as Beverly's best friend Fay; Beverly's son Jason is played, at various points in his life, by Adam Garcia (age 20), Logan Lerman (age eight), Cody Arens (age six), and Logan Arens (age three). ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The Long Road Home evokes memories of The Grapes of Wrath, though it doesn't quite reach the same heights as the earlier film. Mark Harmon heads up a family of migrant workers, toiling in California's San Joaquin Valley in 1937. Harmon's brood is obliged to face down not only the Depression but also exploitive farm owners. When one too many human rights is trampled upon, a union movement takes shape amongst the migrants. Though distinctly American in subject and tone, The Long Road Home was produced by Britain's Norman Rosemont. Unfortunately, this made-for-TV film premiered during an unusually cluttered February "sweeps week" in 1991; there was so much competition that Long Road Home was not even warranted the standard full-page TV Guide ad. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this made-for-TV thriller, Liz Barlett (Loni Anderson) is a rookie journalist covering a series of murders that seem to have touched nearly everyone she knows. When one of Liz's best friends, a fellow journalist named Jerry Caper, becomes the next victim, she meets Dan Walker (Joe Penny), a freelance investigative journalist who knew Caper and wants to track down his killer. Liz and Dan join in hopes of finding the murderer before he can strike again. Before long, they become emotionally involved, though Dan discovers that Liz has a past that she isn't entirely proud of. Whisper Kill also stars Jeremy Slate, June Lockhart, and James Sutorius. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

During her 25th high school class reunion, middle-aged Peggy Sue (Kathleen Turner) tries to forget her marital problems with husband Charlie (Nicolas Cage) by renewing old friendships. Wondering if she made the right decisions in her life, Peggy Sue gets a chance to try again when, zapped into a time warp, she finds herself a teenager back in 1960. Armed with foreknowledge (the scene in which she tells off her algebra teacher is a particular treat), Peggy Sue gets to retrace the steps leading up to her unhappy marriage to high-school sweetheart Charlie. Will nerdish Richard Norvik (Barry Miller), who always carried a torch for Peggy Sue and whom she knows will become a millionaire computer mogul by 1985, win out over the unreliable Charlie this time? A "small" film from the otherwise profligate Francis Ford Coppola, Peggy Sue Got Married possesses an irresistible charm that makes up for its glaring plot deficiencies. The youthful cast is matched in its appeal by such veterans as Leon Ames, Maureen O'Sullivan and John Carradine. And yes, that is Jim Carrey as Walter Getz. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Director Michael Ritchie spoofs survivalists in this rambling black comedy. Donald Quinelle (Robin Williams) is a successful young executive who is called to his boss' office one morning and is fired by a parrot sitting in the CEO's chair -- a method the company uses to axe high-powered execs. Donald meets Sonny Paluso (Walter Matthau), a former gas station owner who is out of work because his business was blown up. At a diner, the two newfound friends witness a robbery and catch sight of the perpetrator, Jerry Reed (Jack Locke). Reed is a mob hit man who swears to kill the two men who saw him commit the crime. Donald, formerly afraid of weapons, becomes obsessed with guns as a way to protect himself from the mob. He enrolls in a survivalist training school in the mountains of Vermont. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

Director Alan Parker and writer Bo Goldman chronicle the emotional disintegration of an unhappy marriage. Albert Finney and Diane Keaton play George and Faith Dunlap, a seemingly happily married couple living with their four daughters in a converted farmhouse in Marin County, California. George is inwardly empty and decides to have an affair with Sandy (Karen Allen), who has doubts about how long their affair will last. Faith is also suffering from ennui and takes up with Frank Henderson (Peter Weller), the contractor for the Dunlap's tennis court. Frank, after discovering about Faith's affair, is in a confused state: he wants to leave and live with Sandy but doesn't want his wife to date other men and demands the love of his daughters -- all of whom now detest him. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

In this black comedy, a humble cab driver spends his days daydreaming of becoming a rock-star. His blissful reverie is one day interrupted when ends up inadvertently blamed for the assassination of a world-renowned nuclear scientist. Soon afterward he finds that he has a stowaway, the late scientist's chimpanzee, the only one who knows his master's secret formula, which if ever written down could cause the destruction of the world. Now the hapless taxi driver must evade both the cops and two villainous Russian Spies. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

John Wainwright (Larry Hankin) is an author whose body and soul have been invaded by the reincarnated spirit of the sinister hypnotist Svengali. His best-selling new book on reincarnation not only admits this fact readily, but cites it as proof, though the public dismisses it all as an entertaining publicity stunt. The book's publisher, Sir Steven (Norman Pierce), knows better, however. He, like Svengali, is a member of the Society of the Bleeding Rose, a Satanic cult that has discovered the secret to immortality through human sacrifice and the theft of souls. Despite the new book's tremendous popularity, Svengali has a skeptic who challenges the veracity of his claims. Dr. Gregorio (Geoffrey Land) is a psychiatrist who disdains belief in the occult as superstition and quackery, but what Gregorio doesn't let on is the reason he considers himself an expert in such matters; he's actually a vampire, a creature of the undead who knows the truth about eternal life. Sir Steven demands that Svengali procure a fresh, untarnished soul for their society's wicked rituals, and nightclub dancer Trilby (Jane Brunel-Cohen) is chosen to replenish the Satanists' supply of psychic energy. Unfortunately, Wainwright's soul is fighting to regain control of the body that Svengali has stolen, flooding the evil hypnotist with strange feelings of love for Trilby that he can't control. Gregorio attends the Black Mass to disrupt the society's sacrifice with his vampiric talents, but he hasn't counted on the interference of Stephanie, (Susan McIver), a young woman who lost her mother to Gregorio's fangs and is bent on revenge. ~ Fred Beldin, Rovi

Shirley (Cindy Williams) wins an all-expense-paid vacation at a ritzy honeymoon hotel. Trouble is, Shirley isn't married, and her pal Laverne (Penny Marshall) would hardly pass muster as a surrogate husband. Enter Shirley's erstwhile boyfriend Carmine (Eddie Mekka), who agrees to pose as "Mr. Feeney" so that the girls can spend the weekend in the hotel--a situation which quickly snowballs out of control! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

During a horror-film convention in San Francisco, the guests are properly aghast when they discover that one of their favorite film stars, Malakai (Jerry Walter), who plays a vampire onscreen, is the real thing off-camera. Convention guest begin succumbing to him right and left. However, it was probably a bad idea on Malakai's part to come to a horror film convention, because the attendees are unusually well versed in vampire lore, and at least some of what they know turns out to be helpful in ridding the world of the fanged menace. This affectionate spoof of horror films contains many in-jokes which are likely to make sense only to devoted fans of the genre. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

When his clothing company is burglarized, former mobster Burt Dresslor (Charles Cioffi) balks at cooperating with the police. But after a night watchman is murdered, Stone (Karl Malden) and Keller (Michael Douglas) take special interest in the situation whether Dresslor likes it or not. Complicating matters is the discovery that Dresslor's business has been electronically bugged--and the two detectives can't be certain if the Feds or Dresslor's ruthless chief competitor is responsible. This episode, which features a pre-stardom appearance by Tom Selleck, was directed by series costar Michael Douglas. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The setting is Atoka County, Alabama -- the time is somewhere after the peak of the civil rights movement, after cities such as Birmingham, Alabama were out of the headlines. The movement is coming to the sticks, including Atoka County, and a lot of the white residents don't like it and are prepared to commit felonious assault, rape, or murder to get their point across. In the middle of this powder keg are two men on either side of a very dangerous line -- County Sheriff "Big Track" Bascomb (Lee Marvin) and Mayor Hardy (David Huddleston). Each man is playing both ends against the middle in the impending race war -- Bascomb wants to keep the peace as best he can, blocking the local klavern of the Ku Klux Klan from their worst excesses and making sure that the Klan's business and the county's business remain separate; Hardy, who also owns the lumber company that employs most of the county and the bank on which most of the residents depend, wants a good environment for business, which includes keeping enough poor blacks around to do the most menial work for the miserable pay he's willing to fork over; this, in turn, requires that they be too scared to ask for too much, including better treatment, but not so scared that they leave the county altogether, which would wipe out his business. Between them is Breck Stancill (Richard Burton), an eighth-generation resident with lots of land but little money and even fewer friends; a wounded war veteran and loner, he still resents the lynching of his grandfather and no longer respects what the white south purports to stand for -- he's even allowed dispossessed blacks to live for free on his property, angering the poor whites around him even more. Bascomb would like Stancill to be a little less high profile, while Hardy would like him to sell out and disappear, and wouldn't mind it if the local Klan helped that process along by trying to kill him. Bascomb's balancing act fails because of two events -- Nancy Poteet (Linda Evans) is raped one night, apparently by a black man, which precipitates the murder of a black teenager and her being violently ostracized by the white community; and a civil rights rally is planned for the town, bringing in lots of "outside agitators" and getting the local klavern eager to act against them. The prime mover in all of this is Big Track's deputy, Butt Cut Bates (Cameron Mitchell), a hardcore klansman who won't be reined in by Hardy and who is not above raping a black woman prisoner (Lola Falana) that he's arrested illegally, or trying to kill Stancill; directly opposed to him is Garth (O.J. Simpson), a young black man who witnessed a Klan murder and, in response, gets a rifle and starts meting out justice on his own. Before it's over, a major part of the county is at war and the bodies are falling everywhere. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

"What do we do now?" Director Michael Ritchie and executive producer/star Robert Redford satirically explore the machinations and manipulations of media-age political campaigns in this cynical political drama. Rumpled left-wing California lawyer Bill McKay (Redford), the son of a former governor (Melvyn Douglas), is enlisted by campaign maestro Marvin Lucas (Peter Boyle) to challenge Republican incumbent Crocker Jarmon (Don Porter) for his Senate seat. McKay agrees, but only if he can say exactly what he thinks. That approach is all well and good when McKay does not seem to have a chance, but things change when his honesty unexpectedly captivates the electorate. As McKay inches up in the polls, Lucas and company start to do what it takes to win, leaving McKay to ponder the consequences of his political seduction. Working without studio interference from a script by Jeremy Larner, a speechwriter for 1968 Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy, Ritchie enhanced the behind-the-scenes realism of Larner's insights with a realistic, cinéma vérité approach. He orchestrated a campaign parade for "candidate" Redford that drew such a considerable unstaged audience that local politicians wanted to draft Redford for a real election. Redford's resemblance to the telegenic Kennedys, and his character's resonance with the future career of California governor Jerry Brown, only emphasized how close to the bone The Candidate was (and is). Released the fateful year of Richard Nixon's reelection, the film garnered accolades, if not substantial box office; Larner won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay and thanked the "politicians of our time" for inspiration. Creating a documentary fiction about the semi-truths manufactured to market a candidate, The Candidate shrewdly exposed the effects of the media on the increasingly cynical political process, posing unanswerable questions that have become all the more pressing with every soundbite-ruled election. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi