Jacob Vargas Movies

The Children of Times Square are alienated and disenfranchised kids from all over the country. With nowhere to go and no real purpose in life, they converge on the streets of New York, totally vulnerable despite their outward toughness. Howard Rollins plays a ruthless cocaine dealer who, in the tradition of Fagin, wins the confidence of many of these kids and organizes them into a criminal gang. The film traces the "recruitment" by Rollins of two teenagers, runaway Brandon Douglas and New Yorker Danny Nucci. Joanna Cassidy plays Douglas' mother, who desperately tries to free her son from Rollins' influence. Made for TV, Children of Times Square debuted on March 3, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After a teenager is killed in a robbery, Hunter (Fred Dryer) discovers that the kid was working for his old enemy Hector "El Gallo" Rivas (Trinidad Silvas). Determined to circumvent the law, El Gallo has assembled a gang of teens who are too young to prosecute as adults to do his dirty work. Secure in the knowledge that they'll beat any rap imposed upon them, the kids are willing to commit murder on behalf of El Gallo--and it is this aspect of the case that nearly pushes Hunter off the deep end. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

An impulsive but determined white principal brings order and respect to a predominantly African-American and Latino high school in this comedy-drama from the director of Young Guns and That Was Then, This Is Now. Rick Latimer (James Belushi), a high-school teacher, is in the process of a divorce when he sees his estranged wife at a bar having drinks with her attorney. Drunk and enraged, he smashes the guy's car up and receives a reprimand from the school board -- a new job as principal at rough-and-tumble Brandel High. Security guard Jake Phillips (Louis Gossett Jr.) is soon teaching his new boss the ropes, but Rick isn't willing to accept the violent and drug-ridden status quo. With a two-word motto -- "No More!" -- he sets about cleaning out the riff-raff, also taking time out to tutor students and get to know Jake. But when chief thug Victor (Michael Wright) refuses to back down, the violence escalates. Eventually, Victor's vengeance threatens the lives of steely history teacher Hilary Orozco (Rae Dawn Chong) -- and Rick himself. Kelly Minter, who plays one of Brandel High's troubled students, portrayed a dyslexic in the similarly themed Summer School the same year The Principal was released. Screenwriter Frank Deese would go on to write the Corey Haim/Corey Feldman vehicle License to Drive. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Jeff Grant (River Phoenix) is a San Diego teen who discovers his father Richard (Richard Jenkins) and mother Elizabeth Grant) are KGB agents. When he applies to the Air Force Academy, a routine FBI check leads to the shocking news. Soon the suburb of Fountain Grove becomes the focus of international agents and espionage. FBI agent Roy Parmenter (Sidney Poitier) helps Jeff absorb the shock and he battles KGB agent Konstantin Karpov (Richard Bradford) in a race to capture the Soviet agents. The excellent performances from Poitier and Phoenix are the highlight of this feature. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In this fact-based made-for-cable docudrama, Leonard Nimoy stars as Mel Mermelstein, a Nazi death camp survivor who wages a court battle against the revisionist Institute for Historical Review over their claims that the Holocaust never occurred. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

Edward J. Olmos made his directorial bow with the powerhouse crime saga American Me. Olmos stars as street-gang leader Santana, who during his 18 years in Folsom Prison rules over all the drug-and-murder activities behind bars. Upon his release, Santana goes back to his old neighborhood, intending to lead a peaceful, crime-free life. But his old gang buddies force him back into his old habits. The omniprescene of the "Mexican Mafia" in the southwest is sufficient to make this film a daunting, demoralizing experience. Upon its release, American Me received a lot of press play due to the fact that Olmos shot his Folsom sequences on location, using actual prisoners as extras and bit players. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on a novel by Richard Peck called Don't Look and It Won't Hurt, Allison Anders's melodramatic coming-of-age tale Gas Food Lodging takes place in Laramie, NM, a small town right off the highway. Nora (Brooke Adams) is a truck-stop waitress who lives in a trailer park with her two teenaged daughters, Trudi (Ione Skye) and Shade (Fairuza Balk). While Trudi sleeps around and defies her mother, Shade spends her time at the local cinema and wishes she could have a dad like a normal family. One day, Trudi hooks up with a visiting geologist (Robert Knepper) and spends a magical evening in a cave with him. However, he turns up missing and Trudi finds herself pregnant. Meanwhile, Shade's romantic advances are rejected by Darius (Donovan Leitch), but she finds something new with film projectionist Javier (Jacob Vargas). Shade's attempts at finding a husband for her mom are unsuccessful, but Nora ends up meeting satellite TV installation man Hamlet Humphrey (David Lansbury). Features a cameo appearance from Dinosaur Jr. frontman J. Mascis, who also wrote the original music. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Neighborhood pride runs deep in Echo Park, so when two lifelong friends join the local gang as a matter of course, they're handed down gang names from the previous generation of homegirls. Unfortunately, Sad Girl (Angel Aviles) and Mousie (Seidy Lopez) don't remain friends for long. When Mousie withdraws into herself to cope with the responsibilities of young motherhood after bearing the child of her one true love, Ernesto (Jacob Vargas), Sad Girl and Ernesto turn to each other for comfort. Soon, Sad Girl herself ends up pregnant, and warm sisterhood cools to an icy feud. Ernesto starts dealing drugs to support his two young families -- and to outfit the gussied-up low rider that he hides from both of his unsuspecting girlfriends. The economic and romantic entanglements of these three characters serve as the entry point into this multifaceted exploration of L.A. street life, but Mi Vida Loca rapidly expands in scope to take in other characters, most of them female. Bleach-blond Whisper (Nelida Lopez), for instance, learns the drug-dealing ropes from Ernesto and considers crossing gender lines to open her own operation. The slightly older Giggles (Marlo Marron), however, refuses to fall into old dependencies and habits after being imprisoned for four years for a crime her boyfriend committed. Sad Girl's sister, La Blue Eyes (Magali Alvarado), the only character to choose college over gang life, chances upon a poem written by a prison inmate and becomes hopelessly smitten, abandoning her books for a passionate jailhouse correspondence. The focus of Mi Vida Loca shifts freely between these and several other characters, many of whom take turns providing narration and context. The director's daughter, Tiffany Anders, has a small role in the film alongside many real-life Echo Park denizens; several musicians and film directors also make cameos, among them Spike Jonze, Kurt Voss, Kid Frost, and the members of Los Lobos. Salma Hayek got her SAG card by playing a tiny role. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Fatal Instinct is an Airplane-style spoof of the late-'80s, early-'90s cycle of erotic crime thrillers. Setting the plot in motion is a kinky murder. Armand Assante plays the cop assigned to the case; he's also the prosecuting attorney; the "Sharon Stone" part is essayed by Sean Young. A dash of Body Heat is thrown in the pot as Assante's wife Kate Nelligan plots her hubby's demise. Tony Randall has a bit as a judge, while the film's semi-mocking jazz score is provided by Clarence Clemmons -- who shows up on screen to toot his sax at various crucial plot junctures. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Christmas and Hanukkah are simultaneously acknowledged during the holiday season at the ER. The faith of Holocaust survivor Hannah Steiner (Joan Copeland) is sorely tested when she is injured in a carjacking and her baby granddaughter is apparently kidnapped; and a priest (Tony Plana) who has been mortally wounded in a shooting at his own church prays that this tragedy will not result in wholesale gang war. As for the staffers, Greene (Anthony Edwards) sullenly prepares to spend his first Christmas without his wife; and Shep (Ron Eldard) finally expresses his true feelings toward Carol (Julianna Margulies). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A gangster is looking to get away from crooked deals and double-crossing people but ends up in the movie business anyway in this comic crime story. Chili Palmer (John Travolta) is a Miami-based loan collector for the mob trying to collect a gambling debt. His assignment takes him to Hollywood to collect money from Harry Zimm (Gene Hackman), a mildly sleazy producer of low-budget horror movies. Although Chili intends to hurt Harry if necessary, he takes a certain liking to him and an even keener interest in Karen (Rene Russo), Harry's girlfriend, whom Chili recognizes from Harry's grade-B monster epics. It seems Harry has a script that he feels is Academy Award material, and he could get the project off the ground if he could get the right actor for the lead -- say, the well-respected but egocentric (and diminutive) Martin Weir (Danny DeVito). Chili thinks he has a feel for the movie business and decides to see what he can do to persuade Weir to get behind the project. Chili soon finds himself hip deep in the film industry, which at least puts him in contact with a higher grade of scumbags than he's used to. But Chili isn't the only criminal Harry's been dealing with; he's been obtaining financing from Bo Catlett (Delroy Lindo), a drug dealer with a highly uncertain temperament. An intelligently constructed crime story and a hilarious look at the absurdities of the film business, Get Shorty was based on the novel of the same name by Elmore Leonard; Leonard based Chili on a real-life former gangster of his acquaintance, though Chili's model never worked in Hollywood. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Selena Quintanilla was a major figure in Tejano music, a Grammy-winning recording artist, a beloved star in the American Southwest and Mexico, and seemed poised to cross over into mainstream popularity on the U.S. pop charts when she was murdered on March 31, 1995 by the president of her fan club. Written and directed by Gregory Nava, this biopic concentrates on Selena's relationship with her family and her rise to fame, dealing only briefly with her tragic death. Abraham Quintanilla (Edward James Olmos) is a veteran musician who leads a family-based singing group, The Dinos. At a young age, he notices that his daughter Selena (played as a child by Becky Lee Meza) has a strong singing voice, and he works her into the act (her big number is a version of Over the Rainbow). However, as she grows older, Selena (played as an adult by Jennifer Lopez) wants to establish her own musical identity; while her heritage is Mexican-American, her primary language is English, and her favorite artists are American pop acts like Donna Summer. While Selena and Abraham sometimes argue about the musical direction of the group, he always respects and supports her talent, and her blend of Tejano roots music and danceable pop rhythms soon sparks a revolution in Latin music. Selena later earns the wrath of her father when she becomes romantically involved with Chris Perez (Jon Seda), a rebellious and long-haired guitarist hired to play with the group, but when they elope and Selena convinces Abraham that their love is sincere, Chris is welcomed into the family. After a long string of successes on the Latin charts and playing to a sellout crowd at the Houston Astrodome and a crowd of 100,000 at a stadium in Monterey, Mexico, Selena begins recording her first album in English, which is expected to make her a mainstream star on the level of Whitney Houston or Gloria Estefan. However, the fates decreed it was an album she would never complete. Selena was produced with the participation of the Quintanilla Family (Abraham was executive producer), and Selena's own recordings were used on the soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Described by director Steven Soderbergh as "Nashville meets The French Connection," this multi-character drama explores the effects of international drug trafficking on all fronts: from their source, to the U.S. border, to the federal government, to the private lives of users. Based upon a miniseries originally aired on Britain's Channel 4, Traffic divides its time among three main storylines and almost a dozen locales. The first and primary plot thread, set in Ohio and Washington, D.C., concerns freshly-appointed drug czar Robert Wakefield (Michael Douglas), whose enthusiasm for his new prestige position is quickly offset when he realizes his 16-year-old daughter Caroline (Erika Christensen) is graduating from recreational drug use to habitual abuse -- a secret that his wife, Barbara (Amy Irving), has kept from him. South of the border, Mexican cop Javier Rodriguez (Benicio Del Toro) attempts to wage his own war on drugs, heading off a cocaine shipment in the middle of the desert with his less-than-virtuous partner Manolo Sanchez (Jacob Vargas). Surrounded by corruption, Javier approaches the drug war with an attitude of patience and compromise, which opens him up to investigation from General Arturo Salazar (Tomas Milian), the country's dubious drug-enforcement liaison to the U.S. Meanwhile, San Diego drug kingpin Carlos Alaya (Steven Bauer) is caught in a sting operation spearheaded by DEA agents Montel Gordon (Don Cheadle) and Ray Castro (Luis Guzman), leaving behind his very pregnant and very oblivious wife, Helena (Catharine Zeta-Jones). At the behest of Carlos' lawyer and shady confidante, Arnie Metzger (Dennis Quaid), Helena decides to carry on the family business -- with tragic consequences. Adapted by Rules of Engagement scribe Stephen Gaghan, Traffic marked Soderbergh's second major release in 2000 after the critical and box-office success of Erin Brockovich, as well as his second feature as cinematographer (credited under the pseudonym Peter Andrews). A favorite with various guild and critics' awards, Traffic won four Academy Awards in 2001, including statues for Best Supporting Actor (Del Toro) and Best Adapted Screenplay (Gaghan), and surprise wins for Steven Mirrone's editing and Soderbergh's direction. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide