Rudy Bond Movies

Bette Midler stars as Rose in this somber drama loosely based on the life of the late Janis Joplin. She plays an ill-fated singer who succumbs to the pressures of performing by indulging in drugs and alcohol. Her sweetheart Dyer (Frederic Forrest) is the former chauffeur who naively tries to save her from self destruction, while her British manager Rudge (Alan Bates) is ultimately blamed for not preventing her inevitable fall. The story mirrors any one of a number of popular singers who have fallen victim to the excess of success. Midler and Forrest were nominated for Oscars for their performances, with Best Editing laurels given to Timothy O'Meara and Robert Wolf. The Rose was a box office smash and was the plum role that elevated Midler to star status in the eyes of the public and Hollywood. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Kojak (Telly Savalas) is tempted to leave the police force when he is offered a highly-paid position as private investigator for a prestigious law firm. Meanwhile, however, the detective is kept busy tracking down the source of some dangerously contaminated heroin. Will Kojak's sense of responsibility for the citizens he is protecting outweigh his ambition to advance himself? ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

On a quiet midday in New York, along the Lexington Avenue subway line, the train designated "Pelham One Two Three" -- so named for its station of origin and time of departure -- makes its way down the East Side of Manhattan. One by one, three men board the train, and at 28th Street, a fourth man approaches the motorman (James Broderick) and points a pistol at him, ordering him to unlock the door to his cab and admit the man waiting there; meanwhile, another man points a gun at the conductor and threatens to kill him unless he holds the doors open and then closes them when the man talking to the motorman is aboard. Once on board, "Mr. Blue" (Robert Shaw) and "Mr. Green" (Martin Balsam) halt the train between stations, while "Mr. Brown" (Earl Hindeman) and "Mr. Gray" (Hector Elizondo) seal off the lead car. With Mr. Green at the controls, the front car is separated and isolated in the tunnel with 17 passengers aboard, and then Mr. Blue presents their demands over the radio: one million dollars in cash, within one hour, or they will start shooting one passenger each minute. On the other end, Transit Police Lieutenant Zachary Garber (Walter Matthau) must overcome his initial disbelief to deal with this threat, amid the confusion of a subway system that's chaotic even when it's running normally. With the mayor reluctantly aboard to pay the ransom, Garber must keep the hijackers from carrying out their threat while the money is transported, and keep the hotheads around him and on the police force under control -- and figure out how they intend to get away with a million dollars from inside a subway tunnel with police on all sides. ~ Bruce Eder, Rovi

Popularly viewed as one of the best American films ever made, the multi-generational crime saga The Godfather is a touchstone of cinema: one of the most widely imitated, quoted, and lampooned movies of all time. Marlon Brando and Al Pacino star as Vito Corleone and his youngest son, Michael, respectively. It is the late 1940s in New York and Corleone is, in the parlance of organized crime, a "godfather" or "don," the head of a Mafia family. Michael, a free thinker who defied his father by enlisting in the Marines to fight in World War II, has returned a captain and a war hero. Having long ago rejected the family business, Michael shows up at the wedding of his sister, Connie (Talia Shire), with his non-Italian girlfriend, Kay (Diane Keaton), who learns for the first time about the family "business." A few months later at Christmas time, the don barely survives being shot by gunmen in the employ of a drug-trafficking rival whose request for aid from the Corleones' political connections was rejected. After saving his father from a second assassination attempt, Michael persuades his hotheaded eldest brother, Sonny (James Caan), and family advisors Tom Hagen (Robert Duvall) and Sal Tessio (Abe Vigoda) that he should be the one to exact revenge on the men responsible.

After murdering a corrupt police captain and the drug trafficker, Michael hides out in Sicily while a gang war erupts at home. Falling in love with a local girl, Michael marries her, but she is later slain by Corleone enemies in an attempt on Michael's life. Sonny is also butchered, having been betrayed by Connie's husband. As Michael returns home and convinces Kay to marry him, his father recovers and makes peace with his rivals, realizing that another powerful don was pulling the strings behind the narcotics endeavor that began the gang warfare. Once Michael has been groomed as the new don, he leads the family to a new era of prosperity, then launches a campaign of murderous revenge against those who once tried to wipe out the Corleones, consolidating his family's power and completing his own moral downfall. Nominated for 11 Academy Awards and winning for Best Picture, Best Actor (Marlon Brando), and Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather was followed by a pair of sequels. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

A great deal of director Al Viola's version of this film was pruned away for its general release. The missing portions are not only the heart of the story, but they are the heart of the novel by Graham Billings which gave rise to the film. The whole story is that Forbush (John Hurt) is going nowhere in his romance of Tara (Hayley Mills) because he is basically an uninteresting, shallow man. In desperation, he decides to go off to Antarctica and study penguins. He hopes that his heroism in doing this will prove his sincerity to Tara. Once there, he grows genuinely enchanted by his project and develops a real interest in penguins. It is this, rather than his courage, which wins him Tara's affections. The truncated version omits most of the film's reputedly spectacular and affecting Antarctic footage (shot by Arne Sucksdorff) in order to concentrate on the love story. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

Having previously costarred in the third-season episode "The Contract", John Larkin, former star of the daytime drama The Edge of Night, and Frank Sutton, future "Sgt. Carter" on Gomer Pyle USMC, are reunited in this Season Four entry. Larkin is cast as "Lieutenant" Phillip Hedden, a former WW1 hero now running a protection racket preying on neighborhood butchers. Sutton plays Hedden's former sergeant and current partner-in-crime, Davey McCain. Though convinced of McCain's loyalty, Hedden doesn't realize that the battle-scarred Davey despises him. Ultimately, this unholy alliance is destroyed not so much by Elliot Ness (Robert Stack) as by Davey's grim determination to "win" both a pretty girl (Francine York) and a long-denied War decoration. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A woman who has long been short on feelings falls in love with a married man in this emotional drama. Gloria Wondrous (Elizabeth Taylor) is a model and party girl who lives for pleasure and is willing to take men for what she can get from them. Gloria bounces from man to man, but feels that she can only truly confide in Steve Carpenter (Eddie Fisher), a longtime friend with whom she shares a close but strictly platonic relationship, though his fiancée (Susan Oliver) suspects otherwise. Gloria becomes involved with Weston Liggett (Laurence Harvey), a wealthy but emotionally cold man who is married to Emily (Dina Merrill). Weston shows Gloria precious little respect or kindness at first, but as they share a few bouts with the bottle, they discover that both are desperately lacking in self-confidence and have little happiness in their lives. As Gloria and Weston reveal more about themselves to one another, they fall in love, but Gloria isn't sure if she can commit to one man, while Weston has to decide if he can leave Emily behind. Based on the novel by John O'Hara, Butterfield 8 earned Elizabeth Taylor her first Academy Award (for Best Actress) after four unsuccessful nominations. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Scripter Paddy Chayevsky altered his successful stageplay for this routine cinematic version of Middle of the Night, emphasizing the self-centered interests of the relatives and friends who surround Jerry Kingsley (Fredric March). Jerry is a widower, a lonely but successful clothing manufacturer who falls in love with Betty Preisser (Kim Novak), one of his employees. The employee-boss relationship is one hurdle the erstwhile couple have to overcome, another is the thirty-year difference in their ages, and the last is the attitudes of the couples' relatives -- each close relative (mother, daughter, sister) feels marginated by the relationship, left out in the cold, forgotten. These attitudes do not bode well for any future walk up the aisle. Director Delbert Mann is best known for his 1955, award-winning Marty. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this western, a Texas Ranger quits his job after he is chastised for bringing back so many dead outlaws. When he gets a deputy sheriff's job, he soon finds himself mixed up in a range war against an avaricious rancher determined to have the whole range for himself. The deputy simultaneously begins an affair with the greedy rancher's wife who wants him to kill her husband. In the end, she kills him herself. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

The Rico brothers are mobsters in the employ of syndicate head Sid Kubick. Richard Conte plays the one Rico brother who has forsaken crime. But the other Ricos (James Darren and Paul Picerni) haven't yet seen the light, causing a deep rift in the brothers' family bonds. Conte gets word that his brothers have been marked for murder, and tries to warn them. What he doesn't know, at least until the last sweat-inducing moments of the film, is that the syndicate boss himself is the man who has ordered the Rico boys wiped out. The Brothers Rico, adapted from a novel by French detective-story specialist George Simenon, is an interesting thriller deeply rooted in the post-noir style of police thrillers like The Line-Up, with its overt emphasis on crude violence and a dull, almost flat visual style. The strong performance by Richard Conte, as a man out of step with the rest of society, is lost in this film which is in essence a simple thriller, lacking any real noir ambience. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This classic story of Mob informers was based on a number of true stories and filmed on location in and around the docks of New York and New Jersey. Mob-connected union boss Johnny Friendly (Lee J. Cobb) rules the waterfront with an iron fist. The police know that he's been responsible for a number of murders, but witnesses play deaf and dumb ("plead D & D"). Washed-up boxer Terry Malloy (Marlon Brando) has had an errand-boy job because of the influence of his brother Charley, a crooked union lawyer (Rod Steiger). Witnessing one of Friendly's rub-outs, Terry is willing to keep his mouth shut until he meets the dead dockworker's sister, Edie (Eva Marie Saint). "Waterfront priest" Father Barry (Karl Malden) tells Terry that Edie's brother was killed because he was going to testify against boss Friendly before the crime commission. Because he could have intervened, but didn't, Terry feels somewhat responsible for the death. When Father Barry receives a beating from Friendly's goons, Terry is persuaded to cooperate with the commission. Featuring Brando's famous "I coulda been a contendah" speech, On the Waterfront has often been seen as an allegory of "naming names" against suspected Communists during the anti-Communist investigations of the 1950s. Director Elia Kazan famously informed on suspected Communists before a government committee -- unlike many of his colleagues, some of whom went to prison for refusing to "name names" and many more of whom were blacklisted from working in the film industry for many years to come -- and Budd Schulberg's screenplay has often been read as an elaborate defense of the informer's position. On the Waterfront won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actor for Brando, and Best Supporting Actress for Saint. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the classic play by Tennessee Williams, brought to the screen by Elia Kazan, faded Southern belle Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh) comes to visit her pregnant sister, Stella (Kim Hunter), in a seedy section of New Orleans. Stella's boorish husband, Stanley Kowalski (Marlon Brando), not only regards Blanche's aristocratic affectations as a royal pain but also thinks she's holding out on inheritance money that rightfully belongs to Stella. On the fringes of sanity, Blanche is trying to forget her checkered past and start life anew. Attracted to Stanley's friend Mitch (Karl Malden), she glosses over the less savory incidents in her past, but she soon discovers that she cannot outrun that past, and the stage is set for her final, brutal confrontation with her brother-in-law. Brando, Hunter, and Malden had all starred in the original Broadway version of Streetcar, although the original Blanche had been Jessica Tandy. Brando lost out to Humphrey Bogart for the 1951 Best Actor Oscar, but Leigh, Hunter, and Malden all won Oscars. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi