Peter Boretski Movies

Made for television, The Taking of Pelham One Two Three is adapted from the suspense novel by John Godey, previously filmed as a theatrical feature in 1974. The earlier version was highlighted by the verbal cat-and-mouse game between a cynical veteran NYPD detective, played by Walter Matthau, and a world-weary master criminal, played by Robert Shaw. The remake offers two detectives, Piscotti (Edward James Olmos and Ray (Lorraine Bracco), who match wits with a man calling himself Mr. Blue (Vincent D'Onofrio), who has masterminded the hijacking of a New York subway car. As his cohorts hold the 14 passengers hostage, Mr. Blue demands a $5 million ransom, to be delivered in one hour, or else the captives will be killed one by one. Though the dark humor which pervaded the 1974 version is largely absent here, the remake pulls off the neat trick of being highly suspenseful and subtle and low-key at the same time. The Taking of Pelham One Two Three debuted February 1, 1998, on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Sean Astin stars as the title character in this creepy made-for-cable adaptation of the Kurt Vonnegut classic. Set in a future America, where a small, elite group controls the masses, teen Harrison Bergeron is chosen to lead a movement that promotes mediocrity. Christopher Plummer stars as John Klaxon, the mastermind behind the attempt to uniformly dumb-down Americans. ~ Bernadette McCallion, Rovi

This made-for-TV crime drama follows the actions of the courageous, determined prosecutor who attempted to put notorious Mafioso John Gotti behind bars. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This cinematic/literary hybrid fuses motifs from Beat writer William S. Burroughs's novel of the same name with elements of the author's biography and plenty of the cerebral alienation and biomorphic special effects fans of creepy cult director David Cronenberg have come to expect. Bill Lee (Peter Weller) wants to write, but he exterminates bugs to pay the bills. His wife, Joan (Judy Davis), becomes addicted to Bill's bug powder dust, and soon he joins her in a world of unorthodox hallucinogens; he visits the kindly yet sinister Dr. Benway (Roy Scheider) and walks away with his first dose of the black meat -- a narcotic made from the flesh of the giant aquatic Brazilian centipede. Soon, monstrous beetles are whispering conspiracy theories in Bill's ears and his nebbish writer friends Hank (Nicholas Campbell) and Martin (Michael Zelniker) are sleeping with Joan under his nose. When a party trick involving a liquor glass and a gun goes awry, killing Joan, Bill flees to Interzone, a Mediterranean city full of talking insectoid typewriters, double agents, offbeat aesthetes, and plots within plots. As he navigates this paranoid landscape, Bill begins ingesting another drug called mugwump jism and writes fragments that Hank and Martin soon assemble into a novel under the title Naked Lunch. As beat literature aficionados know, Interzone is based on Tangiers -- the city where Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch. The incident in the film in which Hank and Martin appropriate Bill's writing and have it published closely approximates the real-life circumstances of the novel's publication, although it was Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac who helped out the real-life Burroughs. The William Tell incident that kills Bill's wife is also drawn from the author's real life. "William Lee" is both Burroughs' literary stand-in and the name under which he published his first autobiographical novel Junky. Ian Holm, who plays Joan Frost's husband, Tom, would appear in Cronenberg's similarly experimental eXistenZ several years later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Based on E.T.A. Hoffman's classic book The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, this animated holiday tale utilizes the vocal talents of such stars as Kiefer Sutherland, Peter O'Toole and Phyllis Diller. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This WW II-set drama follows the creation of the first atomic bomb. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In the second of four New Avengers episodes filmed in Canada, a rogue KGB agent has trained a band of mercenary criminals to destroy a top-secret security installation, thereby hurtling the Canadian Intelligence system back to the 1950s. Worse still, the bad guys are all-powerful and virtually invulnerable. Steed (Patrick MacNee, Gambit (Gareth Hunt) and Purdey (Joanna Lumley) must find a way to stop these modern-day gladiators, who have already left behind a trail of murdered secret agents. This episode was briefly banned from British TV due to "excessive violence." ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi