Timothy Bottoms Movies
The oldest of three sons of a high school art teacher, Timothy Bottoms was 17 when he toured Europe as a member of the Santa Monica Madrigal Society. Enjoying the "rush" of appearing before live audiences, Bottoms pursued a theatrical career. While playing the lead in a stage production of Romeo and Juliet, he was selected by writer/director Dalton Trumbo to play the blind, deaf, armless, and legless protagonist in the 1971 film version of Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun. That same year, Bottoms was tapped by Peter Bogdanovich to star as Texas teenager Sonny Crawford in the award-winning The Last Picture Show (1971), which featured Tim's younger brother Samuel. Bottoms followed these triumphs by creating the role of harried first-year law student Hart in the 1973 sleeper The Paper Chase. Thereafter, his film roles seemed haphazardly selected. On TV, Bottoms was given an opportunity to age nearly 30 years as Adam Trask in the 1981 miniseries version of East of Eden; he also co-starred with brothers Joseph and Sam in the feature-length TV pilot Favorite Son (1987). Again appearing opposite younger sibling Joseph, Tim made his Broadway bow in The 5th of July (1951). Bottoms surprised no one when he balked at the opportunity of re-creating his Sonny Crawford characterization in Texasville, the 1991 sequel to Last Picture Show. Eventually he not only agreed to co-star in Texasville, but also served as executive producer of a documentary on the making of that film, Picture This (1990). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide- 1996
- R
In this thriller, a detective helps save a prostitute from a stalker. The gumshoe's investigation throws them into a world where no one is quite who they seem and where everyone has a shady past. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maud Adams, Timothy Bottoms, (more)
- 1996
Oscar-winning character actor Ben Johnson was never as well known as other stars, and yet for many industry insiders, he was the epitome of cowboy actors. Of Cherokee and Irish heritage, Johnson was born in Oklahoma and became a cowboy at age eleven. He grew up to become the only movie cowboy to win both an Oscar and a rodeo championship. This documentary tells the fascinating, colorful story of his life. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
In this action comedy, renegade cop Jake Wilder investigates the death of his old friend, Lou Swanson, another cop, who was killed while investigating the bombing of a San Diego housing project. To solve the murder and stop the bomber, Wilder teams up with Swanson's partner, a German Shepherd named Reno. At first the new partners do not get along, but eventually they begin working as a team and discover that the culprit was a white-supremacist group. This film stirred up a lot of controversy when it first came out as the distributors exhibited remarkably bad judgment by releasing it two weeks after the Oklahoma City bombing of a Federal building that resulted in the death of close to two hundred innocent people, some of them small children. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Chuck Norris, Clyde Kusatsu, (more)
- 1994
A girl and her best friend hit the road in this family friendly comedy drama -- only the girl's friend weighs in at 4,000 pounds! Eddie (Remy Ryan) is a ten-year-old girl (her name is short for "Edwina") who has trouble communicating with her mother Sarah (Priscilla Barnes) and doesn't care for Sarah's layabout boyfriend, Jeffrey (Patrick Dempsey). A rag-tag circus comes to town, and Eddie finds herself bonding with Ava, the show's performing elephant. Slayton (Timothy Bottoms), the sleazy owner of the circus, learns that he's deep in debt to the IRS, and since Ava is insured for a large sum of money, he plots to kill the elephant in a way that will look like an accident in order to pay off his debts. Eddie, however, gets wind of Slayton's plan; she helps Ava escape, and runs away from home with her new pet at her side. As the hapless local sheriff (Kaye Ballard) and her staff try to find a missing child travelling with a two-ton elephant, Sarah learns that an escapee from prison is on the loose and she becomes afraid that the criminal will cross paths with her missing daughter. As it turns out, Eddie does meet Clayton (Georg Stanford Brown), the jailbird on the lam, but she soon finds that he means her no harm -- and he happens to know a few thing about Slayton and his business. Ava's Magical Adventure marked the directorial debut of actor Patrick Dempsey, who helmed the project in collaboration with Rocky Parker. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Bottoms, Georg Stanford Brown, (more)
- 1993
- PG13
Steven Soderbergh, after the success of sex, lies, and videotape and the commercial failure of Kafka, pulls a rabbit out of his hat with this quiet and evocative recollection of a childhood lived in the Depression, based on A. E. Hotchner's memoir. Twelve-year-old Aaron Kurlander (Jesse Bradford) is coming of age in a rotting working class section of St. Louis in 1933. As the film begins, Aaron's family is coming apart at the seams due to the increasingly bleak economy. His father (Jeroen Krabbe) ekes out a living with a series of failed sales jobs as the family lives in the dilapidated Empire Hotel in a seamy section of town. When his younger brother (Cameron Boyd) is sent to live with relatives to save expenses, his consumptive mother (Lisa Eichhorn) goes away to a sanitarium and his father abandons him to sell watches in Iowa. At first Aaron retreats into a concocted fantasy world but he gradually becomes drawn into the shattered lives of the tenants of the hotel. Aaron sees the rotting social fabric laid bare and discovers he must temper his childhood dreams with the hard-hitting realities of adult existence. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jesse Bradford, Jeroen Krabbé, (more)
- 1992
This oddly unsettling PG-rated film stars Adam Hand-Byrd as Digger, a 12-year-old whose parents are going through serious domestic problems. To keep him out of the line of fire, Digger is sent to live with his crusty grandmother Olympia Dukakis in the Pacific Northwest. He has a great deal of difficulty adjusting to his new environment, but soon he and the locals are the best of friends. A subplot concerns grandma Dukakis' rollicking romance with suave Leslie Nielsen. Rodney Gibbons' script takes some curious side trips into the Morbid, with Digger making the acquaintance of some very tragic characters. Digger was completed in 1992, copyrighted in 1993, and finally given limited release in 1994. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adam Hann-Byrd, Joshua Jackson, (more)
- 1992
- Add Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas to QueueAdd Picture This: The Times of Peter Bogdanovich in Archer City, Texas to top of Queue
This video offers a profile of filmmaker Bogdanovich's first great movie, The Last Picture Show, as Cybill Shepherd, Jeff Bridges, Timothy Bottoms and Sam Bottoms, Polly Platt, Randy Quaid and others reveal the impacts that the film had on their lives. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1991
Timothy Bottoms stars in this 1990s remake of the Sid and Marty Krofft children's program about a family trapped in a prehistoric world. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Bottoms
- 1990
- PG13
Istanbul, also released as Istanbul, Keep Your Eyes Open, is an old-fashioned, shallow, unbelievable thriller. Frank Collins (Timothy Bottoms) is an American reporter living in Sweden. Collins receives a video from his stepson's real father and goes to Istanbul, leaving his stepson at home, but taking his daughter. While in Istanbul, Collins meets Maud. Collins daughter is kidnapped and he finds out about a weapons-smuggling ring. The convoluted plot then involves false identities, murders and evidence of an impending assassination, with a number of car chases. The entire movie is jumbled, confusing and finally concludes in a downbeat, unconvincing muddle with most of the lost strings still untied. Views should beware of this low-rent rip-off of Roman Polanski's Frantic or Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Bottoms, Twiggy, (more)
Texasville is Peter Bogdanovich's much-delayed sequel to The Last Picture Show. Adapted from Larry McMurtry's novel and told as a series of episodes, Texasville follows the characters from The Last Picture Show as they reunite in a small Texas town nearly 30 years after the end of the last movie, and face a number of adult problems, as well as confronting lingering emotions and memories from adolescence. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, (more)
- 1989
This poorly received sequel to the classic 1957 movie The Bridge over the River Kwai, is also based on a true story, as told in the book by Joan & Clay Blair, Jr. This story begins where the previous one left off, with the blowing up of the marvelous bridge. Here, the Australian POWs are rounded up to be shipped by rail and sea to Japan to serve as slave laborers. They have many harrowing experiences and near-escapes. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Bottoms
- 1988
- R
Julia's (Kim Delaney) nightmare begins when she picks up hitchhiker Trey (Miles O'Keeffe) on a desolate road. Once back in the big city, Julia finds she is being stalked by the persistent Trey. Just why he is so obsessed is revealed in the film's climax. Meanwhile, Julia is also being followed by someone hired by her sleazy boyfriend (Timothy Bottoms), and someone has just murdered her best friend. Director Larry Brand shows up in a small role as a cop. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kim Delaney, Timothy Bottoms, (more)
After escaping from a Vietnamese POW camp where they had suffered for five years, five American soldiers attempt to get out of the country before being spotted by Russian and Vietnamese troops in this tale of survival from Filipino filmmaker Eddie Romero. As the five escapees descend upon a remote whorehouse in hopes of collecting the supplies needed to reach freedom, a group of desperate prostitutes plea with the men to transport them to freedom and a troupe of Russian soldiers complicate their fragile escape plan. When the desperate group stumbles across an abandoned airplane deep in the jungle, they must bring the battered aircraft back to life long enough to escape the jungle and fly to freedom. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 1987
Based on an Astrid Lindgren novel, this fantasy focuses on a Swedish teen drawn into a magical world to battle an evil knight. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicholas Pickard, Christian Bale, (more)
- 1987
The made-for-TV Island Sons stars real-life brothers Timothy, Joseph, Samuel and Benjamin Bottoms as fictional brothers named Tim, Joe, Sam and Ben (too bad there wasn't any Zeppo Bottoms). When their mogul father disappears in Hawaii in the aftermath of a scandal, the four brothers bury their own differences and head to the Islands. There they operate all of dad's neat stuff (his yacht, his limo, his hotel), while assistant DA Sam investigates the death in prison of his father's head bookkeeper. The boys get to the bottom of the scandal that ruined their father, and find more than they ever imagined. They don't, however, find enough to encourage a network and a sponsor to pick up Island Sons as a weekly TV series. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1986
- R
In this suspenseful thriller, some unknown man out there has a warped mind, a warped view of sex, and an urge to kill in a very specific way. An innocent yet seductive country woman named Patricia Telling (Moira Harris) moves into a new apartment building in Dublin, where a serial killer seems to have her in his sights. The killer's m.o. is to call a woman on the phone and charm her into inviting him over. Once he's alone with her, he murders her after stripping her naked and putting her body in a certain pose. Several men are suspect because of their odd behavior: Robert (John Cavanaugh), a colleague and teacher at Patricia's school; Danny (Timothy Bottoms), who lives in the building with his wife, and the police inspector McMyler (Christopher Casenove). The question is: will the murderer will be identified before Patricia is the next victim? ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Moira Harris, Timothy Bottoms, (more)
- 1986
- R
This animal thriller at times verges on becoming a horror film, with gory scenes of mangled heads and torn limbs, but it is intended to be a serious tale of baboons gone berserk. The story takes place in a drought-ridden animal preserve in Kenya where ranger Jack Ringtree (Timothy Bottoms) advises both government officials and Chris Tucker (John Rhys-Davies), the manager of a local mine, that all the people in the region have to be evacuated. Jack is convinced thousands of baboons in the preserve will soon go on a rampage caused by a lack of food and water. As might be expected, the authorities ignore his advice, with the usual slow build-up of menacing hairy creatures arguing for the accuracy of Jack's warnings. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Rhys-Davies, Timothy Bottoms, (more)
- 1986
Following the excellent ratings response to the 1985 "reunion" special Perry Mason Returns, producers Fred Silverman and Dean Hargrove quickly assembled a second two-hour Mason TV movie in 1986. Perry Mason: The Case of the Notorious Nun finds Mason (Raymond Burr), now a judge, briefly stepping down from the bench to defend a nun (Michele Greene) accused of murder. The victim was a handsome priest, with whom the nun was allegedly conducting an affair. William Katt plays private detective Paul Drake Jr., who in the tradition of his late father tracks down clues on Mason's behalf--nearly losing his life at every turn. Case of the Notorious Nun was followed in short order by Perry Mason: The Case of the Shooting Star (86). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Invaders from Mars, horror-film director Tobe Hooper's remake of the classic 1950's science fiction film, directed by William Cameron Menzies, centers on a young boy named David (Hunter Carson) who tries to stop an invasion of his town as aliens take over the minds of his parents George (Timothy Bottoms) and Ellen (Laraine Newman), his teachers and the townspeople. With the help of the school nurse (Karen Black), the boy enlists the aid of the U.S. Army to help save the world. With makeup effects supplied by Stan Winston and visual effects by John Dykstra, Invaders From Mars is a wild sci-fi feast that hearkens back to the 1950's invasion films, made popular by the original film and others like Invasion of the Body Snatchers. ~ Linda Rasmussen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Karen Black, Hunter Carson, (more)
- 1985
This fantasy-adventure is geared to the younger set. The saga begins when an American military plane is forced to explode an atomic bomb in the ocean, which brings up an ancient sea monster from his deep hibernation. When poor Capt. Barrios (Timothy Bottoms) is taking the watch on his ship, the monster surfaces and scuttles the vessel. A fellow sailor, mad as a hornet, accuses the Captain of being drunk and Barrios is stripped of his rank and threatened with a criminal trial. Anxious to prove he was right about the sea monster, the much-maligned Capt. Barrios sets out to locate a woman who has seen the beast, and to contact an expert who might be able to help. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Timothy Bottoms, Taryn Power, (more)
- 1985
- PG
Secrets of the Phantom Caverns is a goofy fantasy filmed on the cheap by the ever-canny Don Sharp. The story involves a team of anthropologists and military men who busy themselves exploring a serpentine system of subterranean caves. They discover of lost race of Albinos, which wreaks havoc upon the surface dwelling humans. The British actor Robert Powell and Timothy Bottoms star. According to some sources, Sharp and co. approached the production with extreme carelessness; thanks to an unfortunate accident, a large percentage of the cast and crew were almost fatally poisoned by carbon monoxide in the caves where the movie was filmed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Powell, Timothy Bottoms, (more)
- 1984
This made-for-Disney drama is the fact-based account of Morris Frank (Timothy Bottoms), who, during the 1930s, trained America's first seeing-eye dog. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide
- 1984
- PG
It is doubtful that while acting in D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation back in 1914, Lillian Gish ever dreamed that seven decades later she'd be co-starring with a cute dog in something called Hambone and Hillie. It all begins at a busy airport, where octogenarian Hillie (Gish) is accidentally separated from her beloved bow-wow Hambone. In a twinkling, Hambone and Hillie find themselves on opposite coasts of the USA. The rest of the film charts the efforts of both mistress and mutt to find each other again. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lillian Gish, Timothy Bottoms, (more)
