Eddie Wong Movies
- 1998
For this video-dairy documentary, director Spencer Nakasako loaned cameras to Laotian-born Californians Kelly Saeteurn and Tony Saelio, a couple engaged to marry. Seventh-grade dropout Tony, two years after serving time for armed assault, works as a shuttle-bus driver, but possible INS deportation looms. Meanwhile, pregnant 17-year-old Kelly graduates from high school and begins planning for college and a career. After baby Andrew is born, they follow the Iu Mien custom in which the wife moves in with her in-laws. Frustrated when his parents do not move ahead with the marriage plans, Kelly then learns she's pregnant again. With a video-to-16mm transfer, this film was shown at the 1998 San Francisco Asian-American Film Festival. Nakasako's process here is similar to that employed on his Emmy-winning A.K.A. Don Bonus (1997). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern play a pair of lovers on the run in David Lynch's surrealist road movie Wild at Heart. Cage's Sailor Ripley is a violent ex-convict with an Elvis Presley fixation who falls in love with Dern's Lula Pace Fortune, the daughter of a rich, but mentally unstable, Southern belle named Marietta (Diane Ladd, Dern's real-life mother). Just after Sailor is released from prison, where he was jailed for brutally killing one of Marietta's thugs, he and Lula take off on a wild cross-country trip, pursued by his parole officer, her mother, criminals, bounty hunters, and detectives. Along the way, Sailor and Lula have a lot of sex, share their pasts, share their respective obsessions for Elvis and The Wizard of Oz, and meet a lot of bizarre characters, including a seedy ex-marine (Willem Dafoe) who persuades Sailor to participate in a bank robbery. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicolas Cage, Laura Dern, (more)
If you've seen TV wrestling, you know what a "caged" bout is. In Cage, it's for real; two testosterone-pumped behemoths are placed in a cage where they duke it out to the death. Lou Ferrigno plays Billy Thomas, the muscle-bound Vietnam vet who is finagled into cage-fighting by a group of mobsters. Scott Monroe (Reb Brown), the man whose life Billy saved in Nam, finds himself (through a series of ludicrous plot twists) facing his former savior in the dreaded cage. We suppose this was meant to be taken seriously, but audiences didn't get the hint; Cage has been greeted with raucous, derisive laughter ever since its 1990 release. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lou Ferrigno, Reb Brown, (more)
Playing in a manner that can be conservatively described as larger than life, Kurt Russell plays a macho truck driver who agrees to go to the San Francisco airport and pick up his friend's (Dennis Dun) fiancee (Suzee Pai, freshly arrived from China. Suddenly, a gang of Chinatown toughs kidnap the girl right before Russell's eyes. After a wild chase sequence, Russell discovers that the girl has been abducted by a genuine, bonafide sorceror (James Hong), the ghost of a 3000 year old warlord. And that's just for starters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kurt Russell, Kim Cattrall, (more)
- 1986
- R
In this slice-n-dicer acclaimed pop psychologist Dr. David Kelley hosts a radio call-in show in LA. The current topic of discussion is a baffling series of murders that has been occurring throughout the town. All of the victims are beautiful real estate agents. One day he gets a strange call from "Harry," who claims that each of the victims deserved everything they got, because he believes that the real estate agents encourage the further displacement of the poor and homeless. He also describes their murders in detail. When the calls become more frequent, Dr. Kelley becomes even more concerned. He should be because his own lady love is a real estate agent. The film features considerable gore, nudity and simulated sex. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Joseph Bottoms, Adrienne Barbeau, (more)
In this comedy, an ordinary woman finds herself sharing both her home and her body with a ghost who has a pronounced wild streak. Jan (Glenn Close) and Nick (Mandy Patinkin) are a couple moving into an apartment in an old Victorian house in San Francisco. Jan is a straight-laced secretary working for a Catholic bishop, while Nick deals in used books. While stripping some old wallpaper in their new home, they discover a message written on the wall, which their flaky landlady Mrs. Lavin (Ruth Gordon) informs them was written by Maxie, a high-spirited flapper who had a career in silent films before dying in a car wreck on her way to audition for D.W. Griffith. Out of curiosity, Jan and Nick rent a video of one of Maxie's films to see her in action, but it just so happens that Maxie's ghost still lives in the house -- and is looking for a human host. Maxie's spirit enters Jan's body and makes her presence known at the most inconvenient times; suddenly mild mannered Jan is kicking up her heels, swilling gin, starting arguements, and acting like a flaming youth straight out of the 1920s. Nick finds Maxie a good bit more exciting than Jan and even tries to launch Maxie back into a movie career by having her audition for a remake of Cleopatra opposite Harry Hamlin; Jan, however, just wants to have her body to herself again. Maxie proved to be one of the last screen appearances for veteran actress Ruth Gordon, who died several weeks before the film was released. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Glenn Close, Mandy Patinkin, (more)
