Peter Boyden Movies

This is the second dramatic feature to be made in Imax 3-D. The plotline, of a Russian immigrant boy who has come to New York to search for his long missing relatives only provides a thin excuse to offer an unparalleled, spectacular show case of the Big Apple, past and present. The past images were created from an enormous assortment of old stereoscopic photographs that offer the audience a rare glimpse of the city's early history and the fascinating lives of those who lived there. The present images are presented from a wide variety of viewpoints as Thomas, the 11-year-old protagonist, rides the roller coasters of Coney Island, experiences his first subway ride, and imagines that he is a bird over Manhattan. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Cheech Marin and Eric Roberts play two draft-dodging hippies who flee to a commune in Central America where they stay for 20 years. When they return in 1989 and seek out some of their old NYC buddies, they find they've turned yuppie and things just aren't what they'd expected. ~ All Movie Guide

Tom Cruise juggles Martini shakers and ice cubes as the materialistic Brian Flanagan, a bartender who drops out of school to search for the perfect "rich chick" who will bankroll him into luxury. Brian meets up with bar veteran Doug Couglin (Bryan Brown) and they put together a dance-duo bar-tending act, taking five minutes to a mix a drink as they dance and toss gin bottles behind the bar to cutting-edge rock music circa 1988. The patrons, instead of demanding the booze, are dazzled by their antics and cheer them on. As a result, the bartenders become wildly popular -- in particular, Brian, who finds the bar babes falling all over each other to hop into the sack with him. As a result of their bar-tending success, they get hired to tend bar at a swanky disco, but there Brian and Doug have a falling out, and Brian takes off for Jamaica. There he meets vacationing New York City waitress Jordan Mooney (Elisabeth Shue) and the two fall in love. But then Brian meets rich New York fashion executive Bonnie (Lisa Banes) who wants to take Brian back to Manhattan with her to become her drink-mixing stud. When Jordan sees this, the love affair is put on hold. But not for long, as pangs of consciousness begin to filter through Brian's drunken haze. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Ivan Reitman directed this film, starring Robert Redford, Debra Winger, and Daryl Hannah, that is an amalgam of a thriller, courtroom drama, mystery and Tracy-Hepburn romantic comedy, with a little Mark Rothko-type scandal thrown in. The film revolves around troubled Chelsea Deardon (Daryl Hannah) who as an eight-year-old girl witnessed her father, a famous artist, perishing in a blaze along with his valuable art works. Twenty years later, Chelsea is arrested for stealing one of her father's paintings from an unscrupulous New York art dealer. She claims many more of her father's paintings survived the fire long ago. Defending Chelsea is lawyer Laura Kelly (Debra Winger). Pitted against her is suave district attorney Tom Logan (Robert Redford). Laura thinks if Tom knew the facts behind the case, he would reconsider and exonerate Chelsea. He doesn't, but one night when Chelsea appears at his doorstep, he does permit her to seduce him. The next morning, one of the art dealers involved in the case is found dead, and Chelsea is found in Tom's apartment. Chelsea becomes the prime suspect in the murder and Tom's career is ruined. Inexplicably, Laura hires Tom to help her defend Chelsea. The two lawyers, in researching their defense, not only uncover a scandal involving art dealership, but also fall in love. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Tom Christo (Griffin Dunne) is a New York TV writer-director in a dead-end marriage to Leslie (Blanche Baker). He meets the intriguing Marty Fenton (Marissa Chibas), a research scientist, when she attends a party Tom and his wife give at their home. Even though there is an initial attraction between Tom and Marty, their eventual pairing takes a long time to evolve as each have their own partners (Marty has a boyfriend) and first must go through separation and a series of disastrously failed blind dates. Although slow in developing and stereotypical enough to register as banal, the storyline is greatly enhanced by the interpretations of the two leads. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Brian De Palma's homage to Michelangelo Antonioni's classic art movie Blow-Up (1966) blends suspense and political paranoia when a Philadelphia soundman inadvertently records a murder. Former police technician Jack Terri (John Travolta) makes his living doing sound for slasher flicks. While recording new outdoor effects one night, Jack witnesses a couple's car careen off a bridge into a river, but he can save only the female occupant, Sally (Nancy Allen). Jack begins to suspect something when he learns that her dead companion was a Presidential hopeful. Re-playing his tape over and over, Jack thinks that he hears a gun shot before the crash-causing tire blow-out. When sleazy photographer Manny Karp (Dennis Franz) comes forward with photos of the accident, Jack discovers the real reason that the naïve Sally was in the car -- and also a way to prove his auditory suspicions through motion pictures. Even with all his surveillance talent, however, Jack cannot see (or hear) how dangerous the big picture really is until it's too late. Taking a break from horror films, De Palma turned his interests in technology and voyeurism toward more politically loaded subject matter at the dawn of the Reagan era; the film's red, white and blue mise-en-scène, "Liberty Day" celebration climax, and conspiracy surrounding political "dirty tricks" suggest that American politics are still rotten, seven years after Watergate, . Although Blow Out earned some favorable notice, particularly for Travolta's first "adult" performance, De Palma's downbeat film did not go over well with 1981 summer audiences. Rather than blockbuster escapism, Blow Out instead harks back to 1970s political thrillers like The Parallax View (1974), using cinematic fireworks to tell an unsettling story about one man's struggle against unstoppable corruption. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide