Lorraine Bracco Movies

Five fables, each set in a different historical era, make up this quirky comedy from director Bill Forsyth. Each tale features Robin Williams as a basically decent but troubled average man named Hector. Beginning with the Bronze Age, where Hector struggles for survival against barbarians, the film proceeds through Roman times, the Middle Ages, and the 16th century, concluding in the present day, where Hector is a divorced father attempting to reconcile with his children. The film clearly intends to draw parallels between these stories in order to illustrate the universal nature of human experience, though the segments themselves vary widely in tone, from broadly comic to philosophically reflective. Additionally, some may find the film's attempts at creating a fantasy atmosphere rather cloying, while others may be charmed by the project's determined oddness and whimsicality. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Hip-hop mogul Damon Dash (Paper Soldiers) directs this semi-autobiographical film based on his life as the proprietor of Roc-a-Fella Records. Ebon Moss-Bachrach stars as David Katz, a reporter who, upon interviewing rap producer Damon (Capone), finds himself drawn deeper and deeper into the high-class world of hip-hop. Before he knows it, Katz ignites a war within the label that could bring down the operation for good. A bevy of celebrities from all walks of life make appearances, including Riddick Bowe, Lorraine Bracco, Mariah Carey, Sean "P. Diddy" Combs, Carson Daly, Jay-Z, Chloe Sevigny, James Toback, and countless others. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

Writer/director Gus Van Sant's early bid for big-time commercial success -- a success he didn't manage to achieve until Good Will Hunting -- is based on Tom Robbins' 1976 feminist bestseller. Uma Thurman plays Sissy Hankshaw, a woman born with very large thumbs. After her parents (Grace Zabriskie and Ken Kesey) take her to a doctor (Buck Henry), who offers her parents no remedy for their daughter's condition, the film races ahead to the 1970s. Sissy is now a popular feminine hygiene spray model for a product called Yoni Yum, the product of a company owned by The Countess (John Hurt in drag). Sissy travels to the Rubber Rose beauty ranch, also owned by The Countess, to shoot a Yoni Yum commercial. At the ranch, she makes the acquaintance of the inscrutable Chink (Pat Morita) and Bonanza Jellybean (Rain Phoenix). But under the nose of The Countess, the cowgirls on the ranch are talking mutiny, with the women trying to liberate the Rubber Rose Ranch from the chains of patriarchal oppression. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Martin Scorsese explores the life of organized crime with his gritty, kinetic adaptation of Nicolas Pileggi's best-selling Wiseguy, the true-life account of mobster and FBI informant Henry Hill. Set to a true-to-period rock soundtrack, the story details the rise and fall of Hill, a half-Irish, half-Sicilian New York kid who grows up idolizing the "wise guys" in his impoverished Brooklyn neighborhood. He begins hanging around the mobsters, running errands and doing odd jobs until he gains the notice of local chieftain Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino), who takes him in as a surrogate son. As he reaches his teens, Hill (Ray Liotta) is inducted into the world of petty crime, where he distinguishes himself as a "stand-up guy" by choosing jail time over ratting on his accomplices. From that moment on, he is a part of the family. Along with his psychotic partner Tommy (Joe Pesci), he rises through the ranks to become Paulie's lieutenant; however, he quickly learns that, like his mentor Jimmy (Robert DeNiro), his ethnicity prevents him from ever becoming a "made guy," an actual member of the crime family. Soon he finds himself the target of both the feds and the mobsters, who feel that he has become a threat to their security with his reckless dealings. Goodfellas was rewarded with six Academy Award nominations including Best Picture; Pesci would walk away with Best Supporting Actor for his work. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

This international production by well-known director Lina Wertmuller is a harrowing educational melodrama about the AIDS epidemic. The story follows John Knot (Rutger Hauer) a brash, cheerful American reporter, and Joelle (Nastassja Kinski), a new photographer he has had an affair with and (unbeknownst to him) a child as well. He has been having a lot of fun poking into anti-AIDS prejudice for a series by a Paris paper by pretending to have HIV and announcing this in various situations around Paris, which results in his being thrown out of restaurants, bars, and (in one scene) bed. He runs into Joelle on one these excursions, and discovers that he has a child and that he still cares for Joelle. Not long after that, he discovers that he really is HIV positive. This provokes a lot of soul-searching and anguish, right up to the story's unhappy ending. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Zac is a well-respected French filmmaker who creates a major uproar when for no apparent reason he suddenly vanishes from his posh Parisian apartment leaving behind his lover Helene, a popular star. Marcus, his producer searches for eight months before locating Zac who has since become a homeless street bum in an expensive neighborhood. Marcus sends Zac to a posh hotel. He then sends Daisy, an ambitious secretary and aspiring screenwriter to learn what happened to the great director. It takes a lot of mutual verbal sparring and false turns (which are presented as creatively filmed vignettes that are done using a variety of techniques) from Zac before he finally tells her the truth. The two then decide to turn the story into a film. As they write, Daisy and Zac slowly fall in love. At the same time, Marcus has his hands full trying to avoid some tough Russian Mafiosos who want the money they invested back. In order to make Zac and Daisy's film, the whole production is moved to the relative safety of South Africa. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

The main distinguishing feature of this comedy could be its long title, perhaps the longest in cinematic history. Director Jan Saint-Hamont follows up his 1979 film about a European-Algerian family with the same ethnic focus here. This time around the "Pied-Noirs," or French-Algerians, are represented by a successful businessman and his family. The ineptly tyrannical patriarch proves to be too much for his wife, and she reacts in a distinctly non-traditional manner. For most viewers, the success of the earlier film is not quite duplicated in this second effort. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

The Amazon rain forest is a living laboratory for Dr. Robert Campbell (Sean Connery), a reclusive research scientist living with a Brazilian native tribe. Campbell has accidentally discovered a flower extract that cures cancer, but has been unable to duplicate the formula. With the assistance of Dr. Crane (Lorraine Bracco), he explores every possible chemical derivative, but continues to fail. When a child in the village is near death from a tumor pressing against his trachea, Campbell and Crane stand against each other on the moral issue to use the last of the successful serum to save him or to keep it for further analysis. At the last moment, Crane reconsiders, and agrees to save the child. At the same time, commercial loggers begin to creep ever closer to the village, and government officials demand the tribe's relocation. With only yards remaining between the bulldozers and the tribe, Campbell discovers a vital clue to the elusive elixir he seeks. His attempt to stop the workmen results in violence and a raging forest fire which destroys his lab equipment and the natives' village. The story ends with Campbell, Crane, and the tribe pushing deeper into the jungle in search of new answers.

In a change of pace from his usual action film fare, the skilled work of director John McTiernan brings emotional depth to what would otherwise be just another pro-environmental propaganda film. Connery, who had starred in McTiernan's crowd-pleasing 1989 film The Hunt for Red October, gives a convincing performance as the determined and complex researcher haunted by mistakes of the past. Bracco's character adds the realistic humor of the city scientist adjusting to Spartan life in the trees, but she does so with both strength and dignity. The constant bickering of two equally obstinate scientists gives a mild "honeymooners in the jungle" quality. Filmed in the Mexican rain forest, the canopy is captured in breathtaking cinematography. ~ Lucinda Ramsey, All Movie Guide

Two brothers are the victims of their widowed mother's violent drunkard husband who spares no rod with the youngest brother. Reverting to a world of make-believe, they imagine that their Radio Flyer wagon can fly and that in it they can escape their tormenting stepfather. This film deals in an almost make-believe manner with the serious issue of child abuse. It is narrated by Tom Hanks. ~ All Movie Guide

In this erotic thriller, two bunco artists ply their trade in Miami Beach. They prey upon wealthy marks; the female grifter uses all her wiles to seduce men out of their cash. It works fine until she tries to con ex-G-man Jack Shanks. He catches on and ends up blackmailing her into helping him get a little revenge in Jamaica. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A woman must look past her personal misfortune to uncover a greater tragedy in this thriller. Helen (Lorraine Bracco) is a journalist who is expecting a baby. While working on a story about a police detective (Margot Kidder), Helen is involved in an accident; though she's rushed to the hospital, she is informed upon regaining consciousness that she miscarried. The details don't all add up in Helen's mind, however, and after doing some digging, she suspects that her baby actually survived and was stolen by a black-market adoption ring that sells infants to the highest bidder. John Heard, Jason Gedrick, and R.H. Thomson co-star. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A woman who always longed for the perfect Christmas receives a magical snow globe that transports her to a land where every day is the twenty fifth of December in this family-oriented fantasy starring Christina Milian and Lorraine Bracco. When it comes to the holidays, Angela (Milian) would rather be just about anywhere other than home. Upon shaking an antique snow globe that she received as a gift, however, this embittered cynic is whisked away to a magical kingdom where Christmas never ends, and where she will have to choose between the man of her dreams and a love she could have never imagined. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

HBO split the sixth and final season of its serial mafia drama The Sopranos into two halves, spaced 10 months apart: the first half (episodes 1-12) aired from mid-March through early June of 2006; a hiatus followed between episodes 12 and 13, before the series picked up again for its final nine episodes on April 8, 2007, purportedly thanks to overwhelming audience demand for an extension. As the season begins, Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) is plagued by problem after problem at home: though he has made peace with wife Carmela (Edie Falco), and daughter Meadow (Jamie-Lynn Sigler) is relatively well-adjusted and happy, attending college and living with fiancée Finn De Trolio (Will Janowitz), Tony's son, A.J. (Robert Iler) is a complete slacker and layabout who has just failed out of college and seems hesitant to accomplish anything of merit. Meanwhile, Tony finds himself saddled with a new captain, Phil Leotardo (Frank Vincent) who expresses more hesitation over "working" him than his incarcerated predecessor, Johnny Sacks (Vince Curatola). Complicating matters are two employees: Tony's soldier Eugene Pontecorvo (Robert Funaro), who attempts to buy his way out of the syndicate via an inheritance, and the homosexual captain Vito Spatafore (Joe Gannascoli) who comes out of the closet and ends up being spotted in a leather bar - then is knocked off by a member of the family, which leads to the death of a Lieutenant and sparks a tidal wave of mob violence. In another subplot, aspiring screenwriter Christopher (Michael Imperioli), Tony's cousin, devises an idea for a gangster picture which he describes as "The Godfather meets Saw," and heads off to Hollywood to pitch it to Ben Kingsley. The season cliffhanger, however, involves Uncle Junior (Dominic Chianese), an elderly man suffering from extreme senility who mistakenly draws a gun and plugs Tony in the stomach, sending him into a coma - leaving consigliere Silvio Dante (Steven Van Zandt of The E Street Band) to tend to family business. This, in turn, yields several sequences where Tony wanders around in a dream state, and contemplates his own mortality. The second half of the season has Christopher continuing his strenuous efforts to have his epic (which he entitled Cleaver) produced, the absence of Johnny Sack leaving an ongoing void of power in the syndicate, and Tony again coming to terms with aging and mortality, while he struggles (as ever) to balance personal and professional demands. Guest stars in the 2007 episodes include: Sydney Pollack, Tim Daly, Daniel Baldwin and Geraldo Rivera.