Peter Bogart Movies

Former war hero Cameron Poe (Nicolas Cage) is sentenced to eight years in prison when he accidentally kills a man in a barroom brawl while defending his pregnant wife. When his release comes through, he's eager to see the daughter he's never met. However, Poe's original flight is delayed, so he's put aboard a flight transporting ten of the most dangerous men in the American penal system to a new high-security facility. One of the criminals, Cyrus "The Virus" Grissom (John Malkovich), is a serial killer and insane genius who has hatched a diabolical plot: with the help of several other hoods, including Diamond Dog (Ving Rhames), Johnny 23 (Daniel Trejo), and Garland Greene (Steve Buscemi), Cyrus and his men will hijack the plane and fly to a neutral nation where they can live as free men. Poe finds himself stuck in the middle; he has to find a way to get home, keep himself alive, look after his cellmate Baby-O (Mykelti Williamson), who will die without proper medicine, and try to help the cops on the ground, including agent Vince Larkin (John Cusack). Producer Jerry Bruckheimer's first film after the death of his partner Don Simpson, Con Air shows he learned well how to assemble the formula all by himself, with plenty of action, stunts, and special effects and not a lot of story to get in the way. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This sequel to the surprise box office hit The Blue Lagoon (1980) mimics its predecessor's romantic adventure formula of a lush tropical locale inhabited by scantily clad, nubile teens discovering their sexuality. Spotted adrift in a boat with his deceased parents Richard and Emmeline, a baby boy is rescued by a passing ship. Adopted by the widow Hargrove (Lisa Pelikan), infant Richard is soon at sea again after he, his new mother and her baby daughter Lilli abandon ship in the face of a cholera epidemic. Washing ashore on the same island populated by the first film's heroes, Hargrove protects and raises her young charges until a disease also claims her life. Years pass and both Richard (Brian Krause) and Lilli (Milla Jovovich) become young adults. While Richard discovers his manhood by racing a lagoon shark and spying on the island's dangerous natives, Lilli becomes a woman with her first period. Eventually their raging hormones lead the two into each other's arms. Marriage and a pregnancy follow, but Richard and Lilli's union is threatened by the arrival of a ship carrying a lovely captain's daughter (Nana Coburn) with eyes for the loincloth-clad Richard. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Harvey Fierstein's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit was adapted for the screen by Fierstein himself. The playwright also repeats his stage role of female impersonator Arnold Beckoff, aka nightclub entertainer "Virginia Hamm." The three-part plotline, whittled down to accommodate the film's 117-minute running time, concerns Arnold's seriocomic efforts to find a lasting relationship. We first meet Arnold in 1971, when his heart is broken by his bisexual lover (Brian Kerwin). Next we find Arnold in 1973, enjoying short-lived happiness with his true love (Matthew Broderick). The final act takes place in 1980: Arnold, still grieving over Broderick's sudden death and struggling to raise the young boy that the couple had adopted, has a long-anticipated showdown with his uncompromising mother, superbly played by Anne Bancroft. A witty film that is by turns touching and outrageous, Torch Song Trilogy works well despite its somewhat soft-pedaled approach to the material. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The year is 1978: 12-year-old Joey Cramer, playing in the woods near his home, is knocked unconscious. He awakens and heads home, only to find strangers living there. He also finds that the year is 1986, and that he's been officially missing for eight years. NASA officials determine that Cramer was abducted by aliens during his blackout, and hope to scan the boy's brain in order to unlock a few secrets of the universe. Answering the call of a strange, unseen force, Cramer boards a well-hidden spaceship and takes off, guided by the jocular voice of a computer named MAX (voiced by none other than Paul Reubens, aka Pee-wee Herman). Realizing that he can't fit into 1986 so long as he's a child of the seventies, Cramer hopes to retrace the steps of his alien abductors and get back to his own time. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In the third and final film in the Oh, God! franchise, Bobby Shelton (Ted Wass) is a struggling musician who can't get a break, which bothers him all the more now that his wife, Wendy (Roxanne Hart), is about to have a baby. Desperate and depressed, Bobby announces that he'd sell his soul to get ahead. Suddenly, Harry O. Tophat (George Burns), Satan's earthly representative, appears and offers Bobby a deal -- seven years of unprecentented fame and fortune in exchange for his soul. Bobby cynically accepts and discovers that the devil is true to his word, but he finds that the trappings of fame and wealth are empty pleasures, and he loses Wendy along the way. When Bobby declares that he's made a horrible mistake, God (Burns), who has been watching over Bobby, offers to help get his soul back as the devil offers Bobby's place in eternity as the prize in a poker game. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Lynne Littman has created an effective, understated portrayal of the cost of a nuclear war in human terms, in a film as far removed from the fake hyperbole of action and disaster movies as the natural world is from cartoons. Set in the small California town of Hamlin, the Wetherly family and their everyday concerns open the story. The trivia that fills their secure, ordinary existence disappears when a TV show is interrupted with the announcement that nuclear bombs have exploded in the major cities on the East Coast, and then the entire scene is erased in an increasingly white, blank movie screen -- meant to show that nuclear blasts have been detonated in California as well. Over 1000 people die in the first month from radiation sickness, but the mother in the Wetherly family (Jane Alexander) displays great inner strength as she cares for orphaned children the family has taken under its wing and goes on sustaining those that remain in her own family. At one point, she quietly conveys to her daughter the happiness of intimacy between two adults, knowing her daughter will not live to experience adult love. As these individuals and the children cope with day-to-day existence, there is never any intrusion of overt horrors, the focus remains on the individuals and the way in which they adjust to the inevitable. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

Former Beatles drummer Ringo Starr plays a prehistoric, social outcast who, along with other misfits, forms his own tribe and finds various comic adventures. This spoof is mostly without dialogue besides the expected neanthropic grunt. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide

A slick Los Angeles callboy finds love and redemption in Paul Schrader's ultra-stylish drama. High-living prostitute Julian Kay (Richard Gere, stepping in for John Travolta) has it all: the Mercedes, the clothes, access to Beverly Hills' swankiest establishments, and a stable of rich, older female clients. But it all falls apart after he does a favor for his former pimp (Bill Duke) and the trick turns up dead a short while later; Julian's actual client won't give him an alibi, and police detective Sunday (Hector Elizondo) doesn't believe the gigolo's denials. The one person who can help him is frustrated politician's wife (and sole non-paying bedmate) Michelle (Lauren Hutton), if only Julian could let down his defenses and accept her gesture of love. Mixing his admiration for European art cinema with a voyeuristic view of the seamier side of sex and affluence, Schrader renders Julian an inscrutable, emotionally disengaged purveyor of pleasure, decked out in Giorgio Armani clothes coordinated with Ferdinando Scarfiotti's meticulous production design. Amid critical doubts about its artiness and distanced eroticism, American Gigolo surprised everyone by not dying on the box office vine. With some audiences reportedly showing up for repeat viewings of Gere's seductive charms, it became a moderate hit, turning Gere into a star and Armani into the new fashion sensation. Whatever reservations one may have about the movie, it provided two indelible images of 1980s decadence to come: Gere's perusing his "artist's palette" of shirts, ties, and jackets, and Gere's cruising down the Pacific Coast Highway in his convertible to the New Wave strains of Blondie's "Call Me". ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

An Italian mechanic (Terence Hill) finds that he has inherited a billion-dollar company from his dead uncle, but he needs to be in San Francisco in 20 days to sign over the will. In the meantime, he is chased by kidnappers and the affected corporation's president (Jackie Gleason). ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide

It is hard to get more deliriously fever-pitched than the ending of Mandingo -- in which a plantation master is shot and his main slave gets boiled in oil -- but Drum (Mandingo's mangy sequel) certainly tries. Hammond Maxwell (Warren Oates), the late slave-owner's son (from Mandingo), is trying to follow in his father's footsteps and purchases Drum (Ken Norton) and Blaise (Yaphet Kotto) from bordello hostess Marianna (Isela Vega). Marianna is actually Drum's mother, although her lesbian lover Rachel (Paula Kelly) in fact brought up the boy. Thrown into the package to Hammond is Drum's girlfriend Regine (Pam Grier), who was purchased to satisfy the carnal urges of Mr. Hammond. However, Augusta Chauvet (Fiona Lewis), setting her sites on Hammond, has other plans. Drum is such a perfect specimen of slave that neither men nor women can keep their hands off of him. Drum looks stoic until a climactic slave revolt breaks out, guaranteeing more blood and carnage than Mandingo could ever hope to provide. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

In this drama, a Vietnam vet, living in the psycho ward of a V.A. hospital, has difficulty coping with the crazy world he returned home to. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide