John H. Brennan Movies

This enjoyable sci-fi actioner from director William R. Mesa succeeds despite stealing items from nearly every monster movie of the last twenty years. The plot concerns an idealistic tribal doctor, Ash Mattley (Mark Dacascos), who runs an underfunded provincial clinic in Sarawak, Borneo while trying to develop an immunity-boosting enzyme found only in certain rare beetles. Ash's plans are thwarted by mad scientist Carl Wessinger (Jurgen Prochnow), who steals the doctor's discovery and uses it to reanimate a nasty alien skeleton named Balacau. Ash must team with a pretty CIA operative (Robin McKee) and a precocious native boy (Thomas Taus, Jr.) to stop Wessinger and his hired commandos from selling Balacau to the highest bidder for use as a biological weapon. The monster chases the cast through many dark slimy corridors like the titular beast in Alien (1979), which it also resembles. The monster occasionally uses the cloaking ability of Predator (1987), and there's also a self-sacrificing black computer pro who explodes like Joe Morton in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991). Despite these and other obvious steals, the film is fast-moving, exciting, and manages to avoid many of the pitfalls which plagued dozens of similar efforts in the 1990s. John Hartigan's pyrotechnic effects are especially well-done, and one scene in which a speedboat is chased by a bazooka-firing helicopter is among the best of its type. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

This wacky buddy comedy was the fifth in a series of Hollywood remakes of films by French director Francis Veber, none of which were box office successes. Sheila Kelley is Valerie Highsmith, an heiress who, despite her family's wealth, suffers from horribly bad luck. On a vacation to Mexico, she takes a fall, causing amnesia, then is mugged and kidnapped for ransom. When her father (Sam Wanamaker) becomes frustrated with the failed attempts of a detective, Ray Campanella (Danny Glover) to find his daughter, he teams a very reluctant Ray with Eugene Proctor (Martin Short), an accountant whose bumbling bad luck is even worse than Valerie's. The theory is that perhaps two such incredibly unlucky people will act like magnets, with Eugene leading Ray to Valerie's location. Although Ray finds Eugene irritating, the unlikely partners eventually begin making surprising progress in the case, despite Eugene's never-ending screw-ups and pratfalls. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Her sentimental steak aroused by her impending motherhood, Murphy (Candice Bergen) volunteers to serve Thanksgiving dinner at a homeless shelter. She also "volunteers" the rest of the "FYI" staff to help out, an honor to which they react in a variety of amusing fashions. But "amusing" is not the word Murphy has in mind when, once she is ensconced in the mission's kitchen, the Thanksgiving turkeys all show up--still alive! ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi