Don Carmody Movies

A teenager daydreams of getting some payback from the bullies who menace him in this hybrid of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947) and The Karate Kid (1984). Barry Gabrewski (Jonathan Brandis) is an asthmatic schoolboy who can't participate in sports, much to the delight of a bullying classmate (John Buchanan) and his sadistic gym teacher (Richard Moll). Miserably unhappy, Barry escapes into a world of fantasy, where he imagines himself the tough, karate-proficient sidekick of action movie hero Chuck Norris. Trying to turn his dreams into reality, Barry visits dojo master Kelly Stone (Joe Piscopo), but Stone only mocks his aspirations. A supportive teacher introduces Barry to her uncle, Mr. Lee (Mako), a cook and martial arts teacher who takes Barry under his wing and teaches him the secrets of karate prowess. When Barry becomes good enough to enter a tournament, he needs a fourth athlete to complete his team, and who should be in the stands making a publicity appearance but the real-life Norris, who steps in to fight side-by-side with the plucky teen. Sidekicks was directed by Norris's brother and frequent collaborator Aaron Norris. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

In this political thriller, an ambitious press secretary discovers that the opposing political candidate has feathered the nest of his campaigns with terrible lies. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

For most of his life, a former cop (Keith Carradine) has been tormented by his inadvertent involvement in the death of his parents. It happened during childhood. How was he to know the box he was asked to deliver contained a bomb? Now, after all these years, he learns the identity of the real perpetrators: gangsters headquartered in a Lake Tahoe resort. Armed with this invaluable knowledge, he meticulously plots his revenge. This thriller is based on a novel by Ronald T. Owen. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Contrary to expectations, The Hit Man is not about a mob assassin but instead deals with a Spielberg-style moviemaker, played by Dennis Boutsikaris. The villain is a loan shark (Nick Pryor) who's been reducing honest folks to penury. Utilizing the special-effects trickery at his disposal, Boutsikaris arranges a major sting to thwart the bad guy. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Though this police and courtroom drama did not do well at the box-office, some reviewers thought that the lead performances by Burt Reynolds and Theresa Russell were first-rate. Joe Paris (Reynolds) is a policeman suspended from active duty. He awakens from an alcoholic binge to discover that he is being charged for a murder he has no memory of. Jenny Hudson (Russell) is his court-appointed defense lawyer, a young feminist eager to prove herself in the courtroom. After some initial difficulties, the two cooperate to unravel the tangled circumstances behind the murder. Michael Crichton directed but did not collaborate on the story or screenplay. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this drama, Lt. Jake Robbins (Kris Kristofferson) was presumed to have been killed in action during the Vietnam War. His wife, Sarah (JoBeth Williams) and his son were forced to get on with their lives; however when Jake turns up in Thailand many years later with a Cambodian wife and two children, the two families must struggle to deal with this complication. ~ Iotis Erlewine, Rovi

The 1920s-era play The Front Page was about a Chicago reporter who wants to retire and get married but is tricked by his editor into doing one last story -- which proves to be complicated. It was made into a classic film in 1931 and inspired the 1940 hit movie His Girl Friday, in which the reporter was changed into a woman. Billy Wilder also remade the original film in 1974. Switching Channels is a 1988 remake of His Girl Friday, with Kathleen Turner in the starring role, which has now morphed into that of a cable television network news anchor, Christy Colleran. She wants to marry a rich and handsome sporting goods manufacturer, Blaine Bingham (Christopher Reeve) and move out of town. But her ex-husband, John L. Sullivan IV (Burt Reynolds), who is also her producer and boss, gives her one final assignment to try to keep her around. Her reporting leads her into an investigation of a jail escape that follows a botched-up execution. Writer Jonathan Reynolds updated the original material. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

The Big Town is Chicago, circa 1957. Matt Dillon stars as a small-town crapshooter who heads to the Windy City to seek his fortune. There he becomes the pawn of two high-rolling professional gamblers, played by Lee Grant and Bruce Dern. He later gets mixed up in a revenge scheme cooked up by Diane Lane, the embittered wife of strip-joint owner Tommy Lee Jones. Before he knows what's happened, Dillon is embroiled in two torrid romances, one with Lane and the other with "nice" girl Suzy Amis; he also nearly loses his life by ending up in the middle of a deadly feud between Dern and Jones. Based on The Arm, a novel by Clark Howard, Big Town tends towards uneveness, a result perhaps of the defection of its first director, Harold Becker. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

This minor exploitation oddity pits two curvaceous ex-cons against the inbred populace of a small fishing town -- particularly the title character, whose creepy mother encourages his campaigns of terror against the girls. Though Junior's antics are often quite sadistic -- ranging from pelting one girl with worms to gutting the other's dog -- the filmmakers seem to lack the seedy convictions possessed by the films which clearly inspired them (namely Last House on the Left, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and I Spit On Your Grave), making the heroines' climactic revenge less satisfying. We're almost asked to pity the poor lunkhead, whose actions are dictated by the desires of his mother ... who, by the way, seems to be sporting a serious case of five o'clock shadow! ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

This low-grade thriller centers around Frank Waite (Art Hindle), a sports-car salesman who is suddenly mean-tempered when his wife Lee (Shannon Tweed) becomes turned off by sex, and Anouk Van Derlin, the sex therapist they decide to see (Carole Laure). As Anouk starts to bring out the suppressed sexual fantasies of the couple, their sex life is much better -- but both Lee and Frank are not completely at ease with their new, unrestrained relationship. In the meantime, a series of stabbings occurs in the city that may or may not be related to a transvestite neighbor of the Waites. But as the murders continue, some of the victims turn out to be friends or acquaintances of the couple -- and the guessing game to identify the real killer begins. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

Nine years after the Yuletide slasher flick Black Christmas, Porky's director Bob Clark once again took on the holiday genre, switching from gasps to laughs with A Christmas Story. Adapted from a memoir by humorist Jean Shepherd (who narrates), the film centers on Ralphie Parker (Peter Billingsley), a young boy living in 1940s Indiana, desperately yearning for a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas. Despite protests from his mother (Melinda Dillon) that he'll shoot his eye out, Ralphie persists, unsuccessfully trying to enlist the assistance of both his teacher and Santa Claus. All the while, Ralphie finds himself dealing with the constant taunts of a pair of bullies and trying to not get in the middle of a feud between his mother and father (Darren McGavin) regarding a sexy lamp. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

Sure to generate conversation, this provocative drama tells the story of how a middle-class family is torn apart when their clean-cut high-achieving son, who has the potential of making it on the Olympic gymnast team, suddenly joins a religious cult. The parents become deeply worried and try to get him back. The twist is that, unlike other movie religious cults, the leader of this one is not terribly evil even though he does strongly indoctrinate his followers. The members of his group are good people who do good deeds for others. Unfortunately, the parents don't see it this way and so hire a free-lance deprogrammer to "rescue" their son and force him through a deprogramming process that traumatizes him more than the cult did. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi