Pat Brisson Movies
- 1995
If they are not already fans, those who watch this video are likely to discover why hockey is now almost as popular in many American communities as it is in Canada. Listen as National Hockey League All-Star Luc Robitaille describes the general physical training, ice skating and stick-handling drills that all successful players must master. A variety of NHL tricks are demonstrated by such pros as Chris Chelios, Pavel Bure and Mario Lemieux. Various types of equipment are shown so that viewers can better understand how the game is played and what the players are wearing. Even Wayne Gretzky, known to hockey fans as "The Great One" shares a few special tips for playing one's best game. Players, coaches and fans should all be able to learn something new from this video. A side trip to hockey's Hall of Fame is also included. ~ Elizabeth Smith, All Movie Guide
Pittsburgh Penguins owner Howard Baldwin was the producer of Sudden Death, and the action is set in his hockey arena, in which the Penguins are playing the Chicago Blackhawks. Pittsburgh fire inspector Darren McCord (Jean-Claude Van Damme) is attending the game with his two children. He's quit fighting fires because of a tragedy a few years earlier involving a child he couldn't save. Also at the game is the vice-president of the United States (Raymond Barry), who is the target of a terrorist plot. The terrorist leader, an insane ex-CIA agent named Joshua Foss (Powers Boothe), has masterminded a scheme to hold the vice-president hostage in his luxury suite while demanding that payments be transferred to his account electronically at the end of each period of the game. If he doesn't get his money, he will kill one member of the vice-president's party at the end of each period, and at game's end he will order ten bombs hidden in the arena to be detonated with all 17,000 fans present. McCord discovers the plot while his daughter Emily (Whittni Wright) is kidnapped by the terrorists too. McCord must dispatch the villains and find the bombs, while saving all the hostages. Luckily, he is adept at martial arts. He fights one henchman dressed in a Penguins mascot outfit in the arena's kitchen, and another terrorist on the arena's retracting dome. At one point, McCord switches identities with a player, is sent into the game, and scores a goal. Director Peter Hyams also directed Van Damme in the blockbuster Timecop. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jean-Claude Van Damme, Powers Boothe, (more)
In this youthful drama, Tom, a 14- year-old who's parents have just divorced, is abruptly uprooted from his wealthy Chicago home and sent to the strange land of LA to live in the far-out beach bungalow of his aunt, an aging hippie still stuck in a by-gone era. He is unhappy with the new arrangement and finds his new bohemian lifestyle strange and the activities of his new peers, stupid. His life begins to change a bit when he befriends a young surfer named Fin. At first he thinks of the fun-loving Fin as a real dolt, but later he admits he was wrong. Like the Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn characters on which they are loosely based, the two new friends soon find themselves having a series of adventures, some of them dangerous; by the summer's end, Tom finds himself wiser, accustomed to California, and a lot more grown up. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Landes, Brian Austin Green, (more)
