Bill Cummings Movies

Though a fine cast was assembled for this comedy, none can save this embarrassingly humorless satire. Henderson Dores (Daniel-Day Lewis) is a very proper British art expert sent to rural Georgia by his boss to purchase a painting by Renoir. The present owner, hillbilly Loomis Gage (Harry Dean Stanton), claims he bought the painting for $500 in France in 1946. Dores offers $10 million, but Gage's scheming son Freeborn (Maury Chaykin) has made a deal with a rival art dealer for $15 million. Steven Wright plays Dores' business rival Pruitt with his typical deadpan charm, and Joan Cusack and Laurie Metcalf provide romantic interest. Tea and crumpets collide with moonshine and cornbread in this feature, but the results are unpalatable. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Written by David Tomblin and Ian L. Rakoff, "Living In Harmony" briefly whisks Number Six away from The Village and plunks him into the American West circa 1870. Forced by a "Roy Bean"-style judge (David Bauer) to accept the job of sheriff, Number Six discovers that his first assignment is to protect to beautiful Cathy (Valerie French) from a vicious outlaw known as The Kid (Alexis Kanner). This places the protagonist in an uncomfortable position: How can he fulfill his new responsibility while keeping his self-promise to never again use a gun? Harmony, by the way, is the name of the town where all this takes place --- or does it? Originally slated as Episode 12 of The Prisoner, "Living In Harmony" was seen as the series' 14th installment when it originally aired in England on January 14, 1968. Curiously, this episode was not shown in America where The Prisoner was first networkcast in the summer of 1968 (reportedly, it contained too much violence --- or, possibly, too much of the leading lady's cleavage), though it was included in the Prisoner package syndicated in the US in the fall of 1969. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Thunderball finds James Bond matching wits with the sinister espionage organization S.P.E.C.T.R.E, (which stands for Special Executive for Counterintelligence, Terrorism, Revenge and Extortion). This time, S.P.E.C.T.R.E. hijacks a NATO nuclear bomber, hiding the bombs under the ocean depths and threatening to detonate the weapons unless a ransom of 100,000,000 pounds is paid. The mastermind behind this scheme is international business executive Emilio Largo (Adolfo Celi), who maintains a pool full of sharks for the purpose of eliminating enemies and those henchmen who fail to come up to standard. Dispatched to the Bahamas, lucky Mr. Bond enjoys the attentions of three nubile ladies: Largo's mistress Domino Derval (Claudine Auger), British spy Paula Caplan (Martine Beswick, previously seen as a gypsy girl in the 1962 Bond epic From Russia With Love) and enemy agent Fiona Volpe (Luciana Paluzzi). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi