David Helpern Movies

The Cleaver Family makes the jump from the small black and white screen to color and Panavision in this updated version of the classic TV sit-com. Eight-year-old Theodore "Beaver" Cleaver (Cameron Finley) is a good natured kid with a habit of getting in trouble; he's not bad, mind you, just a bit absent-minded. Beaver lives with his 12-year-old brother Wally (Erik Von Detten), his father Ward (Christopher McDonald), and his mother June (Janine Turner) in a small town in Ohio. Beaver wants a new bicycle more than anything, but his father wishes that he had more of an interest in team sports; someone suggests to Beaver that if he joined the school's football team, Ward might be impressed enough to buy him the bike. Beaver signs up, but his skills on the gridiron fall somewhere between slim and none, and the experience proves more than a bit embarrassing for both Beaver and Ward. Before long, Beaver has quit the team, but he tries to hide this fact from his father. Beaver does get his bike -- but he doesn't get to do much with it before it's stolen by a bigger kid in the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Wally's best friend, the mildly sleazy Eddie Haskell (Adam Zolotin), has fallen for a cute girl at school, Karen (Erika Christensen), and wants Wally to help him impress her; however, Karen seems to like Wally more than Eddie. This puts Wally in dutch with his best friend, and Wally feels even worse when he and Karen begin to quarrel. Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell on the original TV series, plays Eddie's father here, and Barbara Billingsley, the original June Cleaver, appears as Aunt Martha. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Although many genre filmmakers have managed to blend horror and humor with great success, movies employing this formula often run the risk of both elements canceling each other out, resulting in a horror comedy that is neither scary nor funny. Alas, Dead Heat is a textbook example of this kind of failure. It details the weird misadventures of a pair of mismatched L.A. cops -- the straitlaced and by-the-book Roger Mortis (Treat Williams) and wisecracking loose cannon Doug Bigelow (muscle-headed Saturday Night Live alum Joe Piscopo). Their quest is to reach the heart of a sinister crime ring that employs indestructible undead henchmen. In a strange twist, their inept handling of the case results in both cops -- first Williams, then Piscopo -- being killed in action and subsequently reanimated in a secret laboratory managed by the barely seen Vincent Price (whose walk-on role is more entertaining than the combined performances of the two leads). The potential for "splatstick" comedy in the mode of Evil Dead 2 or Peter Jackson's Bad Taste is defeated by two major obstacles: first, the painfully unfunny mugging of Piscopo, who was unwisely allowed to ad-lib much of his performance; and second, the MPAA's trimming of several minutes from Steve Johnson's sensational makeup effects in order to avoid the dreaded X rating -- including a clever scene involving a zombie go-go girl played by Linnea Quigley. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Director Joan Micklin Silver's follow-up to her acclaimed debut, Hester Street, is a more ambitious film that manages to be both an entertaining comedy and a pointed look at the corrupting power of money on an idealistic enterprise. Writer Fred Barron's characters are all associated with a weekly alternative newspaper in Boston, modeled after the Phoenix. (Silver did once work on the Village Voice, but this enterprise is several rungs below that esteemed paper.) Harry (John Heard) is an ambitious reporter romantically involved with Abbie (Lindsay Crouse), the paper's star photographer. Michael (Stephen Collins) is a writer trying to work on a novel and stay faithful to his loving wife, Laura (Gwen Welles), while Max (Jeff Goldblum), the paper's rock critic, shamelessly uses his job to try to pick up women. Lynn (Jill Eikenberry), a typist who is the paper's mother-hen figure, is also its most principled employee. When a publishing mogul (Lane Smith) buys the paper and promises changes that will compromise its aggressive political stance in favor of more "lifestyle" articles, Lynn resigns, and it's clear to the group that their carefree days are behind them. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Young filmmaker Halpern does homage in this documentary to a directorial veteran, Nicholas Ray, whose films included Johnny Guitar and Rebel Without A Cause. Ray, who initially studied architecture at Taliesen under Frank Lloyd Wright, was a highly regarded auteur director. At the time the documentary was made, Ray's filmmaking career was virtually over, and he was teaching film at Harpur College in Binghamton, N.Y. The documentary includes clips from several of the director's films, interviews with Natalie Wood, François Truffaut and others, and brief shots of him at work as a teacher and as a director. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide