Stephen Hopkins Movies
Stephen Hopkins had a diverse background in graphic design and storyboarding prior to taking off as director of Hollywood action features. Hopkins steadily gained clout through the 1990s, and in 2001 linked up with his most visible venture, serving as co-executive producer and director of about half the episodes of Fox's breakthrough real-time television drama 24.Hopkins was born in Jamaica and raised in England and Australia. He ventured out into the working world as a designer of album covers before getting in good with Australian director Russell Mulcahy, who was then working as a music video director. Hopkins worked as a storyboard artist for Mulcahy and set designer on his videos. Forging his own opportunity, Hopkins began directing videos and commercials himself, but eventually returned to Australia to serve as second-unit director on Mulcahy's cult hit Highlander (1986). This paved the way for his own directorial debut, Dangerous Game (1987).
Upon migrating to Hollywood, Hopkins was quick to establish himself as an effective genre director with A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (1989) and Predator 2 (1990). His films increased in stature and budget, if not necessarily impact or ultimate success, as the 1990s progressed. He followed up the Tommy Lee Jones-Jeff Bridges bomber flick Blown Away (1994) with another high-powered duo, Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer, in the 1996 lion-hunting odyssey The Ghost and the Darkness. He graduated to genuine popcorn-flick status with the big-screen adaptation of the TV hit Lost in Space, released in 1998. The failure of that film dulled Hopkins' star a little, though he did end up dating star Heather Graham for a short period.
When the Gene Hackman-Morgan Freeman thriller Under Suspicion (2000) slipped under the radar, Hopkins followed suit. But the director restored some urgency by becoming a main creative force behind one of the catchiest television gimmicks in years. 24 debuted in the fall of 2001 to the tune of great critical buzz about its real-time format, which included 24 hour-long episodes charting an exhausting day in the life of a targeted presidential candidate (Dennis Haysbert) and the counter-terrorist agent (Kiefer Sutherland) who tries to protect him from assassination. 2004 proved an especially good year for Hopkins, with his critically acclaimed biopic The Life and Death of Peter Sellers earning a staggering nine Emmys, including one for Best Director, and his three-part mini-series Traffic - co-directed with Eric Bross - earning an impressive three nominations. Two short years later Hopkins was back in the theaters with The Reaping; an apocalyptic tale of a small Louisiana town beset by a series of apparent biblical plagues and starring two-time Oscar-winner Hilary Swank. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
This special effects-heavy science fiction sequel moves the action from the first film's Amazon forest to the urban jungle of L.A. Danny Glover stars as Lt. Mike Harrigan, an LAPD detective baffled by his latest case, the ritualistic slaughter of several drug dealers by a devastating killer who leaves no traces. As Harrigan and his partners, Danny Archuletta (Ruben Blades), Leona Cantrell (Maria Conchita Alonso), and Jerry Lambert (Bill Paxton), try to figure out who or what killed the criminals, FBI investigator Stephen Keyes (Gary Busey) attempts to warn the team away from investigating further. When two of his team are killed in a particularly grisly way, Harrigan uncovers the truth -- their quarry is an alien creature that hunts humans for sport. Attracted to violence, its latest choice of prey is gun-toting Jamaican drug dealers. Keyes and his team know all about the nasty extraterrestrial and its bloody pastime because they've been studying it for ten years, and they've come up with a possible means of dispatching the beast. When that plan backfires, however, it comes down to Harrigan and an extremely irritated otherworldly foe, slugging it out in a rooftop confrontation. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Danny Glover, Gary Busey, (more)
- 1989
- R
- Add A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child to QueueAdd A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child to top of Queue
In the fifth installment in the Nightmare on Elm Street series, Alice (Lisa Wilcox) begins the film with the notion that she is safe after she vanquished the evil Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund) by learning how to battle the dreamworld psychopath within her own unconscious mind. But somehow Freddy has survived, and Alice discovers that he's found a place where Alice can't protect herself when he taps into the dreams of her unborn child. Freddy is soon leaving a trail of destruction while the child is still in the womb, and he will become even more deadly when the child comes to term. Memorable moments include Freddy's attack on a comic book artist and his Hellish experiences when "the bastard son of a hundred maniacs" is locked in an insane asylum with a nun. A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child was followed by Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, though Mr. Krueger popped up again in Wes Craven's New Nighmare. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Englund, Lisa Wilcox, (more)
