Maurice Jarre Movies

The second of Zucker-Abraham-Zucker's theatrical-feature spoofs (Airplane was the first, discounting the patchwork Kentucky Fried Movie), Top Secret! lampoons practically every film genre. Specifically, however, this is a hybrid of an "Elvis" movie and a World War II "underground resistance" thriller. In his film debut, Val Kilmer plays Nick Rivers, a Presley-like American rock idol sent behind the Iron Curtain on a goodwill tour. Before long, he is involved in a complex espionage scheme thanks to beautiful Lucy Gutteridge, the daughter of a scientist (Michael Gough) held captive by the Communists. Also essential to the action is flamboyant resistance leader Christopher Villiers, who behaves like Victor Mature in Betrayed (1954) and talks like James Mason. Adhering to Z-A-Z's cheerful disregard for people, places and events, the East Germans are depicted as Nazis, while the Underground is comprised of Frenchmen. The plot is mainly an excuse for the Z-A-Z team's fondness for joke-a-minute lampoonery, skewering cinematic targets ranging from The Blue Lagoon (1980) to The Wizard of Oz (1939). As in Z-A-Z's other efforts, Top Secret! scores its biggest yocks when invoking cliches that we never realized were cliches-and falls on its face whenever attempting a too-obvious gag (the biggest clinker: that pigeon statue in the park). Everyone has his or her favorite bits in this film: our faves include the resistance fighter named Deja Vu ("Haven't we met somewhere before?"), Kilmer's horrible nightmare while being tortured (he arrives too late to take final exams), the army-booted cow, the sensitive Pinto, and the East German National Anthem, sung to the tune of the Shorewood (Wisconsin) High School marching song. But let's say no more: comedy of this nature is designed to be seen, not written or read about. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

This drama chronicles the experiences of three women as they endure the rigors of NASA training and compete with each other to become the first female astronaut in US history. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Mel Gibson stars in this period political thriller directed by Peter Weir. Set in Indonesia during the 1965 coup against President Sukarno, the film stars Gibson as Guy Hamilton, an Australian wire-service reporter covering the scene. Whenever Hamilton becomes too glib or indifferent for his own good, he is brought back to earth by his "conscience," photographer Billy Kwan (played in male drag by diminutive actress Linda Hunt, who won an Academy Award for her performance). As all of Jakarta sinks into disarray, Hamilton pursues a romance with British attaché Jill Bryant (Sigourney Weaver). Filmed on location in the Philippines and Australia, the film was financed by MGM, in the first such American-Australian financial collaboration. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Producer/director/star Clint Eastwood takes his sweet time getting Firefox started. Eastwood plays Mitchell Gant, a past-his-prime U.S. pilot, smuggled into the Soviet Union to steal a new Russian supersonic fighting plane. Fortunately the KGB men are as burnt out as Gant, enabling him to abscond with the plane with the greatest of ease. The rest of the film is a protracted chase, pitting Gant against scores of impersonal MIG pilots. Based on a novel by Craig Thomas. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Bruno Ganz plays a West German journalist whose frequent assignments to war-torn nations have left him jaundiced. He is assigned to cover the civil war in Beirut. The combination of his harrowing experiences on the job and his after-hours relationship with widow Hannah Schygulla affects Ganz deeply, in spite of the wall he's built around himself. He suffers a crisis of conscience when he is forced to commit himself to someone--and something--for the first time in his life. The plot of Circle of Deceit was based on the reminiscences of novelist Nicolas Born; the picture's realism is grotesquely enhanced by the decision to film on location in Beirut, surrounding the actors with genuine wartime carnage--bodies and all. Originally titled Die Falschung, Circle of Deceit is not a comfortable experience, but few will stop watching once the film has started. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Devery Freeman's novel Father Sky was the inspiration for the far-fetched but convincingly acted and directed Taps. When an exclusive military school is threatened with demolition by a rapacious real-estate company, the students, headed by Timothy Hutton, take drastic action. Utilizing every bit of military know-how at their disposal, the boys take over the school, arm themselves to the teeth, and prepare to do battle against the "invading" developers. General George C. Scott, the head of the academy, tries to quell the rebellion, but soon he too is swept up by the students' to-the-death determination when the Army is called in to rout the boys. Whenever the action of Taps begins to flag, we recommend that you keep an eye on the show-stopping performances of Sean Penn (in his movie debut) and Tom Cruise as two of the cadets. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Even animal lovers may balk at this light, light drama about how a missionary (Genevieve Bujold) and Bobby (Rick Schroder), a young boy manage to populate a deserving island with critters of all types. Noah Dugan (Elliott Gould) is a pilot in need of escaping his creditors and he agrees to fly the animals to their destination. Bobby and the missionary sneak on board and the plane crash-lands on another island on which two Japanese soldiers are still fighting World War II. The story veers ever more into fantasy as the Japanese and the pilot join together to make a boat out of the plane with the goal of taking every animal with them into uncharted waters. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide

This made-for-TV historical drama chronicles the personal and professional lives of Colonel Tibbets and the airmen who dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The story is based on a book by Gordon Thomas and Max Gordon Witts and also looks at the ways in which the aftermath of the bombing affected their lives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In mid-1978, the cult fantasy guru and comic book illustrator Bill Richert -- after months directing Jeff Bridges and Belinda Bauer in the scattergun carnival of a political satire, Winter Kills -- faced a real head-scratcher. With Winter yet to be completed, Richert's backer, Avco-Embassy, lopped off all funding and suspended production indefinitely. Projectless, Richert spun around, picked up an unproduced feature script by drive-in director Larry Cohen (Q, It's Alive!), and somehow found the cash to churn out a second piece of eccentricity with Bridges and Bauer in the leads, this one for Columbia Pictures -- hoping he could use the latter's earnings to polish off Winter. Thus began a very shaky history over the next 30 years for a little film originally called The American Success Company. This ghost of a picture bombed at the box office in 1979, was later reedited twice by Richert under distinct titles (first as American Success in 1981 and then as Success in 1983), and received limited theatrical distribution. It has since fallen through the cracks of movie history, never receiving official distribution on home video but popping up in bootleg versions under the titles Good as Gold and The Ringer. The movie tells the story of Harry Flowers (Bridges), a Milquetoast employee of a Munich-based credit card company, AmSucCo (did AmEx raise any eyebrows at that?), married to the daughter (Bauer) of his slightly tyrannical boss (Ned Beatty). Flowers allows himself to be shoved around and coddled by everyone, until he suddenly decides to slip into an assumed identity -- that of a gruff, bull-by-the-horns modern-day prince, determined to "rescue himself" from wimpdom by learning sexual aggression from a prostitute (Bianca Jagger) and ultimately wresting millions from the hand that feeds him. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

This expensive production attempts to bring Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer's subtle philosophical novel The Magician of Lublin to the screen. In the story, Yasha Mazur (Alan Arkin) is a perfectionistic turn-of-the-century Jewish stage magician, con-man and mystic, who is touring through eastern Europe, at the same time managing to progressively sabotage his own career. In nearly every town Yasha has a girlfriend, from the youthful Zeftel (Valerie Perrine), to the feisty Elizabeta (Shelly Winters). His harassed manager/impressario Wolsky (Lou Jacobi) arranges for him to have one more chance at theatrical success, which requires that he pull off the trick of a lifetime in a Warsaw theater. Reviewers, fans of Singer's works, and ordinary filmgoers all expressed disappointment in this beautifully filmed and ambitious movie, which was a box-office failure. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Adapted for the screen by novelist Joseph Wambaugh himself, The Black Marble stars Robert Foxworth as a burned-out, hard-drinking cop who is teamed with idealistic lady officer Paula Prentiss. These two polar opposites wade their way through a seamy urban world of corruption and hopelessness. The film is peppered with supporting players, of which include Harry Dean Stanton, James Woods, John Hancock and Barbara Babcock. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Made for television, Ishi: The Last of His Tribe is based on the book by Theodora Kroeber. Kroeber's anthropologist husband Alfred was the man who, in 1911, discovered the last surviving member of the Yahi Indian tribe living in a barn in Oroville California. Dennis Weaver plays the Kroeber counterpart, here named Professor Fuller, who befriends the Native American Ishi and learns his language (much of the film is subtitled). Ishi is played by Joseph Running Fox as a teenager and Eloy Phil Casados as an adult. This informative and deeply moving project was conceived for TV by Dalton Trumbo, who died in 1976 before finishing his script, which was completed by his son Christopher Trumbo. Ishi: Last of His Tribe is to some people's way of thinking superior to the more expensive cable-TV retelling of the same story, 1992's Last of His Tribe, which was bogged down in revisionism and political correctness. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide