Peter Masterson Movies

Drawing inspiration from the intervention of a well-known American playwright, director Peter Masterson's adaptation of the stage play by JoAnn Tedesco (who also wrote the screenplay) takes viewers on an emotional rollercoaster ride as one man's support system struggle to save their friend from his own worst enemy - himself. Leopold De Angeli is a highly intelligent playwright who is personable, intuitive, and sharp as a tack when he's sober. But these days sobriety doesn't come often to Leopold, and his friends are getting concerned. Everyone can sense the disaster that's looming just over the horizon, yet by confronting their friend about his alcoholism, everyone in this well-meaning group will have to face up to their own inner demons as well. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

West of Here, the directorial debut of filmmaker Peter Masterson's son Peter C.B. Masterson, centers around the aftermath of the death of songwriter Gil Blackwell's (Josh Hamilton) cousin and collaborator, Josiah (Norbert Leo Butz). After Josiah's death, Gil starts off on a cross-country trek from Boston to San Francisco in order to settle his cousin's affairs. Once there, he meets Josiah's ex-girlfriend (Mary Stuart Masterson). West of Here also features Tate Donovan, Elisabeth Moss, Guillermo Diaz, John Elsen, Kevin Cooney, and Carlin Glynn. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

In this drama about love and how it can go wrong, Reese McHenry (Sam Shepard) is the owner of a clothing store who, in 1966, hires Carol Fitzsimmons (Diane Keaton) to work for him as a seamstress. Carol is a widow, and Reese's wife is in a coma; both are lonely, and they begin a habit of going to the movies every Wednesday afternoon, and sometimes also meeting for furtive sexual assignations. But Reese is unable to commit to a more permanent relationship as long as his wife is alive, despite his feelings for Carol, and their love remains in a state of limbo for the next 30 years. Meanwhile, Reese's son Tom (Robert Patrick) and Carol's daughter Katherine (Diane Lane) become romantically involved with no knowledge of their parent's relationship, but Tom's unwillingness to commit mirrors his father's own failings. The Only Thrill was based on the play The Trading Post by Larry Ketron, who also wrote the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A plane crash lands an amateur Los Angeles marshal and a dangerous prisoner in the Alaskan wilderness. Their desperate situation forces them to rely on each other. However, the city-boy cop knows nothing about survival in the wilds while his captive is an expert. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Night Game is a sweetly irreverent, low-key comedy which is also an engaging crime thriller. Mike Seaver (Roy Scheider), an ex-ballplayer who's now a homicide detective with the Galveston police, has to solve some vicious grappling-hook murders, somehow linked to hometown-wins by the Houston Astros baseball team. Engaged to cute, young, blonde concession-owner Roxy (Karen Young), Steve must juggle his romance with Roxy while at the same time watching out for her. Roxy is just the type of woman who the murderer stalks, brutally murdering them and leaving their bodies by the boardwalk where Roxy manages her concession with her mother Alma (Carlin Glynn). While the premise of the plot is somewhat hard to believe, the entire cast turns in solid performances as colorful, offbeat characters. The script, by Spencer Eastman and Anthony Palmer is well-written and highly amusing with a level of gallows wit uncommon in a crime thriller. The climax, although obvious to all but the most unsophisticated movie-goer, doesn't spoil the fun of this unusual film which is stylishly staged and sufficiently gripping. ~ Linda Rasmussen, Rovi

Siblings Eric Roberts and Julia Roberts appear in this old-fashioned saga about oppressed Sicilian wine-growers in 19th-century California. Giancarlo Giannini stars as Sebastian Collogero, the robust Italian patriarch who is battling with railroad mogul William Bradford Berrigan (Dennis Hopper) to prevent his land from being taken over by the rail company. Sebastian's spirited son, Marco (Eric Roberts), is in love with Angelica (Lara Harris), the daughter of a rival wine-grower's clan. Marco is not very concerned about the warfare about to erupt between the wine-growers and the railroad until Berrigan's thugs torture and kill Sebastian in front of his daughter Maria (Julia Roberts). Marco then gets his friends together and organizes a revolt against Berrigan and his railroad empire. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Adapted by Horton Foote from his own television play, A Trip to Bountiful is set in 1947 Houston. Forced by circumstances to live her loathsome son (John Heard) and daughter-in-law (Carlin Glynn), elderly Geraldine Page wants nothing more out of life than to return to her home town of Bountiful. Escaping from her family's clutches, Page boards a bus to Bountiful, where she makes the acquaintance of young Rebecca DeMornay. The two women immediately hit it off, and their trip is a most pleasant one. Eventually, sheriff Richard Bradford, ordered to find Page and bring her back to her family, catches up with the old woman just 12 miles from Bountiful. Feeling sorry for Page, Bradford permits her to complete her sentimental journey, even though he knows full well that Bountiful is now a ghost town of empty ruins and dilapidated shacks. It doesn't matter, though: Page sees Bountiful just as it was when she left it, and for the first time in years she is truly happy and at peace with herself. After several near-misses, Geraldine Page finally won an Academy Award for A Trip to Bountiful (incidentally, the original TV production, which still exists in kinescope form, starred Lillian Gish and Eva Marie Saint). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Loosely based on a true story this sudsy made-for-television courtroom drama tells the story of a rather hedonistic young divorcee who is accused of killing her own child. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In the William Goldman-scripted, Bryan Forbes-directed adaptation of Ira Levin's savagely satiric sci-fi novel The Stepford Wives, housewife Joanna (Katharine Ross) moves with husband Walter (Peter Masterson) and their children to the "ideal" suburban community of Stepford, CT. Slowly, Joanna deduces that something is amiss; most of the other housewives are vapid creatures who speak in trivialities and live only to please their husbands. Together with new friend Bobby (Paula Prentiss), she investigates this curious status quo. When Bobby also succumbs to cloying sweetness, Joanna discovers that Stepford's husbands have conspired with male chauvinist scientists to replace all the wives with computerized android duplicates. The Stepford Wives became a massive, runaway hit, earning four million dollars domestically. Mega-producer Scott Rudin and director Frank Oz teamed up for a remake in 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Pueblo is a 2-hour videotaped special, originally telecast March 29, 1973 on ABC Theatre. Hal Holbrook stars as commander Lloyd M. Bucher, who in January of 1968 was forced to surrender the USS Pueblo to North Korea. The drama is staged in an impressionistic manner, with dramatized transcripts from Bucher's subsequent Naval Review Board testimony flashing back to isolated moments of terror and torment during the Pueblo crew's 11-month sojourn in a North Korean prison camp. Despite network restrictions of the era, Pueblo is refreshingly frank, right down to the first-ever TV display of a familiar obscene gesture (which the American prisoners explain away to their captors as a "salute"!) Written by Stanley R. Greenberg, Pueblo was later adapted to a stage play, starring Shepperd Strudwick as Bucher. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Horton Foote was the adapting hand behind this superlative black and white filmization of the 1939 William Faulkner story Tomorrow. Framed in flashback, the film explores the personal reasons that semi-literate farmer Robert Duvall is the lone jury holdout in the guilty verdict for a young killer on trial. We learn in a gradually unfolding fashion that the boy is the son of Olga Bellin, a woman with whom Duvall had had an intense personal involvement some twenty years earlier. Foote's script had previously been utilized on a Playhouse 90 TV version of Tomorrow, which starred Sterling Hayden. Universally regarded as the best-ever film adaptation of a Faulkner work, Tomorrow was in danger of vanishing without truly finding its audience, when it was given a well received TV premiere on PBS on December 17, 1984--twelve years after the film was made. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The winner of the 1967 Oscar for Best Picture (as well as four other Oscars), In the Heat of the Night is set in a small Mississippi town where an unusual murder has been committed. Rod Steiger plays sheriff Bill Gillespie, a good lawman despite his racial prejudices. When Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier), a well-dressed northern African-American, comes to town, Gillespie instinctively puts him under arrest as a murder suspect. Tibbs reveals himself to be a Philadelphia police detective; after he and Gillespie come to a grudging understanding of one another, Tibbs offers to help in Gillespie's investigation. As the case progresses, both Gillespie and Tibbs betray a tendency to jump to culture-dictated conclusions. Still, the case is solved thanks to the informal teamwork of the two law officers. Based on the novel by John Ball, In the Heat of the Night inspired two sequels, both starring Poiter as Virgil Tibbs. In 1987, a TV series version of In the Heat of the Night appeared, with Carroll O'Connor as Gillespie and Howard Rollins as Tibbs. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this WW II drama, a unit of Marines have 96 hours to make it through the dense Philippine jungle and locate a Japanese-American girl who has information needed to plan the invasion of the Japanese-occupied island. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi