Arnon Milchan Movies

It's just not William Foster's (Michael Douglas) day. Laid off from his defense job, Foster gets stuck in the middle of the mother of all traffic jams. Desirous of attending his daughter's birthday party at the home of his ex-wife (Barbara Hershey), Foster abandons his car and begins walking, encountering one urban humiliation after another (the Korean shopkeeper who obstinately refuses to give change is the worst of the batch). He also slowly unravels mentally, finally snapping at a fast-food restaurant that refuses to serve him breakfast because it's "too late." Running amok with an arsenal of weapons at the ready, Foster -- also known as "D-FENS" because of his vanity license plate -- rapidly becomes a source of terror to some, a folk hero to others. It's up to reluctant cop Prendergast (Robert Duvall), on the eve of his retirement, to bring D-FENS down. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Richard Benjamin directed this farce that plays like "Guess Who's Coming for Insemination?" Whoopi Goldberg stars as Sarah Matthews, who runs an African-American oriented bookstore in Oakland. She is raising her daughter, a beautiful high school student named Zora (Nia Long), on her own after her husband's death many years earlier. As a result of a science class blood test, Zora discovers that the man she thought was her father actually wasn't. Instead Zora finds she was the result of artificial insemination. After researching the sperm bank's records, Zora discovers, much to the surprise of Sarah and herself, that the anonymous sperm donor is in fact, Hal Jackson (Ted Danson), a loud, crude obnoxious (and white) used-car dealer who advertises on late-night television. Zora visits Hal while he is filming a commercial and Hal brushes her off. Enraged, Sarah tells Hal off, but after meeting Zora he now feels a paternal itch. Not only that, but he is beginning to feel an attraction to Sarah. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Two socialites find their view of the world changed when a young man takes advantage of their preconceptions in this thoughtful comedy-drama. Flan and Ouisa Kittredge (Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing) are a married couple who have built highly successful careers as art dealers catering to Manhattan's upper crust. The Kittredges are entertaining friends one evening when a young black man named Paul (Will Smith) appears at their door. Paul says that he's a close friend of their children, with whom he attended boarding school, and he's just been mugged and needs to get off the street for a moment. Flan and Ouisa invite him in, and they are immediately taken by Paul's intelligence and charm; he offers to prepare dinner, regales them with stories about his father, Sidney Poitier, and ends up spending the night at their apartment. However, the next morning Flan and Ouisa discover that they've been had; Paul is actually a con artist from the streets who has been pulling the wool over the eyes of many of their friends -- and his actions are beginning to have serious consequences. John Guare adapted the script from his own successful stage play; the supporting cast includes Ian McKellen, Mary Beth Hurt, Bruce Davison, and Heather Graham. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A maverick Pittsburgh policeman loses his job after he shares his suspicion that one of his colleagues is a serial killer. This thriller centers on his hunt to prove his point, a search that becomes more desperate when the killer begins killing the cop's female associates. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Andrew Davis directed this exciting thriller starring Steven Seagal, sans ponytail, and featuring electric, over-the-top performances by Gary Busey and Tommy Lee Jones. This action saga takes place on the battleship USS Missouri, about to be decommissioned from service after a visit from George Bush. When Bush departs the vessel, a band of terrorists overcome the remaining skeleton crew and take over the ship, under the ruse of holding a surprise birthday party for the ship's commander, Captain Adams (Patrick O'Neal). The band is led by Strannix (Jones), a disgruntled ex-CIA operative, and his right-hand man, the psychotic Krill (Busey). The terrorists plan to steal the ship's store of nuclear warheads, transfer them to a stolen North Korean submarine, and sell them to a Middle Eastern country. Unfortunately for Strannix, he has overlooked the ship's cook, Casey Ryback (Seagal). Ryback is a much-honored Navy SEAL who, because of a minor scandal, is quietly completing his twenty-year tour in the galley of the Missouri. Forced into action, Ryback, along with the woman who jumped out of Captain Adams' birthday cake (Erika Eleniak), knocks off the bad guys one-by-one while crawling inside the bowels of the ship. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Chevy Chase stars, though not always visibly, as Nick Halloway, a low-level businessman with an acerbic approach to life and work, whose humdrum existence utterly bores him. Nick gets an unexpected jolt of excitement when, nursing a hangover, he's the only one not to evacuate an office building that becomes a disaster area after a mishap involving nuclear testing equipment. An unexpected by-product of the accident is that it turns the molecules of the building, as well as Nick and the clothes he's wearing, transparent. When a team of shady government agents, led by David Jenkins (Sam Neill), notices that a human has been turned invisible, they try to take him into custody, planning to use him as the most dangerous secret intelligence agent the world has ever known. Distrusting their motives, the frantic and confused Nick escapes, and quickly begins learning new information about his unusual condition, such pragmatic details as trying to sleep when he can see through his eyelids and any unprocessed food he eats will give him away. Soon, however, he discovers that the scientist in charge of the experiments (Jim Norton) has no idea how to return him to normal, and begins plotting how best to live a semblance of a normal life while steering clear of his pursuers. Nick involves a beautiful woman he met the night before the accident (Daryl Hannah) in his dilemma, and soon she too becomes a target. Memoirs of an Invisible Man was adapted from a book by H.F. Saint. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

The November 22, 1963, assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy shocked the nation and the world. The brisk investigation of that murder conducted under the guidance of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren distressed many observers, even though subsequent careful investigations have been unable to find much fault with the conclusions his commission drew, the central one of which was that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone. Instead of satisfying the public, one result of the Warren Commission Report was that an unimaginable number of plausible conspiracy theories were bruited about, and these have supported a sizeable publishing mini-industry ever since. In making this movie, director Oliver Stone had his pick of supposed or real investigative flaws to draw from and has constructed what some reviewers felt was one of the most compelling (and controversial) political detective thrillers ever to emerge from American cinema. Long before filming was completed, Stone was fending off heated accusations of artistic and historical irresponsibility, and these only intensified after the film was released. In the story, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is convinced that there are some big flaws in the investigation of Oswald (Gary Oldman), and he sets out to recreate the events leading up to the assassination. Along the way, he stumbles across evidence that a great many people had reason to want to see the president killed, and he is convinced that some of them worked in concert to frame Oswald as the killer. Among the suspects are Lyndon Baines Johnson (the next president), the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Mafia. Over the course of gathering what he believes to be evidence of a conspiracy, Garrison unveils some of the grittier aspects of New Orleans society, focusing on the shady activities of local businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones). Garrison's investigations culminate in his conducting a show trial that he knows he will lose and which he is sure will ruin his career in order to get his evidence into the public record where it can't be buried again. This movie won two of the many Academy Awards for which it was nominated: one for Best Photography (Robert Richardson) and the other for Editing (Joe Hutshing). ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Ellen Barkin stars in this mystical comedy about a detestable male chauvinist temporarily reincarnated into the body of a woman. Steve Brooks (Perry King) foolishly accepts an invite for an evening of debauchery from three former girlfriends, and thinks he's got it made when he shows up to find them waiting for him in a hot tub. Eager to exact revenge on the scoundrel, the women proceed to drown him, and Steve is cast into a purgatory in which two unseen voices are deciding whether to send him to heaven or hell. Steve is given one chance to save himself from damnation -- if he can find a woman alive who actually liked him. To complicate his task and teach him a lesson, Steve is reincarnated as a sexy woman (Barkin), just the type who would have been the target of his cheesy advances. Sloppily adjusting to his new body, Steve (now Barkin) tells people he is the sister of the missing Steve Brooks, and begins working at his old advertising agency as a means toward completing his arduous task. As Steve's sister, he also enlists the help of his best friend, Walter (Jimmy Smits), despite the complication that Walter is noticeably attracted to the woman he has become. Steve's homophobia -- and several of his other hateful traits -- are put to the test. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

Following Serpico (1973) and Prince of the City (1981), veteran urban crime film director Sidney Lumet completed a thematic trilogy about New York City police corruption with this noir drama. When New York City cop Mike Brennan (Nick Nolte) shoots an unarmed Hispanic drug dealer in cold blood, he quickly plants a gun on his victim and manufactures some eyewitness testimony. D.A. Kevin Quinn (Patrick O'Neal) calls in his assistant district attorney, Al Reilly (Timothy Hutton), to conduct a perfunctory investigation of the incident, but Brennan's obvious guilt during a question and answer session makes Reilly dig deeper. The crusading lawyer is soon uncovering a web of corruption that reaches from Brennan into Quinn's office. At the same time, Reilly learns that his ex-girlfriend Nancy Bosch (Jenny Lumet, the director's daughter), is now dating his chief witness, Puerto Rican drug dealer Bobby Texador (Armand Assante). Q&A (1990) was based on the novel by Edwin Torres, a New York State Supreme Court judge whose two other novels were later adapted into the film Carlito's Way (1993). Lumet would again return to the subject of New York's corrupt criminal justice system with Night Falls on Manhattan (1997). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Divorce lawyer Danny De Vito warns his prospective client that the story he's about to tell isn't a pretty one, but the client listens with eager intensity -- as do the folks out there in the movie in the audience. The War of the Roses can best be described as a slapstick tragedy concerning the decline and literal fall of a marriage. After 17 years, Oliver (Michael Douglas) and Barbara (Kathleen Turner) Rose want a divorce. Not for this couple is there anything resembling a "civilized understanding": Barbara wants their opulent house, and Oliver isn't about to part with the domicile. Barbara nails the basement door shut while Oliver is downstairs, Oliver disrupts Barbara's fancy party by taking aim at the catered dinner, Barbara lays waste to Oliver's sports car....and so it goes, culminating in a disastrous showdown around, about and under the living room's fancy chandelier. DeVito and screenwriter Michael Leeson never let us forget that the couple's self-indulgent imbroglio exacts an awful price upon their children (Sean Astin and Heather Fairfield). The War of the Roses was adapted from the novel by Warren Adler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

John Candy's popularity from his appearances on the Canadian television series Second City TV did not translate into film success until he made the John Hughes comedy Uncle Buck. Who's Harry Crumb? was released just before the more well-known film, and some SCTV regulars make cameo appearances. In this farcical comedy, Candy plays bumbling Harry Crumb, scion of a family of great detectives, who works as a trainee in the agency his legendary grandparents founded. His slimey boss Eliot Draisen (Jeffrey Jones) assigns the inept young detective to find the kidnapped daughter of a multi-millionaire. The plot twist is that Draisen doesn't want the kidnappers found, for reasons of his own. While Crumb blithely bumbles along through various mishaps, Draisen tries to put the moves on the millionaire's wife (Annie Potts). Fans of Candy will probably enjoy this film, which he dominates with his comedic talents and (literally) large presence. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Brazil constitutes Terry Gilliam's enormously ambitious follow-up to his 1981 Time Bandits. It also represents the second installment in a trilogy of Gilliam films on imagination versus reality, that began with Bandits and ended in 1989 with The Adventures of Baron Munchausen. To create this wild, visually audacious satire, Gilliam combines dystopian elements from Orwell, Huxley and Kafka (plus a central character who mirrors Walter Mitty) with his own trademark, Monty Python-esque, jet black British humor and his gift for extraordinary visual invention. The results are thoroughly unprecedented in the cinema.

Jonathan Pryce stars as Sam Lowry, a civil servant who chooses to blind himself to the decaying, drone-like world around him. It's a world marred by oppressive automatization and towering bureaucracy, and populated by tyrannical guards who strongarm lawbreakers. And Lowry is stuck in the middle of this nightmare. Whenever real life becomes too oppressive, Sam fantasizes (to the tune of Ary Baroso's 1930s hit "Brazil") about sailing through the clouds as a winged superhero, and rescuing beautiful Jill Layton (Kim Greist) from a giant, Samurai warrior. The omnipresent computer that controls everything in the "real" world malfunctions, causing an innocent citizen to be arrested and tortured to death. When Sam routinely investigates the error, he meets - and pursues Jill , literally the girl of his dreams. But in real life, she's a tough-as-nails truck driver who initially wants nothing to do with him. It turns out that she is suspected of underground activities, in connection with a terrorist network wanted for bombing public places. The price Sam pays for his association with her is a close encounter with the man in charge of torturing troublesome citizens (Michael Palin). He is rescued - at the last minute - by maintenance man Harry Tuttle (Robert de Niro) who moonlights as a terrorist, but that only represents the beginning of his plight, for now the "system" is onto him.

Gilliam ran into enormous problems with Brazil. Universal - which produced the picture - originally slated it for release in 1984, but the studio - intimidated by the film's whopping length of 142 minutes - demanded that Gilliam trim the film to bring it in under two hours and alter the pessimistic ending. Gilliam refused; Universal shelved the picture for a year. In response, the director took out a full page ad in Variety asking studio president Sid Sheinberg when the film would be released. Sensing tremendous pressure, Universal bowed to Gilliam's insistence on fewer cuts but still demanded a happy ending. Gilliam trimmed only eleven minutes and altered the conclusion just slightly (instead of cutting to black, it fades into puffy white clouds on a blue sky, with a reprise of the title tune). It was thus released in early 1985 at 131 minutes, and of course became a seminal work; many critics regarded it at the time as the best film of the eighties. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide