M.A. Page Movies
Macaulay Culkin tries for a change of pace playing a schoolyard psychotic in The Good Son. When 12-year-old son Mark (Elijah Wood) is his mother's side as she's dying of cancer, she makes him promise her that she won't die. When she does die, Mark is consumed with grief, as well as guilt that he couldn't keep his promise. Mark's father Jack (David Morse) has to go away for a two week business trip to Tokyo shortly after his wife's death. Thinking that the blustery Maine environment will do him good, he drops Mark off with the family of his Uncle Wallace (Daniel High Kelly). At first, Mark is withdrawn, but soon he begins to warm to his Aunt Susan (Wendy Crewson), his cousin Connie (Quinn Culkin), and particularly his cousin Henry (Macauley Culkin). Mark and Henry pal around together, but Mark begins to notice some of Henry's ideas of fun differ significantly from his own. For example, Henry demonstrates his homemade crossbow by killing the neighbor's dog, and shows Mark his dummy (called "Mr. Highway") that he drops from an overpass onto a highway, causing a 10-car pileup. Mark begins to suspect that the death of Henry's baby brother wasn't an accident, and it appears Henry is now making plans to rub out his sister. But when Mark tries to warn Henry's parents of their son's homicidal tendencies, they refuse to listen to him. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Macaulay Culkin, Elijah Wood, (more)
The ghoulish cartoon family created by Charles Addams returns for a second big-screen outing darker and nastier than the first. When Morticia Addams (Anjelica Huston) gives birth to new baby boy Pubert, the other Addams children, Pugsley (Jimmy Workman) and Wednesday (Christina Ricci), devise any number of ways to kill off their new sibling. This leads Morticia and her husband, Gomez Raul Julia, to hire a nanny (Joan Cusack) to oversee all three children. But the nanny has an agenda of her own, packing the Addams children off to a horrid parody of summer camp and setting out to seduce Uncle Fester (Christopher Lloyd), all with the goal of getting her hands on the Addams family fortune. Of course, the Addams eventually triumph, with this blacker-than-most satire extolling the virtues of eccentricity and non-conformity above all. It was followed by 1999's direct-to-video Addams Family Reunion, with Darryl Hannah and Tim Curry replacing Huston and the late Julia. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anjelica Huston, Raul Julia, (more)
