Deborah Reinisch Movies
- 1998
Can a severe back injury bring two lonely people together? Tom (John Ritter) is a respected journalist who makes the serious mistake of becoming involved with a married woman -- the wife of his publisher. Tom's editor, Irene (Katey Sagal), is forced to give him his pink slip, but when Tom sees Irene one day with her car stuck in a ditch, he decides to let bygones be bygones and help push the car back onto the road. Tom manages to do some serious damage to his back in the process, and with no job and no health insurance, he's not sure what to do about it. Irene feels awful about the situation, and makes Tom an offer -- she'll agree to an "in name only" marriage so Tom would be eligible under her insurance benefits. Tom agrees, but what started as a marriage of convenience starts taking a more romantic turn than either of them expected. Chance of a Lifetime also stars Jean Stapleton and David Naughton. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Ritter, Katey Sagal, (more)
- 1996
After her son Georgie (Kendall Cunningham) is paralyzed in a diving accident, feisty divorcee Anna Lerner (Judith Light) vows never to take a moment's rest until she finds a cure for her boy's affliction. Ultimately, Anna moves herself, Georgie and her "normal" son to a new town, there to commiserate with pioneering neurosurgeon David Decker (Tom Irwin), who agrees to an experimental spinal-cord operation that may or may not enable Georgie to walk again. Throughout the experience, Anna must not only spar with the skeptical medical community and an insensitive insurance company, but also with the resentment seething within her other son Ben (Tim Redwine), who feels neglected and forgotten. Appearing in a pivotal supporting role is Christopher Reeve, making his first film appearance since the accident which rendered him quadriplegic. Made for television, A Step Toward Tomorrow premiered November 10, 1996 on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1993
In this made-for-cable thriller an unemployed actor makes a little cash running acting classes. His troubles begin when the student he has been sleeping with calls him one day and says that she has been kidnapped. The next thing he knows, he is being framed for embezzlement and murder. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi
After her son dies of AIDS, a woman must come to terms with his abbreviated life. Sada Thompson stars as the mother in this Emmy award-winning movie that aired on PBS. Thompson is joined in her grief by her dead son's lover played by Richard Thomas. As they learn to cope with their losses, the two begin to see how each person's choices affect those who love them. Terrence McNally authored the acclaimed play on which the film was based. ~ Elizabeth Smith, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sada Thompson, Richard Thomas, (more)
Combining influences from Tex Avery cartoons to Sam Raimi horror movies to 1940s B-movies, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen followed up the stylish film noir of their debut, Blood Simple (1984), with this frantic screwball comedy. H.I. "Hi" McDonnough (Nicholas Cage) is a philosophical but slightly dim career criminal who has been arrested so often that he gets to know "Ed," short for Edwina (Holly Hunter), the officer who takes his mug shots. Hi takes a shine to Ed and promises to go straight if she marries him. She accepts, and they move to the Arizona desert, where Hi holds down a factory job and blissfully watches the sunsets with Ed. Their serenity is shattered when the couple decides that they want a child and discover that, as Hi puts it, "Ed's womb was a rocky place where my seed could find no purchase." (One of the film's many delights is Hi's unexpectedly flowery dime-novel narration.) Ed goes into a severe depression until she sees an item in the news. Nathan Arizona (Trey Wilson), owner of a chain of unpainted furniture stores, has become the father of quintuplets, and he and his wife joke that they now have more children than they know what to do with. In what seems like a perfect "helps you, helps me" situation, Hi and Ed kidnap one of the Arizona infants, figuring that they'll have a baby and the Arizonas will have less of a burden. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Nicolas Cage, Holly Hunter, (more)
In the first film of brothers Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, M. Emmett Walsh plays Visser, an unscrupulous private eye hired by Texas bar owner Marty (Dan Hedaya) to murder Marty's faithless wife Abby (Frances McDormand) and her paramour, Ray (John Getz), one of Marty's employees. But Visser is no more up-front with Marty than with anyone else; he makes some slight modifications of the original plan so that it better serves his own best interests. After a surprise double-cross and the murder of one of the important players, matters spiral out of control, and the plot gyrates through a complicated string of darkly humorous events. False assumptions, guilt, and fear all lead to a frantic attempt to conceal evidence and the heart-pounding, irony-filled denouement. Blood Simple was re-released in the summer of 2000 with a digitally-remastered soundtrack and -- at the Coens' behest -- a few minutes of dialogue trimmed. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Getz, Frances McDormand, (more)
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