Albert S. Ruddy Movies

N. Richard Nash's novel of a horse trainer who agrees to head down to Mexico in order to bring back his boss' spoiled son is brought to the screen in this QED International production. Albert Ruddy produces, with The Lincoln Lawyer's Brad Furman directing from a script that Nash adapted himself. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Sienna Miller and James Franco star in first-time producer/director Gregory Mackenzie's twisted romance about a honeymooning couple who discovers that sometimes love is stronger than death. Recent parolee Silas (Franco) has just been blackmailed into marrying the beautiful Camille (Miller), and he's none to happy about the arrangement; despite the fact that he can't stand her, she still worships the ground he walks on. But now the law is family, and should the union fail, Silas' new uncle-in-law, Sheriff Foster (Scott Glen), will ensure that the disgruntled groom is sent back to the slammer in a flash. Immediately after the wedding, however, things get complicated when Silas and Camille are run off the road by a reckless truck driver. When Silas regains conscious and stumbles over to Camille's contorted body, it's obvious that she's suffered a fatal injury in the accident. After fleeing the scene and attempting to summon help, Silas returns to the sight of the crash and finds Camille nursing a serious neck injury down by the river while frantically trying to get the grass stains out of her wedding dress. Desperate, the couple hitches a ride with the nomadic Cowboy Bob (David Carradine), eventually realizing that Camille didn't survive the accident despite the fact that she's somehow able to walk and talk with the living. As Camille's body begins to decay, the situation grows complicated when the couple learns that the police are on their trail for an imagined robbery and murder. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

 

One of the toughest and best-remembered sports movies of the 1970s gets a humorous makeover in this comedy. Paul "Wrecking" Crewe (Adam Sandler) was once a famous professional football player, but after several years out of the limelight and an alcohol problem have taken their toll, Crewe is arrested for a serious traffic accident aggravated by the fact he was drunk. Crewe is sentenced to Allenville Penitentiary, where Warden Hazen (James Cromwell) is something of a football fan. Hazen had organized his guards into an impressive football team, and clears a healthy profit by taking bets on their games. Looking to make the competition more interesting, Hazen suggests that Crewe put together a team from the inmate population to play his guards. With the help of fellow prisoner Caretaker (Chris Rock), Crewe recruits the heaviest hitters from the cell block for the team, but the guys don't play like a unit until Crewe and Caretaker get some help from Nate Scarborough (Burt Reynolds), a former college and NFL coach doing hard time. Adapted from Robert Aldrich's 1974 box-office smash of the same name, The Longest Yard also features rap star Nelly and Nicholas Turturro; the film has previously been loosely remade in 2001 as Mean Machine, with the action moved to England and the game changed to soccer. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Based upon Peter Biskind's book of the same name, this BBC-produced documentary traces the rise of a generation of Hollywood filmmakers who briefly changed the face of movies with a more personal approach that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable onscreen. Influenced by such European directors as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini, the movement kicked off in the mid-'60s with two films directed by Arthur Penn: Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde. (The latter had been offered to both Godard and Truffaut before it wound up with producer/star Warren Beatty and Penn.) What really kicked it into gear was the unexpected success of Easy Rider, a biker-road movie that became that rare film phenomenon: acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival and a huge commercial success. Film school graduates, the first generation brought up with movies as their main cultural reference, flooded the studios (whose own regimes were changing) with production chieftains such as Robert Evans of Paramount and David Picker at United Artists; they approved risky-looking projects and allowed relatively untested filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola to take on heavyweight movies such as The Godfather or Hollywood newcomers like Britain's John Schlesinger to make quirky stories like Midnight Cowboy. Enriched by success with their TV show The Monkees, producer Bert Schneider and director Bob Rafelson formed a company that produced not only Easy Rider but seminal '70s films such as Five Easy Pieces and the Oscar-winning Vietnam War documentary Hearts and Minds. Another godfather to the new movement was producer Roger Corman, who gave early career opportunities to Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme on low-budget projects that allowed them to learn their craft.

Two things brought this movement to an end: Some individual filmmakers' personal excesses (such disastrous flops as Dennis Hopper's follow-up to Easy Rider, appropriately titled The Last Movie, and Scorsese's New York, New York), and the studios growing fascination with special effects-driven B-movies. An outgrowth of two box-office and marketing juggernauts -- Jaws and Star Wars -- the resulting films became entertainments rather than personal statements of the directors. Narrated by William H. Macy, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls features vintage clips of Coppola, Scorsese, Beatty, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, and Pauline Kael. It also includes original interview material with Penn; Corman; Bogdanovich; Hopper; Picker; writer/directors John Milius and Paul Schrader; actresses Karen Black, Cybill Shepherd, Margot Kidder, and Jennifer Salt (the latter two shared a house in Malibu, a social center for young filmmakers); actors Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, and Richard Dreyfuss; producers Jerome Hellman, Michael Phillips, and Jonathan Taplin; editor Dede Allen; production designer Polly Platt; writers David Newman, Joan Tewksbury, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck; cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond; agent Mike Medavoy; and former production executive Peter Bart. Among the films discussed are Rosemary's Baby, The Wild Bunch, Mean Streets, American Graffiti, The Rain People, Midnight Cowboy, M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. (Three interviewees -- cinematographer Gordon Willis, critic Andrew Sarris, and writer-director Monte Hellman -- listed in the Variety review of this film, were not included in this version from a screening on Bravo.) ~ Tom Wiener, Rovi

Tom Selleck stretches his dramatic range by playing a liberal Democrat in this comedy-drama satirizing the underside of party politics. Governor James Pryce (Tom Selleck) is a well-respected politician with a strong reformist streak who is a shoo-in for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, thanks to a well-run primary campaign organized by his manager Lauren Hartman (Laura Linney), and the savvy speechmaking and moral support of his wife Jenny (Nancy Travis). Now Pryce has to pick a vice-presidential candidate, which proves to be not all that simple. Senator Parker Gable (Robert Culp) helped give Pryce his start in politics, and his wife Meg (Faye Dunaway), a Queen Bee on the Washington social scene, has asked Pryce to consider Gable as VP. Pryce believes Gable would be the right man for the job, but he's well known to chase anything in a skirt, and Pryce thinks his nomination would be a scandal waiting to happen. Besides Gable, the two most likely choices for Pryce's running mate are Senator Mitchell Morris (Bruce McGill), whose strong links to a number of corporate benefactors make Pryce nervous, and Senator Terrence Randall (Bob Grunton), whose outspoken support of campaign finance reform does not sit well with Shawna Morgan (Teri Hatcher), the fundraising expert who has been filling Pryce's war chest. Running Mates was produced for the TNT cable network, where it first aired on August 13, 2000; Gerald Rafshoon, the film's executive producer, has an inside perspective on Washington wheelings and dealings, having served as White House director of communications under President Jimmy Carter. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

After several weeks filming The Scout in the late 1970s, star Peter Falk and director Howard Zieff abandoned the project. Two decades later, writer Andrew Bergman gave his original script to Albert Brooks and Monica Johnson, who polished it as a vehicle for Brooks and director Michael Ritchie. Brooks stars as Al Percolo, a talent scout for the New York Yankees whose latest recruit (Michael Rapaport) has just vomited on the field and fled. Sent to Mexico as punishment by his boss (Lane Smith), Percolo finds phenomenal young pitcher Steve Nebraska (Brendan Fraser). Before he can get back to the Big Apple, however, Percolo gets pink-slipped by the Yankees, so he offers Nebraska as a free agent. After a stellar tryout, Nebraska is signed for millions. Soon after, he starts to exhibit odd behaviors that may be linked to psychological problems. A psychiatrist (Dianne Wiest) hired by the ball club wants Nebraska in daily therapy, so Percolo ends up babysitting a mentally unstable pitcher. Brooks's normally winning mix of laughs with psychological insights didn't add up to box office or critical success, despite cameos from real-life sports figures such as George Steinbrenner and Steve Garvey. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Karate-champion-turned-movie-star Chuck Norris was ideally cast as the title character in the contemporary Western series, Walker, Texas Ranger. Introduced as a two-hour TV movie on April 21, 1983, the weekly, hour-long CBS series starred Norris as Cordell Walker, who worked out of the Dallas office of the Texas Rangers with his youthful partner, Baltimore-born former football pro Jimmy Trivette (Clarence Gilyard Jr.). While Jimmy, like his superiors, preferred to rely upon modern crime fighting techniques -- computers, forensic science, strict adherence to civil liberties and due process -- the impassive, taciturn Walker was generally of the opinion that criminals were subhuman scum, worthy only of a slug in the face or a kick in the groin. Kicking, in fact, was a Walker specialty, notably whenever he came within close proximity of a locked door or bolted window. Though she didn't always approve of his methods, Walker's off-and-on girlfriend, assistant D.A. Alex Cahill (Sheree J. Wilson), admired his strong sense of justice and fair play, especially when protecting those weaker than himself. Too, Alex found Walker extremely handy whenever she got kidnapped, which seemed to happen at the rate of once every other week! Despite his loyalty to his friends, those close to Walker remained so at their own risk, inasmuch as the bad guys were not above hurting them to get to him. Others within Walker's orbit included his old pal C.D. Parker (Noble Willingham), a former Ranger who, after being invalidated out of the service, opened up a restaurant; Uncle Ray Firewalker (Floyd Red Crow Westerman), the sagacious old Native American who raised Walker from childhood and had taught him the value of restraint and contemplation -- unless of course, violence was absolutely called for; Carlos Sandoval (Marco Sanchez), an undercover detective who owed his life to Walker; and Walker's former martial arts student Trent Malloy (James Wlcek), who owned a karate school (and who, teamed with Carlos Sandoval, was briefly spun off into his own TV series, Sons of Thunder). During the series' final seasons, undercover Rangers Francis Gage (Judson Mills) and Sydney Cooke (Nia Peeples) linked up with Walker's team. In the course of events, Uncle Ray Firewalker passed away; C.D. Parker was killed by a band of elusive assassins who intended to work their way up to Walker in their efforts to knock off every Texas Ranger in Dallas; and in the series' seventh season, Walker and Alex became engaged, with wedding bells ringing at the end of season eight and the birth of a baby daughter in the final episode. After ending its CBS run on July 28, 2001, Walker, Texas Ranger launched what was apparently an endless rerun cycle in syndication and on cable. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Derived from Paul Gallico's novella The Snow Goose, this Christmas fable stars Kris Kristofferson as Jericho Adams, a one-time Indian fighter. On Christmas Eve, he, his wife (Kim Cattrall) and their child are kidnapped by a band of revenge-minded Blackfeet warriors being hunted by the U.S. Cavalry. After Jericho's violent escape plans go awry, it's up to his wife to earn their freedom through more peaceful means: by telling the Nativity store to a tribe who has never before heard it. ~ Jason Ankeny, Rovi

Though officially based on Pierre Schoendoerffer's novel L'Adieu au Roi, Farewell to the King also bears echoes of Conrad's Heart of Darkness and Lord Jim--with a lot of filmmaker John Milius' own Hemingwayesque slant thrown in. During World War II, American POW Learoyd (Nick Nolte) escapes a Japanese firing squad. Hiding himself in the wilds of Borneo, Learoyd is adopted by a head-hunting tribe of Nyak Indians, who consider him "divine" because of his elaborate tattoos. Before long, Learoyd is the reigning king of the Nyaks. When British soldiers approach him to rejoin the war against the Japanese, Learoyd resists (in language so flowery that it could have been written by Sir Walter Scott). But when his own tribe is threatened by the invaders, the "king" deigns to fight for their rights. Farewell to the King is breathtakingly photographed and quite exciting at times. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

(Burt Reynolds) as J.J. McClure takes off across the country again in this rickety sequel to Cannonball Run. A sheik has offered $1,000,000 to the first driver to reach a destination in Connecticut from Redondo Beach, California, inspiring J.J. and others to go for the gold. With cameos from more name performers than any dozen films together, (Frank Sinatra and the rat pack, Telly Savalas, Susan Anton, Shirley MacLaine, Jackie Chan, Sid Caesar, Marilu Henner, Catherine Bach, etc., etc., etc.), the movie becomes a pastiche and is executed as though no rehearsals were required, or ever happened. A disparate group of people racing to get a lot of money was first successfully exploited in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, a much better film, and with just as many cameos, in fact. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

A crack military team led by pilot Ace Hunter (Barry Bostwick) is called in to save democracy in a small nation threatened by tyranny. ~ John Bush, Rovi

Burt Reynolds and director Hal Needham team up for the fourth time, this time bringing an all-star cast of characters on a cross-country car race in the vein of 1976 release The Gumball Rally. The police are the least of the Cannonballers' worries as they push the pedal to the metal in a race from Connecticut to California. Reynolds stars as J.J. McClure, a speed-loving racer disguised as an ambulance driver to outsmart the police. He is paired up with Dom Deluise, who plays his dimwitted sidekick Victor and who, on occasion, dons the suit of Captain Chaos. Rat Packers Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. join the lineup as Ferrari-driving priests, while martial arts expert Jackie Chan takes on one of his first U.S. film roles driving a souped-up Subaru. Among the many other stars are Roger Moore doing a parody of his 007 character, complete with secret devices and weapons, Farrah Fawcett as Pamela, a woman McClure and Chaos pick up, and Jamie Farr as a deranged Islamic sheik. Jack Elam joins the cast as a crazed proctologist along for McClure's ambulance ride, and Needham makes a cameo as a patient. ~ Rachel Koetje, Rovi