Timothy Carhart Movies
Unhappy with her job and her loser boyfriend, Melanie Griffith takes a secretarial post at a major Wall Street firm. Her boss is Sigourney Weaver, an outwardly affable yuppie whose grinning visage hides a wicked and larcenous propensity for exploiting the ideas of her employees. While Weaver is incapacitated, Griffith is compelled by circumstances to pose as her boss. Her inborn business acumen and common sense enable Griffith to rise to the top of New York's financial circles, and along the way she wins the love of executive (Harrison Ford). Things threaten to take a sorry turn when Weaver returns, but it is she who suffers from the consequences of her own past duplicity. Working Girl was Melanie Griffith's breakthrough film, proving than she was more than just the off-and-on "significant other" of Don Johnson. The film was later adapted into a brief TV series, starring a pre-Speed Sandra Bullock. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Melanie Griffith, Harrison Ford, (more)
Alan Alda wrote, directed, and starred in this satirical film about the corruption of the film industry's approach to history. Alda plays Michael Burgess, a college professor who has written a historical novel about the American Revolution. The book has been turned into a script, and a Hollywood film crew descends on his North Carolina hometown to make the movie. Predictably, the director and actors make a mess of his concept, and Burgess becomes frustrated as the town is turned upside down. Desperately, he tries to salvage his concept with some last-minute script changes. To make things more complicated, Burgess falls in love with the glamorous female lead in the film, Faith Healy (Michelle Pfeiffer). Meanwhile, his long-time girlfriend, Gretchen (Lise Hilboldt) is pressuring him to get married. The film's male star, Elliott James (Michael Caine), finally shows up in town and becomes Burgess's rival for Faith's affections. Silent film star Lillian Gish appears as Burgess's smother. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Alda, Michael Caine, (more)
Everyone knows that teenagers are smarter than adults, and if given a chance the kids could save the world--if they don't blow it to bits first. The Manhattan Project tells of how 16-year-old Christopher Collet tries to alert his community to the dangers of nuclear energy. John Lithgow, a doctor in a pharmaceutical research plant wherein covert plutonium experiments are taking place, is the boy friend of Cowlet's mom Jill Eikenberry. While Lithgow is romantically occupied, Cowlet and his girl Cynthia Nixon steal the plutonium and construct their own atomic bomb. They do this, of course, as a warning to foolhardy grownups--none more foolhardy than the folks who put up good money to make this film. Manhattan Project was directed by longtime Woody Allen collaborator Marshall Brickman, whose expert sense of comic timing obscures the thickheaded "message" of this picture. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Lithgow, Christopher Collet, (more)
In this comedy drama, three exuberant high-school graduates finally find a direction in life when they decide to fix-up a ramshackle Catskill resort and turn it into a little slice of rock & roll heaven for teens. They work hard to make the repairs and pay the over $8,000 in back taxes. When locals hear of their plans, they misunderstand and try to stop the young men as do wicked industrialists and the corrupt president of the town council who want to use the locale to dump toxic wastes. The lively soundtrack features songs by Phil Collins, Julian Lennon, Arcadia, and Pete Townshend. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel Jordano, Matthew Penn, (more)
- 1985
- PG13
Based on a true story, this drama stars Sissy Spacek as Marie Ragghianti, a Tennessee housewife stuck in a bad marriage with an abusive husband and caring for a child with long-term health problems. Determined to turn her life around, Marie leaves her husband and goes back to school. Against long odds, she completes her college degree and is able to land a job with the Tennessee State Government. Thanks to hard work and being in the right place at the right time, Marie moves up the ladder to become the head of the Tennessee Parole Board. However, the more authority Marie gains, the more corruption she sees, reaching to the highest offices in the state -- Eddie Sisk (Jeff Daniels), special assistant to the governor, has worked out a system by which he can collect bribes on behalf of the governor in exchange for political favors, without the governor himself being directly implicated. An angry Marie decides that it's time she did something about the graft and dirty dealing in the parole department, but she soon discovers that the governor has many powerful friends who can easily discredit her in the press. The supporting cast includes Morgan Freeman and Trey Wilson. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sissy Spacek, Jeff Daniels, (more)
A petite New Jersey housewife finds self-fulfillment through amnesia in this new wave comedy of errors set in New York's hip '80s downtown scene. Rosanna Arquette stars as Roberta, who turns to the personals for vicarious thrills after her four-year marriage to staid hot tub salesman Gary (Mark Blum) grows stale. Her favorite classified ads trace the romance of Jim (Robert Joy), a struggling musician, and Susan (Madonna), a SoHo vamp who's just narrowly escaped being murdered alongside one of her other boyfriends -- a gangster who recently stole some Egyptian jewelry. Through a series of complicated missteps, Roberta ends up losing her memory and convincing both herself and a broodingly handsome young man named Dez (Aiden Quinn) that she's the elusive, adventurous Susan. Soon, Roberta finds herself being romanced by Dez and pursued separately by her husband, Jim, Susan, and by a murderous mobster who's looking for the stolen jewels. For her second feature outing, which was partially inspired by Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating, director Susan Seidelman filled her cast with hipster extras, downtown personalities, and New York thespians. Notable faces include comedian Steven Wright; future indie mainstay John Turturro; future TV stars Michael Badalucco and Laurie Metcalf; punk singer Richard Hell, who also starred in Seidelman's Smithereens; and performance artist Ann Magnunson, who would star in the director's Making Mr. Right. The big dance-club sequence was filmed at Danceteria, the disco that helped launch Madonna's career. The scene, and the film, helped propel "Into the Groove," one of the singer's all-time club classics, into the charts even though it was actually a b-side to the single "Angel." ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosanna Arquette, Madonna, (more)
In Peter Weir's thriller Witness, Samuel (Lukas Haas), a young Amish boy, witnesses a murder in the restroom of a Philadelphia bus station. Harrison Ford stars as John Book, the police detective investigating the murder. When Book discovers that the crime was part of a conspiracy involving several officials in his department, he flees Philadelphia to the Amish community where Samuel lives with his widowed mother, Rachel (Kelly McGillis). Slowly assimilating himself into the Amish community, Book eventually finds himself falling in love with Rachel in the midst of his investigation. Eventually, the corrupt police track Book down, and he is forced to confront them, while also trying to protect Rachel and Samuel. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Harrison Ford, Kelly McGillis, (more)
Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis and Ernie Hudson star as a quartet of Manhattan-based "paranormal investigators". When their government grants run out, the former three go into business as The Ghostbusters, later hiring Hudson on. Armed with electronic paraphernalia, the team is spectacularly successful, ridding The Big Apple of dozens of ghoulies, ghosties and long-legged beasties. Tight-lipped bureaucrat William Atherton regards the Ghostbusters as a bunch of charlatans, but is forced to eat his words when New York is besieged by an army of unfriendly spirits, conjured up by a long-dead Babylonian demon and "channelled" through beautiful cellist Sigourney Weaver and nerdish Rick Moranis. The climax is a glorious sendup of every Godzilla movie ever made-and we daresay it cost more than a year's worth of Japanese monster flicks combined. Who'd ever dream that the chubby, cheery Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man would turn out to be the most malevolent threat ever faced by New York City? When the script for Ghostbusters was forged by Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis, John Belushi was slated to play the Bill Murray role; Belushi's death in 1982 not only necessitated the hiring of Murray, but also an extensive rewrite. The most expensive comedy made up to 1984, Ghostbusters made money hand over fist, spawning not only a 1989 sequel but also two animated TV series (one of them partially based on an earlier live-action TV weekly, titled The Ghost Busters. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, (more)
College student Pondo Sinatra (Matthew Causey is anything but a party animal in this sexually explicit, low, low-budget film about his main goal in life: luring coeds into his boudoir, or wherever. Pondo is more successful at attracting flies than women, and so he begs the Devil himself to help him out a little -- and lo and behold, the winsome Miranda (Suzanne Ashley) shows up as if on cue. Some foggy dream sequences are probably meant to explain her presence, but exactly who she is seems to be irrelevant to connecting one sexual sequence with another -- which apparently need no real reason for continuity anyway. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Matthew Causey, Timothy Carhart, (more)
