Len Cariou Movies

Matthew Keelar stars in this drama based on the true-life story of Dan Jansen, who strives to keep the pledge he made to his sister on her death bed by winning the Olympic gold medal in speed skating. The cast also includes Len Cariou and Jayne Brook. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Jack Nicholson plays retiring insurance actuary Warren Schmidt in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt. Schmidt has settled into a dormant life. He has an unfulfilling marriage to Helen (June Squibb), and conspires to spend as much time away from her as possible. Schmidt's daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) is engaged to Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney), a man Schmidt believes is entirely unworthy of his daughter. When Helen unexpectedly dies, Warren is adrift until he discovers old love letters sent to his wife from his best friend. This inspires Warren to make a valiant effort to stop his daughter's wedding. His plans start to go awry when he meets Randall's extroverted mother, Roberta (Kathy Bates). About Schmidt was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival where many were surprised that Nicholson did not take home the Best Actor award. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

A handful of men and women "of a certain age" pick up the pieces of their lives and look for new love after the loss of their mates in this comedy drama from writer-director Susan Seidelman. Jack (Len Cariou) married his high school sweetheart when they were still in their teens, and when she dies in her early sixties, he is emotionally devastated. Jack's friends and family insist he needs to start living again, and he begins attending a support group for bereaved senior citizens. Jack strikes up a friendship with fellow widower Harry (Joseph Bologna), who offers advice on making time with the ladies, something he's developed a strong interest in since his wife's passing. At their meetings, Jack makes the acquaintance of Sandy (Sally Kellerman), an attractive and intelligent woman who - via a number of obvious sexual advances - makes no secret of her attraction to Jack, though he isn't sure he's ready for a new relationship. Jack and Harry also cross paths with Sandy's friends Marilyn (Brenda Vaccaro), who recently lost her husband to an absent-minded driver with a cellular phone, and Lois (Dyan Cannon), who still flaunts her considerable sex appeal and is dating a younger man, Donald (Michael Nouri). Also screened as The Boynton Beach Bereavement Club, The Boynton Beach Club also stars Renee Taylor, Bologna's wife and frequent acting partner. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this action thriller, a group of Islamic terrorists, led by Nagi Hassan (David Suchet), highjacks a 747 jetliner with 400 passengers aboard, but Lt. Col. Austin Travis (Steven Seagal), a United States intelligence agent, is convinced that this isn't an ordinary case of air piracy. His suspicions are soon confirmed; Hassan's men have obtained a large cache of stolen Soviet nerve gas, and they are using the 747 to smuggle the deadly gas into the United States, where they intend to use it to wipe out Washington D.C. and possibly the entire East Coast. As the jet approaches the U. S., engineer Dennis Cahill (Oliver Platt) designs a plan in which a military plane will be able to transfer U.S. soldiers onto the 747 and regain control of the plane and its deadly cargo. However, when Travis dies in the course of the mission, intelligence agent Dr. David Grant (Kurt Russell) is forced to take his place alongside explosives expert Cappy (Joe Morton), commando Rat (John Leguizamo), and stewardess-turned-anti-terrorist Jean (Halle Berry). Executive Decision was the first directorial assignment for veteran film editor Stuart Baird; he cut the film as well. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An attempted black comedy, Getting In endeavors to satirize the cut-throat competition surrounding the medical school admissions process -- a struggle that in this case literally turns deadly. Gabriel Higgs is an aspiring medical student, not out of a great dedication to his craft but due to pressure by his parents, who expect him to follow the long-standing family tradition of attending Johns Hopkins and embarking upon a prominent medical career. However, a poor showing in the admissions test and several other mishaps conspire to place Gabriel on the school's waiting list. Desperate to gain entrance to the school before being disinherited, Gabriel takes to bribing his fellow waiting-list candidates to ensure his admission. But when the students at the top of the waiting list start turning up dead in rather nasty ways, Gabriel finds himself in real trouble. He must discover who is committing these crimes before he is blamed -- or becomes the next victim himself. Easily forgettable, the film is mainly notable for featuring early performances by future television stars Matthew Perry and Calista Flockhart, and for being the directorial debut of Doug Liman, who would receive critical acclaim for his second film, Swingers. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

In this murder mystery, one twin sister assumes the identity of the other after she is killed in a boating accident. She does not realizes that the dead twin held a fatal secret. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this supernatural nostalgia piece, a young boy tracks down a murderer with help from the ghosts of a slain little girl and her mother. In a voice-over, grown-up writer Frankie Scarlatti describes the disturbing events that intruded on his idyllic small-town boyhood. Locked in the school cloakroom by some other boys on Halloween 1962, young Frankie (Lukas Haas) encounters the ghost of Melissa Anne Montgomery (Joelle Jacobi), who re-enacts her own death by strangulation just before an unseen adult enters the school and tries to do away with Frankie himself. While recuperating in the care of his widower father (Alex Rocco), Frankie conducts some detective work and learns that Melissa is one of ten children killed over the past decade. Further encounters with the girl's ghost -- and the mournful specter of her mother, the Lady in White (Karen Powell) -- do little to help the boy solve the mystery of who killed the kids. Meanwhile, an innocent black maintenance man becomes the scapegoat on which the police hang the killings. However, thanks to the damning but enigmatic evidence Frankie has discovered, the boy faces imminent danger from the actual killer, who ends up lurking terrifyingly close to home. The sophomore feature from writer/director Frank LaLoggia, who made his name with the low-budget horror film Fear No Evil, Lady in White starred the young Lukas Haas halfway between his appearances in Witness and Rambling Rose. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Logan (Chris Noth) and Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) run up against a "wall of brass" when they investigate the death of a female Navy officer, who was last seen alive at a wild party. The detectives' only witness is Ensign Evan Walters (Michael Dolan), who claims that he can remember nothing of the events leading up to the woman's death. Resistance to the successful prosecution of the case reaches to the highest levels of Navy bureaucracy -- but assistant D.A. Stone (Michael Moriarty) is determined to break through the official coverup. Future E.R. regular Julianna Margulies is seen as Lt. Ruth Mendoza. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The 1981 TV version of Madame X was the seventh filmization of the old war-horse play by Alexandre Bisson. This time around, Tuesday Weld (replacing Susan Blakely) plays the poor woman (an airline stewardess in this version) who marries "outside her class" (hubby is a Presidential candidate). She is disgraced, gives up her baby to her wealthy in-laws, and sinks into a life of degradation. 25 years later the woman is accused of murder, and is defended in court by her own grown-up offspring. Adaptor Edward Anhalt makes a few feeble stabs at updating the story, adding drug abuse to the woman's descent into prostitution. Also, her child is now a girl instead of a boy, rabbeting a tentative feminist angle in the proceedings. Other than that, the 1981 Madame X has even less to offer than the lavish but empty 1966 Lana Turner version--except for an offbeat appearance by comedian Jerry Stiller as a slimy blackmailer. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The sixth-season opener of Murder She Wrote takes place in Athens, where mystery writer Jessica Fletcher (Angela Lansbury) is reunited with suave but inherently untrustworthy British secret agent Michael Haggerty (Len Cariou). In order to help Haggerty rescue a kidnapped fellow spy, Jessica reluctantly agrees to pose as Haggerty's wife. Before long, our heroine finds herself up to her neck in peril, especially after the authorities find a dead body in her hotel room. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Jessica (Angela Lansbury) heads to Washington to attend a special concert performed by an Eastern Bloc orchestra. Before long, Jessica is kidnapped and swept into a maelstrom of intrigue involving a pair of defecting musicians and a murdered British intelligence agent. The man behind Jessica's abduction is none other than the redoubtable M16 agent Michael Haggerty, whom Jessica had previously encountered in the Season Two episode "Widow Weep for Me"--and who is played by Angela Lansbury's onetime costar in the Broadway musical "Sweeney Todd", Len Cariou. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide