Willie C. Carpenter Movies

For his fifth effort as a feature-film director, one-time cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld brought his cartoonish visual style and darkly humorous sensibilities to this adaptation of, appropriately enough, a tongue-in-cheek sci-fi comic book. Will Smith stars as James Darrel Edwards, a New York City cop with an athletic physique and a flippant, anti-authoritarian attitude toward law enforcement. After chasing down a mysterious perpetrator one night who turns out to be an alien, James is recruited by "K" (Tommy Lee Jones), a veteran of a clandestine government agency secretly policing the comings and goings of aliens on planet Earth. Nicknamed the "men in black" for their nondescript uniform of black suit, shoes, tie, and sunglasses, the agents are assigned to recover a bauble that's been stolen by an intergalactic terrorist (Vincent D'Onofrio). It seems the item is none other than the galaxy itself, and its theft has plunged humanity into the center of what's shaping up to become an interstellar war, unless K and his new wisecracking partner, now renamed "J," can stop the bad guy. On their side but somewhat in the dark is a pretty, unflappable city medical examiner (Linda Fiorentino) who has been zapped one too many times by K's ingenious memory-sapping device. Men in Black was a box office smash, inspiring an animated children's television series and a hit soundtrack album that featured a performance by star (and rapper) Smith. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

From director-writer Desmond Nakano comes this unusual role-reversal picture examining racism from a different perspective. Louis Pinnock (John Travolta) is a semi-literate worker in a chocolate candy factory. One day he makes a delivery to the mansion of wealthy Thaddeus Thomas (Harry Belafonte). He is noticed while he is unintentionally looking up at Thomas' wife, Megan (Margaret Avery), while she is undressing in an open window. Thomas makes sure that Pinnock is fired for this innocent indiscretion despite his years of reliable performance at the factory. Some time later, unemployed and destitute, Pinnock and his wife Marsha (Kelly Lynch) and children are evicted roughly from their home by police officers. Marsha's mother (Carrie Snodgress) takes in her daughter and grandchildren, but she won't let Pinnock stay. Police officers beat up Pinnock one day because, they say, he fits the description of a criminal suspect. Finally, Pinnock goes to Thomas's house to get an explanation for his firing, but Thomas doesn't remember the incident. Pinnock takes Thomas hostage and demands he be paid for all the hours of work he has missed. In this film, all the authority figures and wealthy people are black, and Pinnock is a member of a poor white underclass. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

A successful retired jock and his geeky younger brother play out their sibling rivalry by coaching rival little league football teams in this family comedy. Ed O'Neill plays the older brother, Kevin O'Shea, a former Heisman Trophy winner whose gridiron exploits have made him a local hero in his small Illinois hometown. Kevin is the almost unanimous choice to head up the town's Pop Warner football team, and he happily builds an imposing team from the best local players. One of the few objectors is Kevin's young brother Danny (Rick Moranis), an awkward, bespectacled gas station owner who empathizes with the kids rejected from the team, including his own athletic daughter Becky (Shawna Waldron). As revenge, Danny starts his own competing team of misfits, taking on the coaching duties himself. Naturally, despite the total ineptitude of Danny and his players, they eventually find themselves major underdogs in a climactic battle against Kevin's well-trained juggernaut. Director Duwayne Dunham and a team of four screenwriters hit all the expected sports film conventions, throwing in a few innocent romantic subplots and cameos by real football players for good measure. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Full Moon Entertainment -- Charles Band's direct-to-video outfit -- tosses together elements from three of its film franchises for this loopy mix & match item. Tracy Scoggins returns as tough cop Judith Grey, who must confront the lethal, wise-cracking terror toys again when they reappear at the same defunct warehouse. When the toys' lecherous leader Baby Oopsy-Daisy kidnaps the diminutive nurse Ginger (reduced to 11 inches by the crazed alien villain of Bad Channels), Judith seeks the aid of Ginger's similarly-statured boyfriend, Dollman Brick Bardo (Tim Thomerson, a Charles Band fave), to rescue her and fight the mini-monsters on their own turf. Fun on its own merits, especially if viewed as a crossover comic book; indeed, Full Moon Comics has published a "Dollman" series as well. Band also deserves some credit for the sheer audacity of pulling this thing off -- given the ludicrous story elements -- and for keeping the weirdness zipping along at a brisk pace and breezy one-hour running time. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Eschewing any connection with previous installments of the creatively strip-mined Amityville saga, this film is actually derived from one of a series of novels by John G. Jones and focuses on a mantle clock from the original Long Island horror-house which serves as a vessel of supernatural evil. A real estate developer (Stephen Macht) purchases the clock in Long Island and brings it home to California, where it promptly anchors itself to the wall and begins to exert a nightmarish influence on the house and its inhabitants. As creepy phenomena and violent behavior run rampant through Macht's family, the occultist neighbor (Nita Talbot) begins to take notice -- but is killed in a freak accident shortly after discovering the secret of the clock's Satanic history. In a twist that echoes the original Amityville Horror, Macht succumbs to the clock's evil influence and turns on his family, just as his scale-model of a planned development is transformed into a block of very familiar-looking houses. Tony Randel's direction is remarkably restrained, allowing the horror to unfold gradually until the final act, where he pulls out all the stops in a style reminiscent of his earlier Hellbound: Hellraiser II. The script makes a valiant attempt to breathe new life into a long-dead franchise, but many interesting subplots fail to develop beyond their sketchy origins. The creepy inner workings of the clock are reminiscent of the ancient machinery of The Church or the vampire-bug-machine of Guillermo del Toro's Cronos, but little is done to explain their origins. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Two beefed-up twins (played by the Paul brothers, Peter and David, who have appeared in several programmers as "The Barbarian Brothers") operating on opposing sides of the law, team up to stop a nefarious crook in this actioner. Peter Jade is a notoriously arrogant burglar who ends up with the key to an enormous underground cache of diamonds. David Jade is a cop who joins forces with Peter after greedy Philip Chamberlain, wanting the diamonds for himself, kills David's partner. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this supernatural prison drama, a correctional facility is reopened after being closed for over twenty years. It was shut down after a terrible uprising culminated with the execution of the brutal warden in the electric chair. The new leader was the late warden's assistant and has vivid memories of it all. Like his predecessor, he is a rigid ruler with no tolerance for infractions. This causes all kinds of problems for the prison psychiatrist who seems to be a liberal on the side of the inmates. Unfortunately, things are not always as they appear; especially when the ghost of the old warden mysteriously reappears. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide