- From the director of "Moonstruck" comes a movie about food, fun, and infidelity. Gabe and Karen. Beth and Tom. Four close friends, two great couples. Married for 12 years, they planned on eating, drinking, and parenting their way into old age together. But when Gabe and Karen host a dinner to try out some new recipes on their best friends, only one arrives, bringing news that will test their frien
Based on the novel by one of the world's best-selling authors, the Lifetime Original Movie PATRICIA CORNWELL S THE FRONT is the fast-paced sequel to Patricia Cornwell s At Risk and it reunites Monique Lamont (Andie MacDowell, Sex, Lies and Videotape) and Win Garano (Daniel Sunjata, Rescue Me) to investigate Boston s most famous criminal. Attempting to generate much needed publicity for her flagging political aspirations, Monique orders Win to re-open the investigation of the brutal, decades-old murd! er of a young blind woman named Janie Brolin. Janie s boyfriend was the main suspect in the original investigation, but Monique has another suspect in mind the Boston Strangler. Win must work closely with a no-nonsense and combative female detective named Stump (Ashley Williams, Good Morning, Miami) to unpeel layer upon layer of the 40-year-old crime. Win and Stump s relationship evolves as they uncover the truth about Janie s death and track down a psychopath who is leaving their witnesses and colleagues dead in his wake.This funny and touching story centers on Kate a forty-year-old respectable and successful headmistress in a small English village who gets together with her single friends Molly a doctor and Janie a local police detective every Monday to drink eat chocolate and decide who is the Saddest of the Week. Things start to turn displeasing between the three friends when Kate begins an affair with Jed a sexy 25-year old ex-pupil and is no longer the Saddest of the ! Week!System Requirements: Running Time 122 MinFormat: DVD MOVI! E Genre: Â MYSTERY/SUSPENSE Rating:Â R UPC:Â 043396079021 Manufacturer No:Â 07902At first
Crush seems to be merely the latest film to portray a clique of boozy, trash-talking women as part of a larger, liberated sisterhood worthy of celebration if not admiration. The lighthearted comedy abruptly detours, however, to expose vicious jealousies with brutal, unexpected consequences. A trio of single women in their 40s, Kate, Janine, and Molly (Andie MacDowell, Imelda Stanton, and Anna Chancellor) engage in a weekly ritual of gin, cigarettes, and joyous male sniping that despite its occasional glimpses of bare insecurity is all good "girl" fun. But when Kate, headmistress at the local school, takes up with a former student (Kenny Doughty) nearly 20 years younger and falls wildly in love, her closest friends, rather than embrace a true departure from social mores, plan instead to sabotage Kate's happiness and bring her to her senses. In one of the most inexplicable twists you're lik! ely to see in a comedy, Janine and Molly's ploy takes an unexpectedly lethal turn, and
Crush goes from amusing, if predictable, to downright nasty, and then back to end on a happy note. The effect is provocative, though perhaps unintended.
--Fionn Meade In the same romantic spirit as PRETTY WOMAN and GHOST, GREEN CARD lights up the screen with its irresistible charm and lighthearted humor! The fun starts when two strangers (Andie MacDowell, SEX, LIES, AND VIDEOTAPE), and Academy Award(R)-nominee Gerard Depardieu (CYRANO DE BERGERAC) agree to a marriage of convenience -- thinking it's going to be hassle-free. She'll get to live in the apartment of her dreams, he'll get a "green card" to live in the U.S. But before they know it, the two opposites encounter far greater differences than most married couples could ever imagine! And worst yet, this mismatched twosome just might be falling love. Winner of two Golden Globe Awards (Best Picture and Best Actor), this de! lightful tale enjoyed cheers from critics and audiences alike.! With it s sunny mix of wit, spirit, and charm, GREEN CARD is an entertaining hit you'll never forget!With the help of his lawyer, Georges (Gérard Depardieu), a composer and one-time petty thief who grew up in poverty, attempts to escape his life in Paris and begin anew in America by illegally marrying Bronte (Andie MacDowell), a prim and repressed young lady from a privileged life in Connecticut. Bronte, who has agreed to the scheme for her own self-serving reasons, is exasperated when the Immigration & Naturalization Service investigates their case, and she and Georges, whom she detests, must spend time together studying each other's lives to avoid disaster. The fallout, and how it ends, is infinitely more delightful than your run-of-the-mill Hollywood romantic comedy, and the very ending itself stops deliciously short of where Hollywood would feel compelled to drag the story. Fine performances are given by MacDowell, Depardieu--who is fiercely charming pounding the keyboard of! a Steinway at an upper class Manhattan dinner party--and Bebe Neuwirth, who is perfect as an upper-class child turned artist who revels in her irresponsibility.
--James McGrathOBJECT BEAUTY - DVD MovieThe director Michael Lindsay-Hogg has a name that sounds British despite the fact that he is a New Yorker by birth. Maybe that association derives from the fact that he's primarily helmed television films--segments of
Brideshead Revisited, for example, as well as a pile of music videos for English bands like the Who and the Rolling Stones. One of his few ventures into feature filmmaking (another was the little-seen
Frankie Starlight) is the 1990 film
The Object of Beauty, which also looks, sounds, and feels British in sensibility. The film is set in a tony London hotel, the weather is England-dreary, and the clothes (when the actors are wearing them) are tweedish and woolly in appearance. And the story is essentially repressed and internal save for! the brash American performances of John Malkovich and Andie M! acDowell , who play a couple living way above their limited financial means. When Jake (Malkovich) bottoms out in a business deal, he urges Tina (MacDowell) to sell her little Henry Moore sculpture, an object of great beauty. Such beauty, in fact, that a young mute hotel maid decides to steal it for her own. The actress Rudi Davies, who plays the maid, steals more than the Moore, however. She sneaks the film out from under Malkovich and MacDowell, who was just coming off of her
sex, lies, and videotape acclaim, and who is quite good here as well.
The Object of Beauty is too subtle in its message--Jake and Tina lose their last monetary chance and in penury begin to discover who they are as people--to let us care about such a pouty pair, and the "hilarious mix-ups and mayhem" that the film promises are, in actuality, tame and trite.
--Paula Nechak DINNER WITH FRIENDS - DVD MovieDirected by Norman Jewison and adapted by Donald Margulies from his Pulitzer Prize-winn! ing play, this acclaimed HBO production offers a welcome antidote to the superficiality of mainstream Hollywood. With the same attention to emotional detail that he brought to
Moonstruck, Jewison establishes a delicate balance of anguish and bittersweet humor, reaching peak intensity as two couples confront the aftershocks of infidelity. Dennis Quaid and Andie MacDowell play the steady pair, committed to surviving every marital peak and valley. Greg Kinnear and Toni Collette are splitting up, divided by his infidelity and forced to reevaluate connections to their long-term friends. While Jewison and cinematographer Roger Deakins expertly translate the stagy material, the revealing, nonjudgmental quality of Margulies's dialogue inspires excellence from this quartet of underrated actors. Funny, painful, and full of truth,
Dinner with Friends presents marriage as an organic work in progress, never to be taken for granted, and never guaranteed.
--! Jeff Shannon
