Australian model George Lazenby took up the mantle of the world's most suave secret agent when Sean Connery retired as James Bond--prematurely, it turned out. Connery returned in Diamonds Are Forever before leaving the role to Roger Moore and Lazenby's subsequent career fizzled, yet this one-hit wonder is responsible for one of the best Bond films of all time.
For Norman and Ethel Thayer, this summer On Golden Pond is filled with conflict and resolution. When their daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda) arrives, the family is forced to renew the bonds of love and overcome the generational friction that has existed for years. Norman (Henry Fonda) must find his way through his anger and fear of growing old, while Chelsea struggles to rebuild their relationship. Ethel's (Katharine Hepburn) consistent support of her "knight in shining armor" is inspirational in its simplicity. This is a movie to ponder and always keep in your heart.
When Kathy Thorn (Lee Remick) gives birth to a stillborn baby, her husband Robert (Gregory Peck) shields her from the devastating truth and substitutes an orphaned infant for their own - unaware of the child's satanic origins. The horror begins on Damien's fifth birthday when his nanny stages a dramatic suicide. Soon after, a priest who tries to warn Damien's father is killed in a freakish accident. As the death toll mounts, Robert realizes his son is the Antichrist and decides he must kill the boy to prevent him from fulfilling a cataclysmic prophecy.
Neil Simon has a special genius for finding the great hilarity in ordinary people doing everyday things. Like two divorced men who decide to share a New York apartment. That's the premise of The Odd Couple, though there's nothing odd in the casting of two Oscar-winning talents like Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. The two veteran funnymen work together with the precision timing of a vaudeville team, but always with bright spontaneity. Lemmon plays fussy Felix, fastidious to a fault. He proves that cleanliness is nest to insanity.
Roger Moore was nearing the end of his reign as James Bond when he made Octopussy, and he looks a little worn out. But the movie itself infuses some new blood into the old franchise, with a frisky pace and a pair of sturdy villains. Maud Adams--who'd also been in the Bond outing The Man with the Golden Gun--plays the improbably named Octopussy, while old smoothie Louis Jourdan is her crafty partner in crime. There's an island populated only by women, plus a fantastic sequence with a hand-to-hand fight that happens on a plane--and on top of a plane.
Ocean's Eleven improves on 1960's Rat Pack original with supernova casting, a slickly updated plot, and Steven Soderbergh's graceful touch behind the camera. Soderbergh reportedly relished the opportunity "to make a movie that has no desire except to give pleasure from beginning to end," and he succeeds on those terms, blessed by the casting of George Clooney as Danny Ocean, the title role originated by Frank Sinatra.
Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack prove how to win in Las Vegas: rob the casinos! He, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Angie Dickinson and more are the epitome of cool in this hot heist caper. The tone of the film is curiously serious--one somehow expected that the Rat Pack would have made a more buoyant first picture. But it is something to see these guys together, if largely for nostalgia reasons.
Once in a great while a movie comes along that truly grips and uplifts its audiences. Such a movie is An Officer And A Gentleman, a timeless tale of romance, friendship and growth. Loner Zack Mayo (Rcihard Gere) enters Officer Candidate School to become a Navy Pilot and in thirteen torturous weeks he learns the importance of discipline, love and friendship. Louis Gossett, Jr. won an Academy Award for his brilliant portrayal of the tough drill instructor who teaches Zack that no man can make it alone.
A single phone call can change a man's life... or possibly end it. Colin Farrell delivers a captivating, off-the-hook performance as Stu Shepard, a self-centered New York City publicist who suddenly finds himself on the deadly end of a high-powered rifle scope. Now it's a real-time race against the clock as Stu must outwit a psychotic sniper in a frantic scramble from phone booth to freedom.
Gene Hackman is a career officer assigned a routine mission well beneath him: deliver a prisoner (Tommy Lee Jones) from Europe to the United States. However, the simple assignment becomes a daring cat-and-mouse game played as the last flames of the Cold War are flickering. This is the first of three films that teamed Jones with director Andrew Davis. In 1989 Jones was a wild card: an actor respected but only popping up in grade B fare. After Davis's Under Siege and The Fugitive, Jones was America's favorite gruff character actor, with an Oscar on his mantel.
