Ellen Gulden (Renée Zellweger) is a career woman writing for a magazine who can’t understand her mother (Meryl Streep) while looking up toher father, George (William Hurt), a fellow writer and literature professor. Yet when her mother gets sick with cancer, she must come home and learn to love her.

This will force her to evaluate how she sees her father, as she discovers several long buried secrets from her mother. It also means giving up her life, a fact that she resents.

The film was directed by Carl Franklin and written by Karen Croner, whose script was based on One True Thing by Anna Quindlen, a book based on her real life experiences.

I usually avoid dramas like this, but I can recognize when a movie is well made.

Mill Creek’s Through the Decades: 1990s Collection has some great movies for a great price like Housesitter, White Palace, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Own, The Matchmaker, Anaconda, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Freshman and The Deep End of the Ocean. You can get it from Deep Discount.

Directed by Luis Mandoki and written by Ted Tally and Alvin Sargent — and based on the book by Glenn Savan — White Palace does something extraordinary for an American movie. It presents an older women as a sexual being every bit the equal of her younger male lover.

Max Baron (James Spader) is a St. Louis advertising executive who has given up on life after the death of his wife. On the way to his friend Neil’s (Jason Alexander) bachelor party, he grabs a sack of burgers from White Castle* — err, White Palace — a burger diner. He learns that the order is six burgers short and leaves the party to argue with the waitress who rang him up, Donna (Susan Sarandon).

Later, they randomly meet in a bar and nearly argue until they mutually reveal why their lives are where they are: he’s lost his wife and she’s lost her son. And then improbably, they end up going home together. He wakes up to her going down on him, then they make love. It won’t be the last time. And unlike so many Hollywood films, he repays her kindness with his own favors.

There was even more of the ad agency in the film, including a problem client played by Gena Gershon. All of these scenes were cut, which also meant that most of Kathy Bates’ role was also left out of the movie.

There’s also a sex scene removed from the film and the first one in the movie was cut down so the movie didn’t get an NC-17 rating. Additionally, the original ending was the same as the book where Max proposes to Nora in a restaurant bathroom and the ending is inconclusive. That ending didn’t test well so a new one was shot. You can see the actor’s hairstyles change in the scene and that’s your signal for which footage is from the reshoot.

*The original title for the film was The White Castle, and the novel even makes reference to a specific White Castle at the intersection of S. Grand Blvd. and Gravois Ave. in south St. Louis. The restaurant chain refused permission to use its trademarked name in either the novel or the film. They also refused permission to allow any of its restaurants for filming locations. The diner used in the movie is now known as the White Knight; the filmmakers wouldn’t let them call it the White Palace after the movie, which is weird when they went through all those legal naming issues themselves.

Mill Creek’s Through the Decades: 1990s Collection has some great movies for a great price like Housesitter, One True Thing, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Own, The Matchmaker, Anaconda, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Freshman and The Deep End of the Ocean. You can get it from Deep Discount.

Janeane Garofalo had had some success outside of stand-up by starring in The Truth About Cats and Dogs — a movie that she dislikes, calling it anti-feminist — and turned down the Gail Weathers role in Scream to appear in this movie, her first and only lead role.

She plays Marcy Tizard, who has been sent to Ireland by her boss Nick (Denis Leary) to find a relative that can help the Irish-American vote for Boston Senator John McGlory (Jay O. Sanders). Arriving in Ballinagra in time for the annual matchmaking festival, she’s suddenly the object of competition between two rival professional matchmakers, Dermot (Milo O’Shea) and Millie (Rosaleen Linehan) and gains the attention of bartender Sean (David O’Hara).

Romantic third act hijinks ensue, as they always do, but things work out.

This was directed by Australian director Mark Joffe, who made sure it was authentic by working with Father Ted writer Graham Linehan, who wrote the script with Karen Janszen and Louis Nowra.

When asked, Garofolo said this was one of the few movies that she was in that she liked.

Mill Creek’s Through the Decades: 1990s Collection has some great movies for a great price like Housesitter, White Palace, One True Thing, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Own, Anaconda, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Freshman and The Deep End of the Ocean. You can get it from Deep Discount.

Newton Davis (Steve Martin) made a dream house for the love of his life Becky (Dana Delany) and proposed. She turned him down and ever since, he’s struggled for a reason to live. Months later, he tells the whole sad story to Gwen (Goldie Hawn), a waitress at a Hungarian restaurant that he thinks can’t speak English. She can and they end up having a one night stand.

Except that Gwen moves in.

Into the dream house.

And she ends up ruining and saving Newton’s life.

The action all takes place in and around a 1800-square-foot, three-bedroom home that won the House Beautiful/American Wood Council Award for Best Small House of 1990. And thanks to a great script by Mark Stein (who wrote the book How the States Got Their Shapes) and Brian Grazer (Splash, Armed and Dangerous), able direction by Frank Oz and the timing of Martin and Hawn, this film transcends the cliches of romcoms and delivers a heartwarming and hilarious treat.

Mill Creek’s Through the Decades: 1990s Collection has some great movies for a great price like White Palace, One True Thing, Donnie Brasco, The Devil’s Own, The Matchmaker, Anaconda, I Know What You Did Last Summer, The Freshman and The Deep End of the Ocean. You can get it from Deep Discount.

For years, Band of the Hand had me fooled with its “From the maker of Miami Vice” poster line. I always thought this was a Michael Mann directed movie and not one by one of the directors of several episodes of that show, Paul Michael Glaser, who also played Starsky. That said, Mann is one of th executive producers.

Even knowing that, I kinda love this movie. It’s all rather dumb — five teenage criminals get rehabilitated by Vietnam vet and Native American Joe Tegra (Stephen Lang, who is also in Mann’s Manhunter, so maybe that’s another reason I was confused): rival gang leaders Ruben Pacheco (Michael Carmine, who sadly died of AIDS when he was thirty) and Moss Roosevelt (Leon, Derice in Cool Runnings), as well as drug dealer Carlos Aragon (Danny Quinn, who was married at one time to co-star Lauren Holly, who plays Nikki), James Lee “J.L.” MacEwen (John Cameron Mitchell — yes, the writer, director and star of Hedwig and the Angry Inch is in this movie and fights evil drug lords) who killed his father and car thief Dorcey Bridger (Al Shannon).

After surviving training in the swamps and cleaning up their neighborhood, Joe is killed by gangsters who include Laurence Fishburne and James Remar as the big bad Nestor. Of course the Band of the Hand comes together and makes a plan that I am in amazed by as someone who loves wacky revenge plots.

Wrter Leo Garren also directed and wrote the early 70s occult weirdness Hex, while co-writer Jack Baran wrote Great Balls of Fire!

The craziest thing about this movie is that it has a Bob Dylan song written for it and he’s backed by Tom Petty (who produced) and the Heartbreakers with backing vocals by Stevie Nicks.

“We’re gonna blow up your home of Voodoo
And watch it burn without any regret
We got the power, we’re the new government
You just don’t know it yet”

Let me say that again: Bob Dylan wrote a song for Band of the Hand.

The Mill Creek Through the Decades: 1980s Collection has a ton of great movies at an affordable price. It also has Punchline, Who’s Harry Crumb?, Vice Versa, The New Kids, Roxanne, Blue Thunder, Suspect, Little Nikita and Like Father, Like Son. You can get this set from Deep Discount.

When a Supreme Court Justice commits suicide and the body of a file clerk at the Justice Department is found floating in the Potomac River, nobody considers it a conspiracy. Instead, homeless and deaf vet Carl Wayne Anderson (Liam Neeson) is arrested because he had been sleeping in the clerk’s car. He doesn’t have a chance against the system unless public defender Kathleen Riley (Cher) can discover who was really behind the murder. She also has some help from Eddie Sanger (Dennis Quaid),  a juror on the case, because that’s the way that trials work in the real world.

Judge Matthew Bishop Helms (John Mahoney) thinks that there’s something happening between Kathleen and Eddie, but he may have some bigger problems because he could end up being in the very trial he’s presiding over.

It’s pretty incredible how much research Cher, Neeson and Quaid did for their roles, spending months around people who would inspire them as well as educate them as to how the real world version of their character would act.

Directed by Peter Yates (Bullitt, The Deep, Krull) and written by Eric Roth (The Concorde … Airport ’79, Wolfen, Ali, Dune), Suspect is a very 80s mystery which fits in quite well with the Mill Creek box set I discovered it inside.

The Mill Creek Through the Decades: 1980s Collection has a ton of great movies at an affordable price. It also has Punchline, Who’s Harry Crumb?, Vice Versa, The New Kids, Roxanne, Blue Thunder, Little Nikita, Band of the Hand and Like Father, LikeSon. You can get this set from Deep Discount.

Directed by John Badham (Saturday Night Fever, Dracula, Stakeout) and written by Dan O’Bannon (Alien, Dark Star, Return of the Living Dead, Lifeforce) and Don Jakoby (The Philadelphia Experiment, Death Wish 3, Double Team), Blue Thunder stands between the conspiracy thrillers of the 70s and the big budget action films of the 80s.

O’Bannon and Jakoby began lived together in a Hollywood apartment where low-flying police helicopters kept them awake all night. Their original take was even more political with the police state controlling the population of Los Angeles through high-tech surveillance and military-level weapons. They also got extensive script help from Captain Bob Woods, then-chief of the LAPD Air Support Division.

What emerged was a movie with a totally awesome helicopter — I owned the toy as a kid — designed by Mickey Michaels. They’re a combination of Aérospatiale SA-341G Gazelles and Apache military helicopters with alterations that made them so heavy that they could barely fly much less pull off the moves in the battle at the close of the film.

Frank Murphy (Roy Scheider, who made this so he wouldn’t have to be in Jaws 3D) is a Vietnam War vet with PTSD who flies a helicopter for the Metropolitan Police Department — you know, the LAPD — along with observer Richard Lymangood (Daniel Stern). Together, they help police forces on the ground in Los Angeles. They’re invited to check out — and even pilot — a special helicopter known as Blue Thunder that can help protect the city during the Olympics.

It all seems too good to be true and Murphy figures that it’s a conspiracy to lead to more police militarization and illegally spying on civilians. He learns that the copter is part of T.H.O.R. Tactical Helicopter Offensive Response) and is being used to kill any politician that is standing in its way. It will eventually be piloted by U.S. Army Colonel F.E. Cochrane (Malcolm McDowell, who hated flying and looks incredibly upset during the fight at the end), the same man who gave Murphy all those bad memories from the war.

When Murphy and Lymnangood film evidence of this conspiracy, the pilot takes Blue Thunder and the observer is murdered by hitmen. Murphy gets the videotape to his girlfriend Kate (Candy Clark, who is awesome in this) and escorts her via the super copter to a TV station while more hitmen are in pursuit, as well as more copters, F-14s and Cochrane come after him.

This was one of the last films Warren Oates made and do I even have to tell you how incredible he is in it?

Somehow, a movie about the dangers of the LAPD getting these machines led to a series where they did and it was sold as a good thing and the dark movie that inspired the movie gets forgotten. James Farentino flew Blue Thunder along with Dana Carvey with Dick Butkus and Bubba Smith working as the ground crew. It lasted eleven episodes. However, another show about a futuristic helicopter, Airwolf, lasted 79 episodes.

“The hardware, weaponry and surveillance systems depicted in this film are real and in use in the United States today.”

Just imagine what’s out there 39 years later.

The Mill Creek Through the Decades: 1980s Collection has a ton of great movies at an affordable price. It also has Punchline, Who’s Harry Crumb?, Vice Versa, The New Kids, Roxanne, Little Nikita, Suspect, Band of the Hand and Like Father, Like Son. You can get this set from Deep Discount.

River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier made one well-regarded political thriller together — Sneakers — but did you know they did another?

Directed by Richard Benjamin and written by Bo Goldman (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest) and John Hill (Quigley Down Under), Little Nikita does what The Americans did several decades earlier. Jeffrey Nicolas Grant’s (Phoenix) parents — Richard (Richard Grant) and Elizabeth (Carolina Kava) — are really Russian deep cover agents that have actually forgotten their mission and settled into America.

Things would be fine if it weren’t for the Soviet killer called Scuba (Richard Lynch) and his mission to murder these sleeper agents one by one. Konstantin Karpov (Richard Bradford), a Soviet spy catcher, wants to stop him. And so does Roy Parmenter (Poitier), who wants revenge on Scuba for killing his partner several decades ago.

It seems like no one was happy with this movie, as Phoenix felt Benjamin treated him like a child and that the Russian characters were too simplistic. Worse, Columbia Pictures chief David Puttnam told Benjamin that it was one of the worst movies he had ever seen and tried to get editor Jim Clark to fix the film.

It bombed at the box office, as did the movie that pretty much remakes it, Abduction.

The Mill Creek Through the Decades: 1980s Collection has a ton of great movies at an affordable price. It also has Punchline, Who’s Harry Crumb?, Vice Versa, The New Kids, Roxanne, Blue Thunder, Suspect, Band of the Hand and Like Father, Like Son. You can get this set from Deep Discount.

Directed by Paul Flaherty (brother of Joe — who shows up as a doorman in a memorable part of this film — and director of 18 Again! and Clifford, as well as a writer on SCTV, Maniac Mansion and several Martin Short projects) and written by Robert Conte and Peter Wortmann (who wrote The Breed and Who Do You Love together), Who’s Harry Crumb? is the kind of movie that would be a failure were it to star anyone other than John Candy, a comedy force of nature who makes it successful by sheer force of talent and will.

When model Jennifer Downing (Renée Coleman, A League of Their Own and the evil leaper Alia on Quantum Leap) is kidnapped, her father (Barry Corbin) visits the detective agency Crumb & Crumb. The boss there, Eliot Draisen (Jeffrey Jones, never the hero), actually did the kidnapping, so he hires out the worst detective they have: Harry Crumb (Candy), the grandson of the company’s founder.

Helped by Jennifer’s sister Nikki (Shawnee Smith), he soon discovers that there’s a lot going on. Jennifer’s stepmother Helen (Annie Potts) is having an affair with tennis coach Vince Barnes (Tim Thomerson) as well as Eliot, and they’re all trying to get all the money for themselves.

John Candy would make this, Uncle Buck, Speed Zone and The Rocket Boy in 1989. He believed that TriStar Pictures’ poor marketing of this film was the reason why it bombed. He refused to work with them for five years until Wagons East, which sadly was the last film he’d make. Candy suffered severe anxiety and panic attacks throughout his life and self-medicated with alcohol, eating, smoking and occasional drug use. He’s also one of my favorite performers of all time and I wish he’d found the help and peace he needed, because he only made it 43 years in this reality and truly deserved a long and happy life.

The Mill Creek Through the Decades: 1980s Collection has a ton of great movies at an affordable price. It also has Punchline, Little Nikita, Vice Versa, The New Kids, Roxanne, Blue Thunder, Suspect, Band of the Hand and Like Father, Like Son. You can get this set from Deep Discount.