In this fictionalized account of the 1920s gang war between the Italian/Jewish mafia and the Black gangsters, Laurence Fishburne has recently been released from prison and comes home to Harlem where mobster Tim Roth, under the command of boss Andy Garcia, is battling local crime boss Cicely Tyson. It’s the tale of one man’s lone rise up the ranks, ignoring advice and the trail of bloodied bodies left in his wake. The Harlem setting and focusing less on the Italian community makes it unique for a 1920s gangster film. It’s a bit slow in its telling, but does have a lot of star power, especially in its largely black cast, including Loretta Devine, Vanessa Williams, Chi McBride, and Queen Latifah. 

Based on the story of the 1961 sinking of the Albatross, Jeff Bridges and his wife Caroline Goodall are instructors on a school at sea sailing boat filled with a crew of white teenaged boys. Bridges runs a strict, extremely disciplined ship but that isn’t enough when the ship runs into a storm that some believe was a white squall. It has an appealing cast of 1990s heart throbs including Scott Wolf, Jeremy Sisto, and Ryan Phillippe but the story takes a bit long to get to the actual storm and the attempts at building characters whose fates the viewer is supposed to later care about fall flat.

Little Women really seems to be a story that has to be re-filmed every decade if only to give that generation’s group of young actresses a chance to portray a classic, female-centric story. As fitting for a made for television film, this version has the sisters being portrayed by some well-known television actresses of the time: Meredith Baxter, Susan Dey, and Eve Plumb. Ann Dusenberry, whom I’ve never seen in anything else, as Amy is the weakest link of the bunch. Her accent is bizarre for the New England setting and her characterization is shrill even for normal Amy standards. I always find it weird when a production doesn’t actually bother having a burn mark on Jo’s dress, but I do like how hacked off her hair looked here and that it was shown to re-grow over the following years. It’s barebones, but certainly holds up as well as any of the other editions I’ve seen.

This silly mockumentary chronicles the career of Jackie Washington, played by Jenifer Lewis, a Diana Ross-like diva, who rose to fame as a singer in an all girls group and is now launching a spectacular comeback concert. It’s a bit rough on the edges, being a made for cable TV film, but it makes up for it with the astounding number of cameos, celebrities either portraying versions of themselves or as fictional characters. Lewis thoroughly embraces the role in all her full-throttle divaness. As with The Five Heartbeats, director Robert Townsend really has an eye for portraying realistic tales of early R&B characters.  

I had thought I had watched this film before but it left no impression on me. A second watch didn’t do much to alleviate that feeling. The story of Edie Sedgwick, an heiress who was best known as one of Andy Warhol’s Superstars who died at a young age because of her drug abuse, isn’t very interesting, at least as shown in this film. It portrays her as a poor little rich girl whose life follows a rather predictable trajectory, used and discarded by any of the men in her life. Sienna Miller does do an admirable job in portraying Sedgwick, from her highs to her lows. Comparing pictures from the time portrayed, the two are almost indistinguishable from each other.

After the mute wife of a movie theater owner ‘dies of fright’, pathologist Vincent Price discovers an internal creature crushed her spine because she was unable to scream her fright away. He theorizes everyone has one of these creatures residing within them and names it the Tingler. There is a lot of silly terrorizing when the Tingler that was removed from the woman’s spine escapes its cage. The original run of the film included a couple of gimmicks including buzzers being attached to some seats in the theater to be activated during particularly tense scenes. While it’s unfortunate that that can’t be replicated for home viewing, there is a great scene with bright red blood flowing in an otherwise black and white film that just shines on a newer television.