Alan J. Pakula
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- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsLiza MinnelliWendell BurtonTim McIntireIn this romantic comedy, an eccentric girl forces a reluctant college student into an affair.The Sterile Cuckoo is not as good as it should have been because it lacks consistency of tone. But parts of it are awfully good, and Miss Minnelli is one hell of an actress.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsJane FondaDonald SutherlandCharles CioffiA small-town detective searching for a missing man has only one lead: a connection with a New York prostitute.With Fonda and Sutherland, you have actors who understand and sympathize with their characters, and you have a vehicle worthy of that sort of intelligence. So the fact that the thriller stuff doesn't always work isn't so important.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsMaggie SmithTimothy BottomsDon Jaime de Mora y AragónAmerican Walter Elbertson (Timothy Bottoms), in his late teens, is feeling lost within his family of overachievers. Thirtysomething Englishwoman Lila Fisher (Dame Maggie Smith) is emotionally repressed. The two meet on their respective vacations in Spain when, on the spur of the moment, Walter decides to ditch his overly-regimented cycling-tour group and join the bus tour-group of which Lila is a member. They hardly speak to each other during the first few days, and when they do, they make each other nervous, since each is scared of life. Despite their fears of life, or largely because of it, they enter into a friendship that blossoms into a romance, however rocky the road to that romance is. Out of circumstance, they abandon the bus tour and travel together through Spain on their own, together. Their relationship is put to the test of outside scrutiny when they meet and have an extended stay with a Spanish Duke (Don Jaime de Mora y Aragón).Cheerfully dreary.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsWarren BeattyPaula PrentissWilliam DanielsAn ambitious reporter gets in way-over-his-head trouble while investigating a senator's assassination which leads to a vast conspiracy involving a multinational corporation behind every event in the world's headlines.The Parallax View blends deft direction from Alan J. Pakula and a charismatic Warren Beatty performance to create a paranoid political thriller that stands with the genre's best.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsDustin HoffmanRobert RedfordJack Warden"The Washington Post" reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein uncover the details of the Watergate scandal that leads to President Richard Nixon's resignation.A taut, solidly acted paean to the benefits of a free press and the dangers of unchecked power, made all the more effective by its origins in real-life events.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsJames CaanJane FondaJason RobardsA brave and proud woman struggles for her land, finding help and something more in unexpected way.No reason old formulas can't be reworked. But director Alan J. Pakula maintains such a somber mood that the whole thing is a downer except for the stunning photography of Gordon Willis.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsBurt ReynoldsJill ClayburghCandice BergenA divorced man falls in love, but somehow he can't get over his ex-wife. This affects his love life in comic ways. Based on Dan Wakefield's novel.A better story than you'd probably expect for a film of this kind of this vintage.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsJane FondaKris KristoffersonHume CronynThe wife of a murdered petrochemical company chairman and a banker investigating the liquidity of his new bank stumble upon an international financial scheme that could lead to global economic collapse.The dramatic possibilities of the material are weak at best, and its satirical underpinnings are nowhere to be found.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsMeryl StreepKevin KlinePeter MacNicolSophie is the survivor of Nazi concentration camps, who has found a reason to live with Nathan, a sparkling if unsteady American Jew obsessed with the Holocaust.So perfectly cast and well-imagined that it just takes over and happens to you. It's quite an experience.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsKristy McNicholBen MastersPaul ShenarAfter she's been attacked in her apartment, Cathy starts reliving the event in her dreams. She seeks help at a sleep disorder research center, but in doing so she encounters some unexpected results ...[The filmmakers] wager everything on the audience finding mid-'80s dream research to be the height of compelling cinema.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsAlbert FinneyMatthew ModineKevin AndersonBrothers Treat and Philip have lived alone since they were kids. Interdependent, they dwell in a loft house and live on little thefts, until an aging minor criminal moves in with them and takes over the role of a father."Orphans" is a good play about behavior that has been turned into a mediocre movie about nothing much at all.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsJeff BridgesAlice KrigeFarrah FawcettLarry, a divorced psychiatrist, meets Beth, a widowed photographer, at a party in Manhattan. He walks her home. They both have two kids though he rarely sees his. Will marriage work?The screenplay is so scrupulous, so fair, so enlightened and so intelligent, that it turns out to be one of those unsparing movies of experience and analysis in which the audience is not spared.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsHarrison FordRaul JuliaGreta ScacchiAs a lawyer investigates the murder of a colleague, he finds himself more connected to the crime than anyone else.Thanks to an outstanding script, focused direction by Alan Pakula, and a riveting performance from Harrison Ford, Presumed Innocent is the kind of effective courtroom thriller most others aspire to be.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsKevin KlineMary Elizabeth MastrantonioKevin SpaceyDuring a joint dinner at the restaurant, the neighbors offer to exchange wives for one night. It was a joke, but only at first.Insipid and idiotic.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsJulia RobertsDenzel WashingtonSam ShepardA law student uncovers a conspiracy, putting herself and others in danger.Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington are a compelling team in the overlong Pelican Brief, a pulpy thriller that doesn't quite justify the intellectual remove of Alan J. Pakula's direction.
- DirectorAlan J. PakulaStarsHarrison FordBrad PittMargaret ColinA police officer uncovers the real identity of his house-guest, an I.R.A. terrorist in hiding.Harrison Ford and Brad Pitt are enormously appealing and gifted actors, and to the degree that the movie works, it's because of them. Using all the gifts of the actor's craft, they're able to sell scenes that don't make sense and don't add up.