Elizabeth Pena

[7] The five tenants of an old building in New York are threatened by a land developer demolishing buildings all around them. Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy star as an elderly couple trying to keep the building’s storefront café in business. Elizabeth Pena plays an expectant mother, Frank McRae plays a mute boxer-turned-handyman, and Dennis Boutsikaris plays a struggling artist. Just when all these characters …

[5] Cyndi Lauper and Jeff Goldblum star as New York psychics tricked by Peter Falk into locating a lost Incan city for treasure hunters that wish to harness it’s mystical powers. Vibes is sort of a paranormal mystery, sort of a comedy, sort of an adventure, and sort of a love story. As a tonal mish-mash, it doesn’t succeed as well as, say, Ghostbusters, but …

[5] Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Strange Days) co-writes and directs this female cop thriller starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Curtis plays a new cop on the New York streets who shoots a grocery store bandit to death. The film takes a bonkers turn when one of the witnesses hides the bad guy’s gun and starts killing innocent citizens with it. The bullets he uses have …

[8] Jacob’s Ladder is a terrific example of what can happen when an inspired screenplay gets into the hands of a great director and a capable leading actor. I’m talking about Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost), Adrian Lyne (Fatal Attraction), and Tim Robbins (Shawshank Redemption), respectively. Rubin’s script is a fever dream of a tale, following a New York Vietnam vet who’s losing his grip on …