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 cafĂ© 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 …