Synopsis:
TRAPPED IN PARADISE: Bill Firpo (Nicolas Cage) is trying to stay straight, but at the behest of his brothers Dave (John Lovitz) and Alvin (Dana Carvey), he agrees to help out on a bank robbery that...
TRAPPED IN PARADISE: Bill Firpo (Nicolas Cage) is trying to stay straight, but at the behest of his brothers Dave (John Lovitz) and Alvin (Dana Carvey), he agrees to help out on a bank robbery that they assure him cannot go wrong. Dave and Alvin have recently gotten out of jail, and the poorly guarded bank in the small town of Paradise, Pennsylvania, provides an opportunity for easy money they just can't pass up. The robbery proves successful, but they don't manage to get out of town before a huge snowstorm hits; snowed in with their loot, they are taken in by the unwitting townspeople they've just robbed, who give new meaning to the phrase "killing with kindness"!
RAISING ARIZONA: A childless couple unable to adopt decide that a couple who just had quintuplets won't mind if they steal one of the babies. Thus begins the Coen brothers' madcap romp, RAISING ARIZONA. Holly Hunter stars as Ed, a cop who is devastated when she learns that she cannot get pregnant. Nicolas Cage is her husband, H.I., an ex-con who wants nothing more than to make his wife the happiest woman in the world. So if she wants a baby, she's going to have a baby, one way or another.
Heading up the supporting cast of bizarre characters are John Goodman and William Forsythe as crazy cousins who have just busted out of prison, Sam McMurray and Frances McDormand as Ed and H.I.'s swinging friends, and Randall "Tex" Cobb as a motorcycle madman hired to rescue the baby. RAISING ARIZONA is the Coen brothers' most consistently funny film. Carter Burwell's score, replete with infectious yodeling, is relentless; Barry Sonnenfeld's cinematography is beautifully wacky; and the manic dialogue is the brothers' most quotable. The film is a treat for the ears and the eyes, a one-of-a-kind sensation from a marvelous pair of filmmakers.
KISS OF DEATH: KISS OF DEATH opens with ex-convict Jimmy Kilmartin (David Caruso) attempting to distance himself from his shady past. His cousin, Ronny (Michael Rapaport), shows up at his door begging for help with one more heist, and Jimmy agrees to participate against his better judgment. Things go sour when a detective is shot, and Jimmy is left to take the fall. As Jimmy's hopes for a normal life with his wife (Helen Hunt) and daughter fade, he becomes a pawn of the police in their attempts to bring down a psychotic gangster named Little Junior (Nicolas Cage).
Caruso and a pumped-up, supremely menacing Cage highlight a spectacular cast that also features Samuel L. Jackson as the cop who becomes Jimmy's sole ally and Stanley Tucci as a Machiavellian district attorney. Novelist Richard Price supplies the screenplay, and director Barbet Schroeder (SINGLE WHITE FEMALE) ensures that KISS OF DEATH, based loosely on the 1947 film of the same name, unfolds with the grooved precision of a well-made watch while bristling at every turn with the volatile life of a vividly imagined criminal underworld.
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