Coincidentally, this not so high profile actor showed up in two completely different movies that I saw this weekend, both very good. And the movies were exactly twenty years apart.

The first one I rented (in VHS) after reading about good 70’s movies somewhere on a website. It was Straight Time, a superb fact-based 1978 movie about a convict who just can’t seem to make life work after he finishes his 6-year prison term. Dustin Hoffman actually did extensive research studying the real convict this movie is based on and which he of course stars in.

(If you want to see what Theresa Russell looks like in her 20’s, check this movie out. Kathy Bates is also in this movie as well as Gary Busey. )

The next one is The Mighty a definite high-richter on the ole Heart-Warmer scale. It’s about a kid with a particular handicap and his neighbor, of the same age, but who had always been a huge kid for his age, with a convict father. James Gandolfini (Sopranos) plays this kids’ father (the big kid, not the handicapped one).

The crippled boy (Sharon Stone plays the mother) is the very intelligent friend to the less brainy big kid.

If you have some kind of Movies-To-Check-Out-Eventually list on your palm or your PC, I’d recommend adding these.


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