Hugo Pool (1997)

"This is you-know-who. Leave a message right after the you-know-what."
-Hugo Dugay's answering machine.

In between her starring roles on Who's the Boss? and Charmed, Alyssa Milano kept busy in the acting world. Many of her films during this time, such as Poison Ivy II: Lily (1995) and Fear (1996), were not exactly stellar, but Milano never ceased to be delightful to watch.
Hugo Pool is the most interesting of her films during this period. Milano plays Hugo Dugay, a swimming pool cleaner in Los Angeles who becomes quite busy one day.
She enlists her bizarre father, Henry (Malcolm McDowell) to go to the Colorado River to obtain water to refill the pool of mobster Chick Chicalini (Richard Lewis). En route, Henry befriends a hitchhiker (Sean Penn). At the same time, Hugo is also helping out filmmaker Franz Mazur (Robert Downey Jr., whose father directed this movie). Her mother Minerva (Cathy Moriarty), who has a compulsion for gambling, wants to help her before becoming distracted by an upcoming horse race they are informed of by another customer, one Floyd Gaylen (Patrick Dempsey), who suffers from Lou Gehrig's Disease.
The characters are all colorful, to say the least, but this is Milano's film because she makes Hugo likeable immediately. The romance that develops between Hugo and Floyd is also sweet. The moment where he struggles to say "Your Welcome"(without his computer, which normally does his talking for him) when Hugo thanks him for helping out with Chick is particularly nice.
One of the most interesting moments in the film, though, occurs at the beginning, when Hugo is getting ready for her day. She lies in bed for a few moments and cries. We are never told why she was crying, but this could reflect helplessness that she feels about her life, something many of us may occasionally feel about our own.
Much like Sunshine Cleaning, I doubt the profession the protagonist has is much like it is in real-life, but, in both cases, it makes for an entertaining film.

State of Grace (1990)*

"What is it you want, Frankie?"
"I don't gotta want something all the time, do I?"
"I never knew you when you didn't."
-Kathleen and Frankie Flannery.



Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) set the benchmark for all gangster movies. Each one which has come in the years since has been compared to it in one way or another. That's a reason why this film was overshadowed upon its initial release by The Godfather Part III as well as Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas. Like Coppola's gangster epic, this is a story of mobsters with the underlying current of family and loyalty. Sean Penn plays Terry Noonan, a fellow who returns from Boston to his childhood haunts in Hell's Kitchen, where he's happily reunited with his best friend Jackie Flannery (Gary Oldman) and Jackie's brother Frankie (Ed Harris). Unbeknownest to them, however, Terry is now an undercover cop sent to bring down their criminal organization before they can strike a deal with the neighboring Italian Mafia. At the same time, Terry rekindles his romantic relationship with the Flannerys' sister Kathleen (Robin Wright) who, like Diane Keaton's Kay in The Godfather, doesn't want anything to do with her family's business practices (to that end, she works at a hotel on the other side of the city). She makes it clear to Terry that she won't be with him if he plans to go along with Frankie and Jackie's dealings again. The acting is great all around, but Penn, whom I've always regarded as one of the most intense actors of our time, is the one who sells it. His self-conflict as he contends with betraying the guys he's known & loved since childhood are completely believable. At one point, he interrupts his lovemaking with Kathleen by screaming, "I'M A F***ING JUDAS COP!" This self-torment intensifies when he realizes that Frankie, unbeknown to Jackie & Kathleen, has killed another childhood pal of theirs (John C. Reilly). Even when Terry flat out tells his superior (John Turturro) that he quits the force, he knows that it's not that easy. Terry knows that the only way out of his situation is to see it through. *Thanks to Macphist0 at joblo.com/forums for recommending that I review this film.