Ellen Lewis Movies

A mysterious loner attempts to successfully complete his criminal mission while operating outside of the law in contemporary Spain. His objectives shrouded in secrecy, the untrusting lone wolf (Isaach de Bankolé) sets out on his latest assignment knowing that the law is never too far behind. Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton, and Gael García Bernal co-star in a crime drama from acclaimed indie filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (Mystery Train, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Titanic shipmates Kathy Bates, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Kate Winslet step onboard for director Sam Mendes' tale of suburban malaise in 1950s-era Connecticut. Adapted from the classic 1961 novel by author Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road tells the tale of a young Connecticut couple whose once-idealistic relationship steadily deteriorates into a ceaseless cycle of petty jealousy and bickering as they strive to retain their independence in the conformity-obsessed world of picket fences and perfectly manicured lawns. Ever since they first met, Frank (DiCaprio) and April (Winslet) saw themselves as special and different. They strive to form their relationship around higher ideals, though upon moving into their new home on Revolutionary Road, the defiant couple pledges never to be confined by the social conventions of the era. As time passes, however, Frank and April gradually become the very thing that they both feared most -- a typical suburban family complete with abandoned dreams and faded hopes. Frank loses his nerve after taking a comfortable job with a reliable salary, and April morphs into an unsatisfied homemaker desperate for passion and excitement. But April's independent spirit hasn't been suffocated just yet, and when she hatches a plan to head for Paris, her need to escape at all costs stands in direct contrast to Frank's desire to hold on to what they already have. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ethan Hawke, Albert Finney, and Marisa Tomei star in director Sidney Lumet's thriller concerning two brothers who hatch a plan to rob their parent's jewelry store. When the job goes awry, the entire family is set on a collision course with tragedy. Andy (Hoffman) is an overextended broker in desperate need of some cash. His brother, Hank (Hawke), isn't much better off, so when Andy hatches a plan to rob their parent's modest jewelry store, it seems like a foolproof way to make a quick buck. But Andy's trophy wife, Gina (Tomei), is secretly sleeping with libidinous younger brother Hank, and when the robbery proves a complete disaster it isn't long before loyalties start to shift. Now Andy and Hank's father, Charles (Finney), is determined to make the unidentified robbers pay for their crime. What's a father to do when he discovers that the ones he loves have become his worst enemies? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Produced by Tom Hanks, written by Aaron Sorkin, and directed by Mike Nichols, this adaptation of George Crile III's incendiary bestseller tells the remarkable story of the Texas congressman whose efforts to prevent the Red Army from overtaking Afghanistan eventually led to the collapse of the Soviet Union while simultaneously fueling the rise of radical Islam. In the early 1980s, a hastily assembled army of Afghan "freedom fighters" achieved the remarkable feat of fending off Soviet invaders despite the fact that the odds were overwhelmingly stacked against them. At the time, Texas congressman Charlie Wilson (Hanks) was a key member of the hugely powerful House Appropriations Committee. Illuminated to the specifics of this remarkable war by a high-profile Houston socialite, Wilson spearheaded an effort to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in weapons and training to the Mujahideen with more than a little help from brilliant but prickly CIA operative Gust Avrokotos. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

E.B. White's classic children's story comes to the screen in this live-action adaptation with an all-star voice cast. Fern Arable (Dakota Fanning) is a young girl growing up on her family's farm. When a sow gives birth to some piglets, Fern's father (Kevin Anderson) intends to do away with the runt of litter, but Fern has become attached to the little pig and persuades her father to let him live. The pig, named Wilbur (voice of Dominic Scott Kay), becomes Fern's pet, but when he grows larger, he's put in the care of Homer Zuckerman (Gary Basaraba), a farmer down the road. Fern is still able to visit Wilbur regularly, and it soon occurs to both of them that pigs tend to have a limited life expectancy on a farm, and that unless something unusual happens, Wilbur will eventually becomes someone's dinner. Charlotte, a friendly spider, hatches a plan to make Wilbur seem special enough to save by weaving messages about the "terrific" pig into her web, and she soon persuades her barnyard friends to join in her plan. Charlotte is voiced by Julia Roberts, while the other actors who provide the voices of the animals on Zuckerman's farm include Robert Redford, John Cleese, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Buscemi, Kathy Bates, Cedric the Entertainer. Thomas Haden Church, and André Benjamin. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Douglas McGrath's Infamous represents the second major biopic about the avant-garde belletrist Truman Capote to be released within a year. It thus tells roughly the same story as Bennett Miller's earlier Capote, recounting the events that belied the writer's six-year authorship of the seminal "nonfiction novel" In Cold Blood. The story opens with Capote (Toby Jones) visiting the site of the 1959 Clutter family homicide, on a Kansas research trip, accompanied by his close friend and colleague, author Harper Lee (Sandra Bullock). As Capote settles into the community, McGrath uses the preponderance of screen time to explore the emotional tapestry of Capote's increasingly risky emotional attachment to one of the two murderers, Perry Edward Smith (Daniel Craig), with whom he senses more than a few common bonds. McGrath weaves a decidedly bittersweet tale, contrasting the optimism and devil-may-care, "conquer all" attitude of Capote in his early years with a seemingly endless string of poor choices in the writer's later years, from addictions to drink and pills, to a failure to maintain healthy output as a writer, to poorly chosen romantic and sexual entanglements. Most significantly, however, McGrath reveals how the relationship with Smith virtually destroyed Capote as an artist and a human being, by inducing him to sell out on all levels to satisfy his lust for accomplishment and notoriety. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Two women get a new and unusual perspective on the doctor/patient relationship in this romantic comedy. Rafi Gardet (Uma Thurman) is a woman in her mid-thirties who has recently gone through a messy divorce. Rafi has been seeing an analyst, Lisa Metzger (Meryl Streep), as she struggles to get back on her feet emotionally and look for new love. Rafi meets a man named David Bloomberg (Bryan Greenberg), and the two quickly hit it off, but Rafi isn't sure if she should pursue the relationship, since David is only 23 years old. After discussing the burgeoning romance during one of their weekly sessions, Lisa urges Rafi to take a plunge with David, and not be afraid to seek out the companionship she needs. However, there's something about David that Lisa doesn't know -- he's her son. Rafi doesn't know that Lisa is David's mother, either, and both psychiatrist and patient are thrown for a loop when they learn the truth. Prime was originally intended to star Sandra Bullock as Rafi, but she dropped out of the project shortly before filming began, reportedly due to disagreements with the director over the script, with Thurman taking her place. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Wim Wenders drama Land of Plenty stars John Diehl and Michelle Williams as two very different people who are brought together for an unconventional road trip. The film takes place after September 11, 2001, and the main characters are dealing with their grief in very different ways. Paul (Diehl) keeps his paranoid eye on the lookout for terrorists wherever he goes. His niece Lana, Williams) does charity work for the indigent. After a young Muslim is shot dead, the uncle and niece travel together - her to bring the body back to the family, he to wipe out the terrorists he is convinced the young man worked with. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Two marriages and four lives are brought to a crossroads by infidelity in this drama, based on a pair of short stories by author Andre Dubus. Jack (Mark Ruffalo) is a college professor whose marriage to Terry (Laura Dern) has been going through a rough patch. Beyond the tensions over Terry's failings as a mother and housekeeper, Jack is deeply infatuated with Edith (Naomi Watts), the beautiful wife of his best friend, Hank (Peter Krause), a fellow professor and struggling poet. As it happens, Edith is also attracted to Jack, and they soon begin an affair that Edith is certain will soon be found out. Hank, meanwhile, is a man with a flexible attitude about his own fidelity, and he falls into a relationship with Terry. Before long, all four parties learn about the infidelity of their spouses and friends, with differing reactions; Terry becomes desperate to save her marriage, Jack decides he's in love with Edith, but neither couple is willing to divorce. We Don't Live Here Anymore received its world premiere at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, where it was honored with the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A shocking and tragic event causes the members of a quietly dysfunctional family to reexamine themselves and their lives in this drama. Ben and Sandy Travis (Jeff Daniels and Sigourney Weaver) are a couple whose troubled family begins to crumble when their eldest son, star college athlete Matt (Kip Pardue) commits suicide. Sandy's naturally cynical nature becomes all the more prickly, and while she tries to bond with her surviving teenaged son, Tim (Emile Hirsch), they seem closest when they discover a shared fondness for marijuana. Ben also tries to reach out to Tim, but the young man is never able to shake the feeling that he's never quite been the son his father wanted. Tim has a girlfriend, Steph (Suzanne Santo), but their relationship has been going through a rocky patch, and Tim finds himself questioning his feelings about women and men when his friendship with next-door neighbor Kyle (Ryan Donowho) evolves into something more intimate. Imaginary Heroes was written and directed by Dan Harris, best known for his work as a screenwriter on the blockbuster comic-book adaptation X-Men and projected remakes of Superman and Logan's Run. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The epic HBO miniseries Angels in America is directed by Mike Nichols and written by the play's author, Tony Kushner. This six-part drama is adapted from the two full-length award-winning plays (Part I: The Millennium Approaches and Part II: Perestroika) originally performed on Broadway in 1993. Set in New York City during the mid-'80s, the story follows the interconnected lives of several people affected by the AIDS crisis, intense spiritual experiences, and the Reagan Administration. Newcomer Justin Kirk plays Prior Walter, a young man dying of AIDS. Things are made worse when he's abandoned by his lover, Jewish court clerk Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman). Then he's visited by an Angel (Emma Thompson), who keeps crashing through his roof and insisting that he's a prophet.
Meanwhile, conservative power monger Roy Cohn (Al Pacino) is also dying of AIDS, but he's in serious denial about it. While in the hospital, he's continually visited by the ghost of Ethel Rosenberg (Meryl Streep), a woman he had sent to the electric chair. Roy's protégé is Mormon lawyer Joe Pitt (Patrick Wilson), who also tries to deny his own homosexuality. Joe's estranged wife Harper (Mary-Louise Parker) suffers from a Valium addiction and has an acute sensitivity to the world around her. Joe leaves her to start up a relationship with Louis, who works in his building. Jeffrey Wright reprises his stage role of the trusty friend and nurse Belize. Angels in America first aired in two parts on HBO during December of 2003. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Seven internationally respected filmmakers offer different perspectives on time and fate -- some witty, some somber -- in this omnibus film, with the stories linked by performances from jazz great Hugh Masekela. Dogs Have No Hell by Aki Kaurismaki follows one man's unusual journey as he celebrates getting out of jail by travelling to Siberia in search of a wife. Victor Erice directed the impressionistic Lifeline, in which a family of Spanish farmers try to help an infant who has fallen ill. Werner Herzog visits the Uru Eus tribe of South America -- believed to have been the last unknown indigenous people on earth prior to their discover in 1981 -- and explores the often sad toll their discovery has taken upon them in Ten Thousand Years Older. Chloe Sevigny plays an film actress waiting out a ten-minute break in her trailer in Int. Trailer. Night, directed by Jim Jarmusch. Wim Wedners contributes Twelve Miles to Trona, in which a young man, dazed and ill, tries to drive himself to a doctor through a barren desert. Spike Lee looks into the Florida vote-counting scandal, and how Al Gore's assistants and supporters reacted to it, in the short documentary We Wuz Robbed. And in 100 Flowers Hidden Deep, directed by Chen Kaige, a delusional elderly man is convinced his furniture still stands in the vacant lot where his home used to be, and he persuades workers to help him move it away to safety. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The violent rise of gangland power in New York City at a time of massive political corruption and the city's evolution into a cultural melting pot set the stage for this lavish historical epic, which director Martin Scorsese finally brought to the screen almost 30 years after he first began to plan the project. In 1846, as waves of Irish immigrants poured into the New York neighborhood of Five Points, a number of citizens of British and Dutch heritage who were born in the United States began making an open display of their resentment toward the new arrivals. William Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), better known as "Bill the Butcher" for his deadly skill with a knife, bands his fellow "Native Americans" into a gang to take on the Irish immigrants; the immigrants in turn form a gang of their own, "The Dead Rabbits," organized by Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson). After an especially bloody clash between the Natives and the Rabbits leaves Vallon dead, his son goes missing; the boy ends up in a brutal reform school before returning to the Five Points in 1862 as Amsterdam (Leonardo DiCaprio). Now a strapping adult who has learned how to fight, Amsterdam has come to seek vengeance against Bill the Butcher, whose underworld control of the Five Points through violence and intimidation dovetails with the open corruption of New York politician "Boss" Tweed (Jim Broadbent). Amsterdam gradually penetrates Bill the Butcher's inner circle, and he soon becomes his trusted assistant. Amsterdam also finds himself falling for Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz), a beautiful but street-smart thief who was once involved with Bill. Amsterdam is learning a great deal from Bill, but before he can turn the tables on the man who killed his father, Amsterdam's true identity is exposed, even though he has concealed it from nearly everyone, including Jenny. Gangs Of New York was the first film in two years from actor Leonardo DiCaprio; ironically, it was at one time scheduled to open on the same day as Catch Me if You Can, the Steven Spielberg project that DiCaprio began filming immediately after Gangs wrapped. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide