Josh Hopkins Movies

A fortysomething divorcée (Courtney Cox Arquette) with a teen son considers reentering the dating pool, which just happens to be full of younger men. ~ Joe Friedrich, All Movie Guide

Longtime friendships are put to the ultimate test when a dying woman summons her best friends from college into the wilderness for a four-day camping trip, and everyone quickly discovers that they haven't exactly been told the whole truth about her current condition. Lucy (Missi Pyle) has always been obese, and now that her health has taken a turn for the worse, she wants to spend her last days with the estranged college social group that helped her through one of the most difficult periods of her entire life. Upon learning that Lucy is on her deathbed, her loyal friends all rush to Montana in order to be by her side for one last weekend together. Immediately upon arriving, however, it's glaringly obvious to all of Lucy's friends that something isn't right. Her condition is a far cry from what she made it out to be in her desperate messages, and as tensions begin to rise Lucy realizes that the people standing before her today simply aren't the same people whom she remembered so fondly from college. With no modern conveniences to fall back on as the reunited group begins an arduous four-day hike into the wilderness, everyone's deepest fears and demons gradually claw their way to the surface, leaving Lucy to wonder whether her "final wish" was truly the brilliant idea she initially thought it to be. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A vehicle for the dazzlingly beautiful Rebecca Romijn, the WB comedy drama Pepper Dennis cast the model-turned-actress as the title character, an up-and-coming news reporter for fictional Chicago TV station WEIE. Aspiring to anchor the station's top-rated news broadcast, Pepper Dennis was understandably put out when the job went to handsome Charlie Babcock (Josh Hopkins) -- with whom Pepper had had a one-night stand just before he was hired for the job! Now relegated to the position of Babcock's assistant and occasional on-air replacement, Pepper did her darnedest to hide her jealousy (not to mention her still-strong attraction to Charlie) when anchoring WEIE-TV's characteristic "if it bleeds it leads" news features. Typical of Pepper's assignments was the episode in which, to expose a poker-club prostitution ring, she had to disguise herself as a hooker. Also, in keeping with the tenor of the times (the mid-2000s), Pepper and her colleagues zinged out a great many wisecracks and put-downs aimed toward certain right-wing cable news hosts, notably that guy with the Irish name who was "looking out for you." The rest of the cast included Brooke Burns as Kathy Dinkle, Pepper's whiny, self-centered sister, who moved in with our heroine after the breakup of her marriage (which she unfairly blamed on Pepper); Ms. Dennis' best friend, WEIE's acerbic makeup artist Kimmy Kim; and Rider Strong as Chick, a station cameraman who worshipped Pepper from afar. Created by Gretchen J. Berg and Aaron Harberts, whose previous efforts included the highly regarded but little-watched Wonderfalls, Pepper Dennis debuted April 4, 2006. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Debuting August 21, 2006, the hour-long Fox network series Vanished was a serialized drama in the tradition of 24 and Prison Break, this time with a bit of the "procedural" genre (à la Without a Trace) thrown in. Things got under way when Sara Collins (Joanne Kelly), the wife of prominent Georgia senator Jeffrey Collins (John Allen Nelson), abruptly disappeared during a fundraising dinner, the apparent victim of a kidnapping. Assigned to locate -- and, possibly rescue -- Mrs. Collins were FBI agents Graham Kelton (Gale Harold) and Lin Mei (Ming-Na). While Lin approached her job with a cynical sense of humor and an abundance of energy, Kelton was morose and taciturn, still blaming himself for the horrible death of a youthful kidnap victim which occurred right before his eyes. As the plot thickened, it became obvious that the two agents had more than a common, everyday abduction on their hands: the number-one suspect was killed off at the very start of the series; the trail was strewn with bizarre, contradictory clues and DaVinci Code-like cryptic messages; and finally, not only had Sara Collins mysteriously vanished on previous occasions, there was every indication that she wasn't really Sara Collins at all. Clearly, the missing Mrs. Collins was but a cog in the wheel of a larger conspiracy, in which (naturally) no one could be completely trusted. Other characters included Rebecca Gayheart as an unusually ubiquitous investigative reporter and Eddie Cibrian as Kelton and Mei's enigmatic FBI superior. Vanished was created by Josh Berman of CSI fame. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide