Portia de Rossi Movies

As Season 5 begins, Christian (Julian McMahon) joins Sean (Dylan Walsh) in Los Angeles, where they soon discover they're pretty small fish in a very big plastic-surgery pond. Needing exposure for the practice, they hire a publicist (Lauren Hutton), who finds them work as medical advisers for the prime-time soap opera "Hearts & Scalpels." It doesn't pan out for Christian, but the opposite holds true for Sean, who begins wielding a scalpel on-screen after the show's star (Bradley Cooper) is fired in a sex scandal. Sean also dates his costar (Paula Marshall) and meets another publicist, Colleen Rose (Sharon Gless), on the set. Colleen takes an intense interest in him, but Julia (Joely Richardson), who arrives in L.A. from New York, has lost interest in him. She's also involved with someone else -- a woman named Olivia Lord (Portia de Rossi). Olivia's promiscuous and duplicitous teen daughter Eden (AnnaLynne McCord) immediately dislikes Julia. Eden also has a brief fling with Sean and ends up in a threesome with Kimber (Kelly Carlson) and Kimber's old porn boss Ram Peters (John Schneider). Kimber has left Matt (John Hensley), but they share custody of their daughter. Meanwhile, Liz (Roma Maffia) follows Christian and Sean from Miami, but leaves McNamara/Troy after a falling out with Christian. Her replacement, adventurous Theodora "Teddy" Rowe (Katee Sackhoff), a recreational anesthesia user, has an affair with Sean. And Dawn Budge (Rosie O'Donnell) finds herself at McNamara/Troy after being bitten by an eagle while hang gliding. She becomes romantically involved with "Hearts & Scalpels" executive producer Freddy Prune (Oliver Platt). And then there's Christian, who has his own issues. He gets sexually reacquainted with Julia and Gina Russo (Jessalyn Gilsig), his adopted son Wilber's sex-addicted mother. Then he faces a health crisis. ~ Paul Droesch, All Movie Guide

The team behind the Scream trilogy, director Wes Craven and screenwriter Kevin Williamson, present another entry in the teen-horror genre with Cursed. Starring Christina Ricci and Jesse Eisenberg, the film tells the story of two siblings who have to battle a werewolf that has been wreaking havoc on their neighbors, just as they learn that they might be marked with "the sign of the beast," and may become werewolves themselves. Along with Shannon Elizabeth and Judy Greer, Cursed also co-stars Dawson Creek alumnus Joshua Jackson, as well as R&B star Mya. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide

A road trip rolls through a small town where the line between the dead and the living has become a bit problematic in this horror parody. A handful of twentysomethings are driving to Galveston, TX, in an RV to attend the wedding of a close friend. After a long day on the road, the travelers find themselves in a tiny town called Lovelock, where the only available accommodations are at a bed and breakfast run by the eccentric Mr. Wise (David Carradine). One of the kids, Johnny (Oz Perkins), notices that Mr. Wise is carefully looking after a small box; curious about its contents, Johnny opens it, only to unleash a torrent of evil spirits who turn the local rednecks into bloodthirsty creatures hovering somewhere between life and death. Dead & Breakfast features supporting performances by Portia de Rossi, Diedrich Bader, Jeremy Sisto, and David Carradine's daughter Ever Carradine; co-star Oz Perkins is also the offspring of a well-known actor, Anthony Perkins. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Originally titled America's Son, this cable-TV biopic of John F. Kennedy Jr. begins at the end, with the plane crash of July 19, 1999, that took the lives of Kennedy, his wife Caroline, and his sister-in-law. From this tragic vantage point, the film segues into flashbacks detailing the very public life of J.F.K. Sr.'s only son, of whom it was once said, "The world knew his name before he did." Based on The Day John Died, a book by George Andersen, the film intimates that "John-John" would have been happy charting his own course in life, but was instead channelled into following in the Kennedy tradition by his iron-willed mother Jacqueline (played by Jacqueline Bisset, who'd previously essayed an à clef version of Jackie O. in the theatrical feature The Greek Tycoon). Thus, John enters law school, where he is twice humiliated by failing to pass the bar exam. Finally, as editor of the high-profile George magazine, John can stand on his own merits and not as an adjunct of the Kennedy mystique. Naturally, the film devotes time aplenty to J.F.K. Jr.'s well-publicized romances, notably his lengthy association with actress Daryl Hannah (here played by Tara Chocol) and his ultimate marriage to Caroline Bessette (Portia de Rossi). Somewhat undercutting the credibility of the restaged scenes is the producers' utilization of interviews with the actual friends and associates of John Jr. -- not to mention film clips of the "real" Kennedy, employed as bridges between scenes. America's Prince: The John F. Kennedy Jr. Story debuted January 12, 2003, on TBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

As Arrested Development leaps into its first season, hard-working Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) is on the brink of starting a new life in Arizona with son George Michael (Michael Cera) when he is dragged kicking and screaming back to California, there to take charge of his family's business when his light-fingered father, George Sr. (Jeffrey Tambor), is jailed for fraud and the company's assets frozen. Though he had fondly assumed he'd seen the last of his vituperrious mother, Lucille (Jessica Walter), and his lazy, self-indulgent siblings, he was forced to hunker down and teach them how to behave (and spend!) more responsibly. As Michael's airheaded would-be-activist twin sister, Lindsay (Portia de Rossi), her sexually confused ex-doctor hubby, Tobias (David Cross), and their out-of-control daughter, Maeby (Alia Shawkat), move in with Michael, older brother Gob (Will Arnett), a spectacularly unsuccessful and untalented magician, must face the prospect of actually getting a real job, while the "baby" of the family, Michael's feckless kid brother, Buster (Tony Hale), remains sequestered in his mommy's Balboa Bay condo. Michael's well-ordered world doesn't take very long to unravel; by the second episode, his darling son George Michael has set fire to the Bluths' frozen-banana stand in Newport Beach, and has developed a borderline-incestuous crush on cousin Maeby. A few weeks later, Lucille Bluth's neurotic social rival Lucille Austero (Liza Minnelli) has entered into an affair with the much, much, much younger Buster, an act that will eventually move Buster's mom to spitefully adopt a Korean orphan named Annyong (Justin Lee). Meanwhile, Michael finds it next to impossible to break up the doomed romance between brother Gob and his girlfriend, Marta (Patricia Velasquez), and to fire such millstones around the Bluths' necks as hopelessly inept family lawyer Barry Zuckerkorn (Henry Winkler) and blackmailing company secretary Kitty Sanchez (Judy Greer).

Among the supporting actors entering into the lunacy are Rocky co-star Carl Weathers, who makes the first of several self-deprecating appearances as himself in the episode wherein George Michael is forced to hire a public relations service to gain entrance to a private school; Inside the Actors Studio host James Lipton as the warden in the prison where George Sr. is wasting away, so to speak; Seinfeld veteran Julia Louis-Dreyfus as the sight-challenged attorney Maggie Lizer, who plays up to Michael while trying to dig up more damaging dirt on his family's business practices; and series regular David Cross' longtime Mr. Show cohort Bob Odenkirk as a marriage counselor who tries to patch up the differences between Lindsay and Tobias (chief among them the fact that the "never-nude" Tobias will not undress in front of his spouse); and Amy Poehler, real-life wife of regular Will Arnett, as the "where the hell did she come from?" new wife of the gormless Gob. The season finale finds George Sr. staging a heart attack for the purpose of busting out jail, Maeby finally tumbling to George Michael's unspoken love for her, an unintentionally gay-themed book written years ago by Tobias embarrassingly hitting the best-seller charts, and the rivalry between Buster and Annyong coming to a head -- and threatening to bust both of their heads. Although season one of Arrested Development posted lukewarm ratings, the series earned a renewal from the Fox network largely on the strength of its five surprise Emmy Award wins (Outstanding Comedy Series, Outstanding Casting for a Comedy Series, Outstanding Directing, Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing, and Outstanding Writing). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Standup comedian turned director Chris Ver Weil makes his debut with this wild and woolly romantic comedy cum noir crime thriller. The film centers on Trevor Finch (Christian Slater), a master counterfeiter and career con who learns that he has a price on his head from mob hitman Critical Jim (Tim Allen). The reason turns out to be a wacky case of mistaken identity -- Finch has assumed the name Cletis Tout, a sleazy, long-dead French muckraker with, it turns out, a criminal history himself. Rewind to 1977, when Micah (Richard Dreyfuss) pulls off a massive diamond heist and buries his booty in a field with the help of his young daughter Tess. Five presidential administrations later, Micah and his cellmate Finch bust out of prison, only to learn from the now-grown Tess (Portia de Rossi) that the diamonds are behind the walls of another newly built prison. Meanwhile, sparks begin to fly between Tess and Finch. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide