Chris Hanley Movies

A failed suicide attempt gives a woman (Sarah Michelle Gellar) a new lease on life when she wakes to realize that she only has days to live in this adaptation of Paulo Coelho's best-selling novel. Emily Young (Kiss of Life) directs from a script by Larry Gross and Roberta Hanley. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

A precocious but troubled young girl living in 1950s-era Alabama seeks solace in the music of Elvis Presley in director Deborah Kampmeier's controversial tale of childhood trauma and musical healing. An air of repression lingers over the home of spirited youngster Lewellen (Dakota Fanning), who finds both comfort in the music of pop sensation Presley, as well as a place to store her pain and anger. In time Lewellen begins to find her own voice, a voice that will instill her with the strength to move beyond the pain of her past and into a more hopeful future. Piper Laurie, David Morse, and Robin Wright Penn star in a period drama that made its debut at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

With his gentle drama Lo Mas Bonito Y Mis Mejores Anos, writer-director Martin Boulocq sings a mournful, bittersweet ode to the emptiness and meaninglessness of young Bolivian lives. Juan-Pablo Milan plays the teenage Berto, a Cochachamba native. Longing for a departure from Bolivia, but lacking the funds to buy the ticket to Madrid that he desires, Berto attempts to sell his most valuable asset: a 1965 Volkswagen bequeathed to him by his late grandfather. He devises a number of schemes to pawn the vehicle off, none of which seem to work. Meanwhile, his best friend Victor (Roberto Guilhon), who works at a nearby video store, futilely does everything in his power to persuade customers to rent art films by Aki Kaurismaki and Wong Kar-wai, and privately obsesses over women and sex. The two young men spend a great deal of time palling around the Bolivian countryside together, until Victor's ex-girlfriend, Camila (Alejandra Lanza) turns up and skews the balance between the two friends, particularly when she starts to develop feelings for Berto. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Matthew Bright directs the romantic comedy Tiptoes, written by Bill Weiner. Rolfe (Gary Oldman) is a dwarf, but his brother Steven (Matthew McConaughey) is not. When Steven's wife, Carol (Kate Beckinsale), gets pregnant, she worries about the baby being born a dwarf. She also ends up falling for Rolfe, much to her surprise. Also starring Peter Dinklage and Patricia Arquette. After appearing at film festivals in Europe, Tiptoes made its U.S. premiere at Sundance Film Festival in 2004. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Love Liza is a psychological drama about a man trying to come to terms with his wife's suicide. Wilson Joel (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) is searching for answers as to why his wife, Liza, killed herself. He is unable to bring himself to read the suicide note Liza left behind. Instead of facing his demons, Wilson becomes addicted to sniffing gasoline. Kathy Bates co-stars as Liza's mother. This film was written by the star's brother Gordy Hoffman, and directed by newcomer Todd Louiso. Love Liza was screened at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark, who made a controversial feature debut with the disturbing drama Kids, returns with another disquieting look at amoral and sexually precocious youth. Bobby (Nick Stahl) is a high school student growing up in southern Florida in the early '90s. Bobby is also a borderline psychotic; he frequently lashes out with brutal violence against those around him and especially enjoys humiliating his best friend Marty (Brad Renfro). While Bobby professes to hate and fear homosexuals, he goads Marty into performing phone sex with men, makes Marty and his friends watch hardcore gay porn films with him, and may have sexually abused Marty. But Marty is hardly the only victim of Bobby's abuse; Bobby has sexually assaulted Marty's girlfriend Lisa (Rachel Miner) and more than once has barged in on the couple while they were making love. Lisa's best friend Ali (Bijou Phillips) has also been raped by Bobby, and he has mistreated nearly everyone in their circle of friends. One night, Marty, Lisa, Ali, and several others decide Bobby's cycle of abuse must stop. But their solution is as ugly as the problem -- the teens stab Bobby, slit his throat, crush his head with a baseball bat, and throw his body into the bay, where the remains will be eaten by alligators. Bully is based on a book by journalist Jim Schutze, which recounted the facts of the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent, who after years of abusing his friends and classmates, was killed by seven of his acquaintances in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. As with Kids, Larry Clark's startlingly graphic depiction of sex, violence, and drug use among teenagers crossed the boundaries of what the MPAA could permit in an R-rated film, and the picture's distributors chose to release the film without a rating. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Despite the efforts of her sleazy attorney, Mr. Butz (David Alan Grier), teen drug dealer/car thief Crystal (Natasha Lyonne) is sentenced to a 25-year prison term, the first segment of which will be served in a youth correctional facility where she will be treated for her rampant bulimia. There, in-between binge/purge marathons with her fellow eating-disordered inmates and relentless harassment of the hapless authorities, she fends off the lesbian advances of her psychotic cellmate, Cyclona (Maria Celedonio), a serial killer who's just received a life sentence. The two escape together and embark on a cross-country road trip in search of Sister Gomez (Vincent Gallo), the beneficent nun who protected Cyclona from the sexual predations of her family during her troubled childhood south of the border. Where writer/director Matthew Bright's original Freeway was a modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, Freeway 2 riffs on Hansel and Gretel; it borrows only the trailer-park trappings of the earlier film, making the titular allusion to automobiles somewhat tenuous. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Dominique Swain stars as spoiled, small-town high-school senior, 18-year-old Andrea Marr, who lives with her parents in an upscale suburb of Porter City, Washington -- where Andrea and her gal pals make the scene at various concerts and clubs. Before the summer ends and an Ivy League school takes her East, the virginal and somewhat confused Andrea hopes to achieve sexual satisfaction. She chooses Kevin (Channon Roe), but the encounter isn't quite what she was expecting, perhaps because she's more attracted to rocker Todd Sparrow (Sean Patrick Flanery). Absorbing advice from her friend Rebecca (Summer Phoenix), she plots a course of action and drops Kevin. After she succeeds in linking with her one-and-only, it's not long before she's disappointed to find that Sparrow has flown the coop. Swain's effective voiceover narration contrasts her careful plans with her impulsive actions. Shown in the market section at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Actor Vincent Gallo (The Funeral, Palookaville) made his feature directorial debut with this drama about convict Billy Brown (Gallo), released after half a decade spent behind bars. Drifting into downtown Buffalo, Billy kidnaps teen Layla (Christina Ricci) and has her pose as his loving wife when he visits his parents (Ben Gazzara and Anjelica Huston). Layla praises him and goes along with his fanciful tale that they met at CIA headquarters, where they both worked. Mom and dad not only fall for this, they are entranced by Layla, who soon begins to embellish her act. When she claims to be pregnant by Billy, he hustles her out to a bowling alley and on to a restaurant, where they run into trampy Wendy (Rosanna Arquette), who might be Billy's former girlfriend. Eventually, Billy seems ready to track down and kill the person he feels was responsible for his five years in the slammer. Shown at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Pulp fiction writer Jim Thompson's novels have been adapted into noirish movies such as The Grifters and this one, directed by Michael Oblowitz. This unusual dark tragedy is narrated by Marty (Billy Zane), a successful investigative reporter who is unhappy with his shy and sick wife. As children, Marty and his twin sister Carol (Gina Gershon) saw their father and his mistress murdered in their home. Their mother (Rue McClanahan) took the children on the road, and they had a tumultuous childhood before finally settling in a small town in California. Marty and Carol had an incestuous relationship, and now they resume it after Marty leaves his wife and job to visit his sister and mother. Carol has been divorced and has become a cheap hooker. Marty soon hooks up with a classy, highly professional policewoman, Lois Archer (Sheryl Lee), who has a secret need to treated abusively, and they spend decadent weekends together at a beach cottage that Lois and her husband own. Marty and Carol plot to get the cabin for themselves after Carol poisons a couple of gangsters who are horning in on her prostitution business. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

In this postmodern exploitation flick loosely based on "Little Red Riding Hood," the uneducated daughter of a drug-addicted prostitute flees the foster-care system in search of her long-lost grandmother but meets up instead with a serial killer. Vanessa (Reese Witherspoon), a nearly illiterate firebug and serial shoplifter, desperately clings to normalcy even though her mother turns tricks, does drugs, and manages to ignore the fact that the girl's stepfather Michael T. Weiss has been abusing her for years. When both of her parents get arrested, Vanessa steals the car of her family-services caseworker (Conchata Ferrell) and heads up Interstate 5 in search of her paternal grandmother, who's never met her. Car problems force her to accept a ride from Bob Wolverton (Kiefer Sutherland), a youth counselor who uses charm and sympathy to get the girl to open up. Confessing the sordid details of her childhood to Bob, Vanessa is shocked when he suddenly declares that she's one of the "garbage people" and that he plans to murder her and have sex with her corpse. Bob, it turns out, is the "I-5 Murderer," who's been slaughtering young prostitutes in the Los Angeles area. Thanks to a gun borrowed from her fiancé, Vanessa manages to turn the tables on Bob, shooting him repeatedly and leaving him for dead. He survives, Vanessa is arrested, and the two meet up again in court -- with her unrepentant, even though the police disbelieve her story, him flanked by his prim wife (Brooke Shields) and the righteous indignation of the American legal system. Locked up in the juvie for psychological evaluation, Vanessa gets in touch with her wild side and eventually escapes, heading off to her fateful meeting with grandma. Although Freeway was originally filmed for HBO, vigorously positive critical response eventually earned it a theatrical release. Alanna Ubach, who portrays Vanessa's nemesis/accomplice Mesquita, would go on to appear with Witherspoon in Legally Blonde. Freeway also features two Clueless alumni: Dan Hedaya, as a police detective, and Brittany Murphy, as the disfigured lesbian who befriends Vanessa in lock-up. Michael T. Weiss, who previously appeared in gay indie Jeffrey, appears in both Freeway and its sequel, Freeway 2: Confessions of a Trickbaby. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide