Alex Draper Movies
A handful of scientists trying to unravel a mystery discover a terror beyond their wildest nightmares in this thriller from directors Andy Mitton and Jesse Holland. Friar, NH, is a small town with a bizarre history; in 1940, the 572 people who lived there all left their homes and marched up a mountain trail never to return. When a search party led by the military was conducted months later, some of the missing townspeople were discovered brutally murdered while others froze to death, but the majority were never found. The search party's final report was classified, but a team of university historians and anthropologists has obtained a copy of their findings and travels to Friar in hopes of charting the mysterious lost trail. Most of the people of Friar treat the long-ago disappearance as some sort of urban legend and most flatly refuse to discuss it with the visitors, but one eccentric woman says she knows how to find the trail, and will show them where it is if she's allowed to tag along. The researchers agree, and they set out along the head of the trail, marked by a stone with the legend "YellowBrickRoad." As they climb farther up the mountain, they hear a faint music that grows louder with each step, and a collective madness begins to overtake them as they come closer to the place where the people of Friar met their fate. YellowBrickRoad was an official selection at the 2010 Slamdance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Cassidy Freeman, Anessa Ramsey, (more)
Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga star in director George Ratliff's uncomfortable psychological thriller Joshua, as Brad and Abby Cairn, an affluent young stockbroker and his wife, raising children in New York City. Their firstborn, the nine-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan), is a frighteningly intelligent child -- to such a degree that he thinks and acts decades ahead of his age. Nearly always clad in formal wear and demonstrating limitless brilliance as a pianist -- with a marked predilection for "dissonant" classical pieces -- Joshua gravitates toward his gay aesthete uncle (Dallas Roberts) as a close friend, but distances himself from his immediate kin -- particularly when Abby brings a newborn baby sister home from the hospital and unwisely alienates the young tyke. As the days pass, one at a time, the mood at the house regresses from healthy and happy to strange, unsettled, and disorienting; meanwhile, bizarre events transpire. As the baby's whines drive an already strained Abby to the point of a nervous breakdown, Joshua devolves from eccentric to downright sociopathic behavior, discarding all of his toys, disemboweling a stuffed animal, and killing off pets. One at a time, family members also begin to suffer tragic fates -- but are they Joshua's fevered and psychotic doings or merely the result of happenstance? ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, (more)
- 1997
A devoutly Jewish women finds love outside her faith and is forced to make a difficult decision in this drama. Rachel Pearlman (Sabrina Boudot) was raised in a family of Hassidic Jews and works in the jewelry store owned by her father Chaim (Ben Hammer). Chaim thinks that it's time that his daughter got married, and he often arranges meetings with men from the Hassidic community, but none of them strike Rachel's fancy. Nick (Alex Draper) comes to work at the store to pay off a repair bill on a ring he purchased, and he's immediately smitten with Rachel. Rachel finds herself just as attracted to Nick, but Nick is a gentile, and becoming involved with him would be offensive both to her family and her faith. In spite of this, Rachel and Nick begin dating on the sly, until Chiam finds out and demands that she stop seeing him. Chiam makes plans to marry off Rachel as soon as possible, but Rachel still loves Nick, and she is forced to choose between her family and community and the man who has stolen her heart. Nick and Rachel was shown at Cinema Judaica '97, the 1997 Los Angeles Jewish Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Sabrina Boudot, Alex Draper, (more)
- 1996
The detectives launch a search for a possible campus rapist when the body of a female college student is found. The ensuing investigation suddenly goes off on another tangent when evidence points to a prostitution ring involving pretty coeds. Can it be that the dead girl was a secret hooker, and that one of her colleagues killed her to keep the secret? Whatever the case, the DA's office is stonewalled by the legal maneuvers of the suspect's well-connected father. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- 1991
When a man is stabbed to death in front of a coffee shop, an unhinged "street person" named Lemonhead (Matthew Cowles) leads detectives Logan (Chris Noth) and Cerreta (Paul Sorvino) to the probable killer, a homeless man named Polesky (Stuart Rudin). Sure enough, the cops find the murder weapon in the Central Park clearing that Polesky calls "home." Unfortunately, the killer's prosecution may be stymied when the Defense argues that Logan and Cerreta didn't have a search warrant. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
