Mark Mathis Movies

Trapped in a miserable marriage and blessed with the ability to transform her misery into delicious desserts, a small-town waitress finds her life forever changed by an unplanned pregnancy. Every day, Jenna (Keri Russell) ties on her apron and serves her customers with a smile, and every night she goes to bed knowing that she is one step closer to the day that she can kiss her scarily domineering husband (Jeremy Sisto) goodbye forever. A smart and sassy baker whose extraordinary pies are inspired by her daily trials and tribulations, Jenna fears that her dreams are all but dead when handsome Dr. Pomatter (Nathan Fillion) reveals that she is soon to become a mother. As Jenna begins penning a series of letters to her unborn baby, her life starts to change for the better in ways she never could have imagined. The final film from actress/filmmaker Adrienne Shelly, Waitress debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah just months after the director was discovered dead in her New York City apartment -- the victim of a homicide. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A tough-talking teen attempts to uncover his ex-girlfriend's killer in director Rian Johnson's hard-boiled high-school noir, told in the style of a Dashiell Hammett mystery. An outsider by nature, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is forced to penetrate the elaborate ranks of the high-school social scene and its more insidious underbelly when the body of his former girlfriend Emily is found lying lifeless in a remote creek. Though the pair had been on the outs, Brendan can't seem to shake the hysterical phone call that he received from Emily the day before her body was discovered, a call in which she rattled off a number of cryptic words: "brick," "pin," "tug," "poor Frisco." He's determined to find the guilty party, and to do that he'll need to uncover the meaning behind her enigmatic phone call. From the highest-ranking athlete to the lowest-level burnout, no one is above suspicion of leaving her in that creek or putting her in the position to end up there. Brendan's skill for getting the right attention from the right people leads him to a local drug dealer of urban-legendary status (Lukas Haas), who walks with a cane and lives with his mother. As Brendan infiltrates the social and political web more deeply, his theory solidifies and each player's role becomes clear, from the shifty-eyed pot slinger to an upper-crust innocent who may well be a femme fatale. Brendan may soon be ready to make his case, even if it's too late for him to get out. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Filmmaker Frank Novak debuts with this wild satire about a white trash marriage that's coming apart at the seams. Fanatical toy collector Don (Bob Mills) and his Italian-born wife Donatella (Petra Westen) are so estranged from one another that they use their only child Don, Jr. (Andrew Eichner) as a go-between. The warring couple both still live in their rundown North Hollywood bungalow, even though their divorce court date is in only two weeks. Donatella is too afraid of losing all of her belongings to move out, while Don is using every trick in the book to drive her out. When he learns that Donatella, who works as a forklift operator, has the hots for female company manager Marion (Tracey Adams), Don goes berserk. He builds a wall clean through the middle of the house with a little doggy-door so that Don, Jr. can shuttle between the two halves. As the film progresses, the tranquility of Donatella and Marion's half contrasts sharply with the high-school basement party atmosphere of Don's, which is populated with an increasingly motley array of drug-addled toy collectors and general freaks. His loser brother-in-law Chuck (Zia) agrees to act as a house security guard in exchange for being allowed to live in Don's car with his crack-addict girlfriend Tiffany (Maeve Kerrigan). Meanwhile, men's rights advocate and gun nut Joe (Al Schuermann) arms Don with guns and eventually a rocket launcher -- after which things get really out of control. This film won the Grand Prize at the 2000 Slamdance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide