Giuseppe Andrews Movies
From his first infomercial appearance as a young boy hungry for hot dogs to his directorial debut with the outrageous pseudo-reality comedy Trailer Town, eternally unpredictable actor-turned-director Giuseppe Andrews has constantly surprised audiences, regardless of which side of the camera he happens to be on. Andrews's debut feature resembles something of a cross between Gummo and Pink Flamingos, making it obvious to anyone who has seen the film that there are few boundaries Andrews is not willing to completely obliterate. He had a nomadic childhood, residing in a van with his father, sleeping in supermarket parking lots while his dad gulped experimental pills for hospital surveys -- but a simple newspaper ad seeking an older man to get his hair cut in an infomercial offered a catalyst for the unassuming youngster's first foray into film. When the producer asked the elder Andrews if he knew of a young boy who could ask for hot dogs while his father was getting his hair cut, young Andrews landed the role with ease, acquiring an agent in the process.After making his feature debut in the 1989 comedy Getting It Right, Andrews continued on with appearances in such efforts as 12:01, Prehysteria 2, and White Dwarf, also landing a role in the widely released 1995 drama Unstrung Heroes, providing his most high-profile role to date. All of that would change when Andrews was cast in director Roland Emmerich's 1996 sci-fi blockbuster Independence Day. The following year's roles in efforts such as Pleasantville and American History X found his resumé expanding and his recognition factor rising. Though Andrews would eventually climb the credits to land a substantial role in director Adam Rifkin's 1999 retro-comedy Detroit Rock City, the film was widely panned by critics and died a quick death at the box office. A starring role in the 1999 made-for-television feature Student Affairs preceded a recurring role in the short-lived weekly series Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place, and in 2002 Andrews cracked up audiences as "Party Cop" deputy Winston in the horror hit Cabin Fever. Positive word of mouth from Cabin Fever director Eli Roth helped to get Andrews' early films seen, and in the summer of 2004, Troma DVD released his debut feature Trailer Town, and the sound of dry heaving filled living rooms nationwide. With roles in Tweek City, 2001 Maniacs, and The Black Dahlia set to follow soon after, audiences could rest assured that Andrews wasn't going to completely abandon his acting career for that of a director just yet. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- 2008
- R
The flesh-eating virus that consumed a group of hapless college vacationers back in 2003 returns to crash a high school prom in director Ti West's gore-drenched sequel to the Eli Roth original. The Lost star Marc Senter joins a cast featuring Larry Fessenden, Giuseppe Andrews, Mark Borchart, and Rider Strong - who seems to have successfully sweated out his original case of Cabin Fever. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Noah Segan, Rusty Kelley, (more)
- 2007
Underground filmmaker Giuseppe Andrews returns to the helm to direct this surreal statement against animal abuse produced by Adam Rifkin. Dougal and Dongo are two small-time criminals who have just scammed an unsuspecting woman's social-security check. Their plan for the cash: to rent a local hotel room and take in a televised kangaroo fight. Unfortunately the pair stays up arguing and misses the match. Deeply depressed by their blunder and lacking the cash needed to purchase the baked potatoes they so deeply desire, Dougal and Dongo vow to commit suicide when checkout time rolls around. Meanwhile, a talking cow released from the local slaughterhouse checks into the room next door, and a murderous homeless man who receives his instructions through bath towels reads a newspaper report about the cow's reprieve and sets out in search of some steak. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Miles Dougal, Walt Dongo, (more)
At times, it seems video surveillance is omnipresent in America, and Adam Rifkin (Underdog) spends the better part of two hours asserting just that in his fiction feature Look. This motion picture gains a historical footnote as the first U.S. mainstream movie to depict events solely through the "eyes" of surveillance video cameras. The preponderance of action unfurls in San Fernando Valley offices, stores, and shopping malls, where we witness security-camera footage of character interactions and events that would likely never occur if the perpetrators knew they were being "watched." In one subplot, Marty (Ben Weber), a beleaguered insurance salesman alienated by his co-workers, makes brazenly sexual passes at his female colleagues, secretly hatching a darker plan of his own on the side. Meanwhile, in another locale -- that of a department store at the Northridge Fashion Center shopping mall -- a chauvinistic floor manager named Tony takes full-scale sexual advantage of each of his female co-workers, letting all his inhibitions fly out the window in the "secrecy" of the back room. And in the same store, two minors, Holly (Heather Hogan) and Sherri (Spencer Redford), shop for seductive apparel in a twisted plot to seduce and presumably blackmail a high-school instructor. On a darker note, Rifkin follows convenience-store employees attempting to "bring down" a cadre of serial murderers tagged as "The Candid Camera Killers," whose doings attract the attention of police cameras. Other perspectives included in the film include those of ATM cameras, robot security cameras, and all sorts of other surveillance devices of varying ingenuity, all of which catch shocking behavior and are used to follow a myriad of substories. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jamie McShane, Spencer Redford, (more)
Fearless underground filmmaker Guiseppe Andrews steps back behind the camera to deliver the kind of extreme gross-out thrills only hinted at in 2003's Trailer Park in a tragicomic tale of life along the Ventura Highway. When a birthday camping trip goes bad and his son is killed in a tragic accident, a retired police officer finds the overwhelming pain too much to bear. Meanwhile, a homebound father longing to relive the sexual conquests of his youth fulfills his fantasies with an imaginary prostitute named Serenity, and a French dwarf struggles to finish his screenplay concerning the strange adventures of a half-man/half-stuffed-animal chauffer. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
In this comedy from Troma Entertainment (The Toxic Avenger, Killer Condom), entitled Touch Me in the Morning, writer-director Giuseppe Andrews stars as a young man named Coney Island, who struggles against the problems that plague him. Faced with unemployment, feelings of sexual incapability, an ex-con gigolo father, and a broken family, Coney opts instead to spend his days singing to the elderly and riding pint-sized mechanical bulls at a local playground. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giuseppe Andrews, Bill Nowlin, (more)
Underground film icon Giuseppe Andrews stars as a sexually frustrated, half-Latino speed dealer whose rampant paranoia is about to get the best of him in director Eric Johnson's tense, hallucinogenic thriller Tweek City. Fired from his job at a Bay Area computer company, San Francisco speed slinger Bill Jenson (Andrews) seeks solace in the company of punk-rock porn connoisseur Jerm (Keith Brunsmann) -- a White Trash Debutantes fanatic. Jerm, however, becomes completely useless when he takes Bill to a punk rock concert, then stage dives and severely injures himself -- leaving Bill to fend for himself and to focus on what troubles him the most: the loss of his lifelong love, Sharon (Elizabeth Bogush). Life goes on, though, and these days Sharon is set to marry another man. As the wedding date draws near and Bill's tenuous grip on reality slowly begins to slip, the lovelorn addict embarks on a drug-soaked bender of epic proportions before he sets his sights on the ceremony and determines to stop the union at all costs. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Giuseppe Andrews, Elizabeth Bogush, (more)
Hostel director Eli Roth's genre-friendly Raw Nerve film group makes its gore-soaked splash with director Tim Sullivan's kitchy remake of Hershell Gordon Lewis' southern-fried splatter-fest. A drunken group of hard partying college-kids are in for a Spring Break they'll never forget when they take a tragic detour through the small southern town of Pleasant Valley. Greeted by the overzealous mayor (Robert Englund) and promised a wild time at the town's annual barbecue celebration, the initially-hesitant teens soon agree to spend the night when the citizen's down-home hospitality simply becomes too much to resist. But things are not what they seem in the timeless town of Pleasant Valley, and as the thrill seeking students begin to disappear one-by-one in the most gruesome of fashions, it soon becomes obvious that they are to be the main ingredient in Pleasant Valley's most tasty tradition. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Englund, Lin Shaye, (more)
Eric Christian Olsen and Jeremy Sumpter star as brothers Randy and Skeet Dobson in this coming-of-age surfer movie from director Ron Moler. With their widowed mother working to provide for the family, Randy is left to look after 12-year-old Skeet. Despite the fact that a kid brother is a bit of a style-cramper, Randy lets Skeet tag along with him to the beach where he and his friends surf the summer days away. But trouble begins to brew when a pretty girl named Samantha (Shelby Fenner) chooses Randy over the leader of a rough-and-tumble surfer gang. Meanwhile, all is not well at home either when Skeet befriends Jim Wesley (Mark Harmon), a legendary surfer who begins a romantic relationship with the boys' mother, Jessica (Stacy Edwards), much to Randy's chagrin. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Eric Christian Olsen, Stacy Edwards, (more)
Five college buddies retreat to the woods for a little R & R and end up getting a horrific lesson in infectious disease in this low-budget shocker. Cabin Fever stars Rider Strong as the geeky Paul, who hopes to settle in around the campfire with his brash buds Jeff (Joey Kern) and Bert (James DeBello), and make the moves on the nubile-but-shy Karen (Jordan Ladd). Unfortunately, a wayward, forest-dwelling vagrant (Arie Verveen) stumbles into their lives, his skin badly desiccated by a mysterious virus. Fearing for their own lives, the quintet decide to do away with the man, with little success: He stumbles away from the campsite and into a nearby stream, where his disease quickly infects the local water supply. It isn't long before the oblivious co-eds get a taste of the man's illness, and in their desperation, each learns that he or she will stop at nothing to survive. Cabin Fever premiered at the 2002 Toronto Film Festival, where it was snapped up by Lions Gate for a fall 2003 release. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jordan Ladd, James DeBello, (more)
- 2002
- NC17
Prepare to be shocked and revolted as actor-turned-director Giuseppe Andrews explores the drunken, fecal-smeared exploits of a California trailer park in this raw and uncompromising directorial debut. Featuring a variety of unprofessional actors who drink the day away while making love to excrement, the film is bound to test viewers' gag reflexes as Andrews attempts to illuminate the dark underbelly of America's insolvent lower-class. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
Are you ready for the hottest band in the land? It's 1978 in Detroit, and pretty much any teenager who isn't a total wimp is totally stoked for the upcoming Kiss concert (as anyone who ever listened to Kiss Alive! knows, Detroit has always loved this band). But four proud members of the Kiss Army find themselves without tickets to the show, and one has to deal with a mother who is convinced that Kiss and their music are evil incarnate. Will they be able to foil scalpers, security, and paranoid parents to witness the fire-spitting, blood-puking, hard rock frenzy that is Kiss on stage? Detroit Rock City stars Edward Furlong, Sam Huntington, Natasha Lyonne, Giuseppe Andrews, and James DeBello as the representative members of the Teenage Nation; the original four members of Kiss (Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, and Peter Criss) play themselves, and Simmons also co-produced. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edward Furlong, Giuseppe Andrews, (more)
Twenty-two year old Carla Tate (Juliette Lewis) is a slightly mentally challenged young woman who has spent several years at a sheltered private boarding school. Now she's coming home to her wealthy parents in northern California who are emotionally ill-equipped to deal with her and are guilt ridden over sending her away in the first place. The biggest limitation Carla must now overcome is her overprotective mother Elizabeth (Diane Keaton). When she takes a class at a trade school, Carla soon meets the equally challenged Daniel (Giovanni Ribisi). Despite his limitations, he maintains a job in a bakery and lives alone. Carla dares to dream of independence and love despite her mother who refuses to view her as an adult. When Daniel fails his class, his father cuts off his funds. Facing a move to Florida to live with his mother, the two turn to each other and find a way to stay together to face a world of adult opportunities and responsibilities. ~ Ron Wells, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Juliette Lewis, Diane Keaton, (more)
Many people wish they could go back to high school, knowing what they know as an adult; Josie Geller gets the chance to do just that in the comedy Never Been Kissed. Josie (played by Drew Barrymore) is a 25-year-old copy editor at a newspaper in Chicago. But it's her youthful looks as much as her journalistic skills that finally win her a writing assignment: she's ordered to enroll in high school posing as a teenager for a story on the state of America's youth. Trouble is, Josie was a hopeless nerd in high school (called "Josie Grossie" by her classmates); she had no idea of how to fit in with the cool kids, and she's hardly gotten any better at it in the seven years since graduation. While Josie makes fast friends with a bookish girl named Aldys (Leelee Sobieski), and also takes notice of her good-looking English teacher Mr. Coulson (Michael Vartan), she realizes for the sake of her story she has to infiltrate the cool girls' clique, which will be impossible without someone to give her a crash course in hipness. Josie's brother Rob (David Arquette), obviously the more style-conscious sibling, offers to sign up for the same school to act as the cool-guy friend she'll need to fit in, but just when Josie starts making headway (and starts enjoying high school for a change), her editor changes the focus of the story -- he now wants a feature on improper relations between teachers and students, which will not be good for her deepening friendship with Mr. Coulson. Never Been Kissed also features supporting performances from John C. Reilly, Molly Shannon and Jordan Ladd (the latter in a much more wholesome vehicle than her last cinematic visit to cinematic teen-town, Gregg Araki's Nowhere). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Drew Barrymore, David Arquette, (more)
Gary Ross, Oscar nominated for his Dave and Big screenplays, made his directorial debut with this comedy. The cheerful '50s TV sitcom "Pleasantville" is revived in the '90s for a loyal cable audience. One devoted fan is shy suburban teen David Wagner (Tobey Maguire), who has an almost obsessive interest in the series. Living with his divorced mother (Jane Kaczmarek), David sometimes has disputes with his ultra-hip twin sister Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon). She wants to watch MTV just when a Pleasantville marathon is about to begin. They struggle over the remote control, and it breaks. A strange TV repairman (Don Knotts) supplies their new remote, a potent high-tech device which zaps David and Jennifer inside Pleasantville, where their new sitcom parents are businessman George Parker (William H. Macy) and wife Betty (Joan Allen). As "Bud" and "Mary Sue," the teens take up residence in a black-and-white suburbia where sex does not exist and the temperature is always 72 degrees. Life is always pleasant, books have no words, bathrooms have no toilets, married couples sleep in twin beds, the high school basketball team always wins, and nobody ever questions "The Good Life." David revels in Pleasantville's Prozac-styled peacefulness. He fits right in, but Jennifer's 1990s attitude upsets the blandness balance, painting parts of Pleasantville in "living color." Repressed desires surface, cracks appear in the '50s lifestyles, and the Pleasantville populace finds their lives changing in strange, wonderful ways. It's liberating -- but there's also a darker side. This film breaks an all-time record with more than 1700 special effects shots. Shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tobey Maguire, Jeff Daniels, (more)
- 1998
Oprah Winfrey co-produced this psychological drama, a TV movie remake of the acclaimed black-and-white low-budget ($180,000) 1962 David and Lisa. The original earned $1 million in its first run and also earned Oscar nominations for director Frank Perry and screenwriter Eleanor Perry, who adapted the story from the case history by Theodore Isaac Rubin. The script for the remake is credited to director Lloyd Kramer, Eleanor Perry, and Rubin. Emotionally disturbed teenager David (Lukas Haas), a genius with a fear of being touched, is taken by his mother to an institution where he encounters compassionate psychiatrist, Dr. Jack Miller (Sidney Poitier) and free-spirited teen Lisa (Brittany Murphy), who speaks in rhyme. Although Miller makes a supreme effort with David, it's Lisa who succeeds in reaching out to David and making contact with him, quelling his demons with love. The remake relocates the story from the East Coast to the West Coast, where it was filmed in Los Angeles locations (Venice, Los Feliz). The telepic premiered November 1, 1998 on ABC. When this remake was filmed, Rubin was still a practicing psychiatrist in New York at the age of 75. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sidney Poitier, Lukas Haas, (more)
- 1998
Three former college chums are the center of this sitcom, set at a Boston pizza parlor where grad-school roommates Berg (Ryan Reynolds) and Pete (Richard R. Ruccolo) work. Above their apartment lives their friend and neighbor, Sharon (Traylor Howard), sales rep for a chemical company. Berg is an eccentric philosophy major who's also a guinea pig each week for a different new product (nasal spray, talking shoes). Pete's a potential architect with a bubbly girlfriend, Melissa (Jennifer Westfeldt). Bill (Julius Carry) is the boss at the pizzeria, where one of the "wacky" customers is the delusional Mr. Bauer (David Ogden Stiers). Most of Bauer's "adventures" seem to have been filched from the plotlines of JAWS and other movies. The first six episodes of this series were purchased by the Fox network and then sold to ABC, where the show premiered March 11, 1998 on ABC. The New York Times reviewed it as a "charmless comedy." ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Traylor Howard, Ryan Reynolds, (more)
Tony Kaye made his feature directorial debut with this dramatic exploration into the roots of race hatred in America. In a shocking opening scene, teen Danny Vinyard (Edward Furlong) races to tell his older brother, neo-Nazi Derek (Edward Norton), about the young blacks breaking into his car in front of the house, whereupon Derek gets his gun and with no forethought shoots the youths in their tracks. Tried and convicted, Derek is sent away for three years in prison, where he acquires a different outlook as he contrasts white-power prisoners with black Lamont (Guy Torry), his prison laundry co-worker and eventual pal. Meanwhile, Danny, with a shaved head and a rebellious attitude, seems destined to follow in his big brother's footsteps. After Danny writes a favorable review of Hitler's Mein Kampf, black high-school principal Sweeney (Avery Brooks) puts Danny in his private "American History X" course and assigns him to do a paper about his older brother, who was a former student of Sweeney's. This serves to introduce flashbacks, with the film backtracking to illustrate Danny's account of Derek's life prior to the night of the shooting. Monochrome sequences of Derek leading a Venice, California gang are intercut with color footage of the mature Derek ending his past neo-Nazi associations and attempting to detour Danny away from the group led by white supremacist, Cameron (Stacy Keach), who once influenced Derek. Director Tony Kaye, with a background in TV commercials and music videos, filmed in L.A. beach communities. Rated R "for graphic brutal violence including rape, pervasive language, strong sexuality and nudity." ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, (more)
A group of intrepid humans attempts to save the Earth from vicious extraterrestrials in this extremely popular science-fiction adventure. Borrowing liberally from War of the Worlds, Aliens, and every sci-fi invasion film inbetween, director Roland Emmerich and producer and co-writer Dean Devlin present a visually slick, fast-paced adventure filled with expensive special effects and large-scale action sequences. The story begins with the approach of a series of massive spaceships, which many on Earth greet with open arms, looking forward to the first contact with alien life. Unfortunately, these extraterrestrials have not come in peace, and they unleash powerful weapons that destroy most of the world's major cities. Thrown into chaos, the survivors struggle to band together and put up a last-ditch resistance in order to save the human race. As this is a Hollywood film, this effort is led by a group of scrappy Americans, including a computer genius who had foreseen the alien's evil intent (Jeff Goldblum), a hot-shot jet pilot (Will Smith), and the President of the United States (Bill Pullman). While some critics objected to the film's lack of originality and lapses in logic, the combination of grand visual spectacle and crowd-pleasing storytelling proved irresistible to audiences, resulting in an international smash hit. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bill Pullman, Will Smith, (more)
