David Fine
The rousing, true-life story of a single dad who went from living on the streets to owning his own brokerage firm is brought to the big screen by superstar Will Smith, appearing for the first time opposite his real-life son Jaden Smith. Set in early-'80s San Francisco, the film charts the hard times and eventual comeback of Chris Gardner, a suddenly single salesman who has custody of his son, but finds that providing for the two of them is a challenge in the increasingly unstable economic climate. He struggles to work his way from unpaid intern at Dean Witter to something more substantial, even as life continues to offer him setbacks. Making his Hollywood debut, Italian director Gabriele Muccino was championed by Will Smith for the project. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Will Smith, Jaden Smith, (more)
- 2005
- PG13
- AddRentto QueueAddRentto top of Queue
This film adaptation of the Broadway musical based loosely on Puccini's opera La Bohème features many members of the original cast. It follows a year in the lives of seven friends living the disappearing Bohemian lifestyle in New York's East Village. AIDS and both its physical and emotional complications pervade the lives of Roger (Adam Pascal), Mimi (Rosario Dawson), Tom (Jesse L. Martin), and Angel (Wilson Jermaine Heredia); Maureen (Idina Menzel) deals with her chronic infidelity through performance art; her partner, Joanne (Tracie Thoms), wonders if their relationship is worth the trouble; Benjamin (Taye Diggs) has sold out his Bohemian ideals in exchange for a hefty income and is on the outs with his former friends; and Mark (Anthony Rapp), an aspiring filmmaker, feels like an outsider to life in general, always behind the camera recording the events but never playing a part. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Rapp, Adam Pascal, (more)
A typical high school senior's friendship with a newly arrived transfer student finds the daydreaming graduate-to-be facing an impossible evil in a sinister tale of teenage terror from director Daniel Hess. Stacy is a hard-partying senior who somehow tolerates her boring classes just long enough to get through the week and cut loose with her best friends when the weekend rolls around. At first striking up a casual friendship with new student Christina, Stacy soon begins to ponder her new pal's mental stability when Christina's behavior begins to border on obsessive. There's something much more malevolent that's coming between the pair than intense emotions though, and when one of the most popular students in the school goes missing and Stacy makes the startling discovery that something evil has followed Christina from her former home, she comes into contact with a formidable force of evil that may be using the troubled transfer student to spread it's influence to a whole new town. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rebekah Isaacs, MacKenzie Firgens, (more)
- 2005
The desperate lives of a handful of denizens of San Francisco's Tenderloin district are chronicled in this independent drama from filmmaker Rob Nilsson. Lou (Brette McCabe) is an aging street prostitute who wants to get out of the life, but she lacks the temperament for the straight life, and has started using heroin again, which even her dealer regards as a bad idea. Lou is also living dangerously by not giving a cut of her earning to her pimp, who usually responds to such behavior with violence. Jane (Marianne Heath) is Lou's daughter, who makes her living dancing at a dingy strip club, though she's grown tired of the work and has become willing to join her friend Petite (Diane Gaidry) in strong-arming johns for their wallets. And Francesca (Gabriela Maltz Larkin) is a friend of Jane who runs a combination brothel and phone sex service. While Francesca arranges pleasure for others, she's desperately lonely herself, and when Jane begins dating a handicapped man who shares a flat with Francesca, she explodes with resentment and jealousy. Need is the sixth film in director Nilsson's "9@Night" series, which documents life along the margins in the Bay Area. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Diane Gaidry, Marianne Heath, (more)
- 2002
- NR
Coming as part of a spate of interrelated films made in collaboration with San Francisco's experimental theater troupe the Tenderloin yGroup, venerable indie filmmaker Rob Nilsson delivers this Cassavetes-style meditation on a group of desperate, homeless, or otherwise downtrodden characters who try to find connection with each other -- with varying degrees of success. Attitude takes as its lead character Spoddy (Michael Disend), a recently HIV-positive mechanic and petty thief who, fearing retribution from some shady business associates, takes refuge with a group of homeless people living at a landfill. There, he self-centeredly rails against the forces that conspired to cause his demise -- never realizing that he oversaw his own downfall. Also starring Selena Allen, Attitude is the fifth part of a seven-film series made between 2000 and 2003 called "9@Night," which all involve the same 40 actors from the theater troupe, and are made according to Nilsson's theory of "Direct Action Cinema" -- digitally-shot, improvised films that attempt to heighten the viewer's awareness of social issues. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Disend, Robert Viharo, (more)
