Stephen Ujlaki Movies

A man with a troubled past becomes the prime suspect in a small-town murder case. Adapted from the novel by Patricia Highsmith, The Cry of the Owl tells the tale of Robert Forrester (Paddy Considine), a man who flees from the city and his marriage in search of solitude. Eventually, Robert winds up in a quaint community and becomes drawn to Jenny (Julia Stiles), a pretty local whose simple existence holds a unique appeal to the former big-city dweller. When Jenny notices Robert peering in through her kitchen window, she senses that he doesn't mean her harm and strikes up a conversation. Suspicious of the mysterious newcomer's motivations and jealous of the attention his girlfriend is getting, Jenny's boyfriend Greg (James Gilbert) launches an obsessive campaign to humiliate and destroy Robert. After a heated confrontation Greg goes missing, and the authorities begin looking to Robert for answers. Now the higher the stakes get, the more Robert begins to suspect that he's being set up to take a big fall. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Tom Ripley (Barry Pepper) and friends cover up the death of a renowned artist in order to continue profiting from his work, but find their ruse threatened by a sharp-eyed art collector who recognizes one of the paintings as fake. Tom Wilkinson, Claire Forlani, Alan Cumming, and Willem Dafor co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Although this made-for-TV chiller would seem to have been inspired by The Amityville Horror, it actually has a closer kinship to To Kill a Mockingbird. Moving his family into their new home, tech writer Victor Robinson (John Savage) can't shake the feeling that someone is already living there. Well, not exactly "living"; thanks to an ancient Edison invention activated by Victor's autistic daughter, the family begins picking up disturbing echoes of a murder that occurred there eight years ago. Even worse, one of the Robinsons' neighbors is a child killer, who will strike again unless the spirits of his past victims can make themselves known. First telecast November 12, 1998, Lost Souls was originally part of UPN's weekly "Nightworld" movie series. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A scientist finds himself walking a fine line between reason and fantasy in this family-oriented drama. Dr. Jonathan Dempsey (Ted Danson) is an American scientist who has devoted his career to searching out the truth behind contemporary legends and psudeo-scientific phenomena like Bigfoot, which has not gained him much credibility among his peers. Dempsey's superior, Dr. Mercer (Harris Yulin), has a new project that would seem to be right up his alley -- Mercer wants Dempsey to travel to Scotland to prove once and for all that there is no such thing as the Loch Ness Monster. Dempsey takes the assignment and settles into a small hotel near the Loch run by Laura MacFeteridge (Joely Richardson), a single mother with a young daughter, Isabel (Kirsty Graham). Isabel strikes up an immediate friendship with Dempsey while her mother soon takes a more mature interest in the American scientist, but most of the locals don't take kindly to the notion of an outsider flying in to prove that Nessie isn't real, especially the town's self-proclaimed monster expert the Water Bailiff (Ian Holm). What Dempsey does learn about Nessie surprises him a great deal -- and so does his decision about what to do with his findings. Jim Henson's Creature Shop pitched in for the special effects sequences with Nessie. Loch Ness was released theatrically in Europe, but had its American premiere as a network television presentation. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

With a story that seeks to continue the famous tale of Heidi, Courage Mountain focuses on the teenager (Juliette Caton), forced to leave her grandfather (Jan Rubes) to attend an Italian boarding school on the eve of World War I. The German army appropriates the school, and Heidi is forced to depend on her smarts until she can be reunited with her boyfriend Peter (Charlie Sheen). ~ John Bush, Rovi