Michael Siegel Movies

Underworld hipster Chili Palmer is back in the entertainment business in this sequel to the 1995 hit Get Shorty, which like the first film is based on a novel by Elmore Leonard. Gangster-turned-movie producer Chili (once again played by John Travolta) has grown tired of the screen trade, especially after his latest project turned out to be a box-office flop. Chili is looking for new horizons and thinks he may have found his niche when his close friend Tommy Athens (James Woods), a fellow mobster who runs an independent record label, is murdered by Russian gangsters. Chili takes over Athens' record company, Nothing to Lose Records, and begins courting Tommy's girlfriend, Edie (Uma Thurman). Edie is an experienced hand in record production, and together she and Chili spot what would seem to be the ideal act for their label -- Linda Moon (Christina Milian), a beautiful young woman with a powerhouse voice. Linda is stuck, however, in a going-nowhere R&B trio managed by the monumentally sleazy Raji (Vince Vaughn). Chili isn't much concerned about Linda's contract with Raji, but Raji certainly is, and the manager soon takes out a contract on Chili with the same Russian hoods who killed Tommy. Soon Chili is facing all the action he can handle between the Russian gunmen, a music mogul named Nick Carr (Harvey Keitel) who wants Chili to stay out of the business, and Sin LaSalle (Cedric the Entertainer), a successful hip-hop producer who wants Chili to pay him the 300,000 dollars he is owed by Tommy. Be Cool also features appearances by The Rock as a gay Samoan bodyguard, Andre Benjamin (aka Andre 3000 from the hip-hop duo Outkast) as a rapper who isn't very good with a gun, and Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler as himself. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This low-budget cult classic horror spoof has one of the great movie titles of all time. Mike (Grant Cramer) and his sweetheart, Debbie (Suzanne Snyder), are smooching on lover's lane when they see what appears to be a meteorite crashing over the horizon. They loosen their liplock long enough to investigate and find a curious circus tent. There they discover malevolent clowns who stop their victims with popcorn-shooting guns and acid-drenched pies in order to feast on human blood. The unfortunates are then entombed into inescapable cotton-candy cocoons. Officer Dave Hanson (John Allen Nelson) is called to investigate with help from Officer Mooney (John Vernon). For those viewers who already think clowns are a little creepy to begin with, this one will push them over the edge. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi

Based on the book Matilda, by British children's author Roald Dahl, this film moves the setting from the U.K. to the U.S.; otherwise it follows the original closely. Matilda Wormwood (Mara Wilson) is an extremely curious and intelligent little girl who is very different from her low-brow, mainstream parents (Danny DeVito and real-life wife Rhea Perlman), who quite cruelly ignore her. As she grows older, she begins to discover that she has telekinetic powers. Not until a teacher shows her kindness for the first time does she realize that she can use those powers to do something about her sufferings and help her friends as well. Villains from the awful Miss Trunchbull (Pam Ferris), headmistress of her miserable school Crunchem Hall, to her parents and older brother begin to feel her ire. Look for Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman) in a small part as an FBI agent investigating Matilda's shady father. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi