Taylor Miller Movies
- 2009
Claudia Allen adapts her own play detailing the decades-long love affair between a butch lesbian and a religious housewife for the screen in a film directed by Wendy Jo Carlton. The story begins in a nursing home, where an elderly Hannah (Sharon Gless) has been forbidden from visiting Rachel, the love of her life. Rachel is in a coma, and since Hannah is not family, she is refused entrance into her longtime lover's room. As Hannah's memories drift gently back into the past, she recalls her relationship with Rachel, which began when they were just young girls. Just when it begins to look as if Hannah will never see Rachel again, a sympathetic student offers to help her circumvent the traditional hospital rules regarding visitors. In the process of attempting to get one last glimpse of her beloved, however, Hannah is forced to come to terms with the fact that Rachel's view of their relationship wasn't all roses. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sharon Gless, Maureen Gallagher, (more)
- 2002
The sad and sometimes darkly funny lives of various denizens of Chicago's social and economic underside provide the focus of this adventurous independent comedy-drama. Seamus (Davidson Cole) is a sad sack working as a security guard at a warehouse. Misfortune befalls Seamus as regularly as the sun rises, and while his relationship with his girlfriend Kate (Mary Kay Cook) might be expected to buffer some of life's hard edges, her eccentric sexual tastes often leave him disoriented rather than satisfied. Meanwhile, Peter (Daniel J. Travanti) is a former teacher who now works a dispiriting job as a door-to-door salesman. Despondent since his wife left him, Peter has turned to alcohol to drown his sorrows, drinking himself into a stupor every night, leaving his teenage daughter Sonya (Jennifer Morrison) to see that he eats, changes clothes, and goes to bed. And Nicholas (Edward Cunningham) is a professional photographer whose hobby is snapping humiliating shots of strangers when they're not aware, often caught through windows. Nicholas' pastime creeps out his girlfriend (Kipleigh Brown), and when he moves on to sexually abusing the bride at a wedding he's been hired to shoot for the sake of his private photos, he's soon on the run from her family, determined to get revenge. The first feature film from writer and director Davidson Cole (who also plays Seamus), Design was screened in competition at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Daniel J. Travanti, Jennifer Morrison, (more)
- 1992
Overexposed starts out as a "heavy breather of the week" TV movie and develops into a truly involving suspense tale. Marcy Walker plays a wife and mother, stalked by wacko Terence Knox. This isn't just the usual hit-and-run harassment; Knox is a businessman who has an "X-rated" video of an adulterous affair, with Walker as "star." He had tricked her into sleeping with her years earlier; now he plans to destroy her marriage (her husband is his business associate) and then claim her for himself. Based on fact, Overexposed was filmed in Chicago by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
