Amanda Davis Movies
- 2009
- Add Canary to Queue
Director Alejandro Adams has crafted a darkly witty look at a time to come when the global health care market is even more chaotic than it is today. In this not-so-distant future, commercial brokering of human organs is a major growth industry, and Canary Industries is the leading firm in the business; with new ailments causing nearly a third of the American population to need an organ transplant, Canary have made a handsome profit getting folks the parts they need for the right price, and marketing and advertising executives with the company are looking at ways to make Canary even bigger. However, not everyone who agrees to pay for a fresh kidney, liver or heart is able to keep up the payments, and a mysterious woman who never speaks (Carla Pauli) is one of the agents working for Canary whose dirty job is to reclaim organs when their new owners default on their loans. Canary received its world premiere at the 2009 Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, California. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- 2008
An uncaring father tries to bring his family together for all the wrong reasons in this independent psychological drama. Wyatt (Steve Voldseth) is a middle-aged businessman who has little talent for human relationships; he's been divorced twice, and he regards Noah (Connor Maselli), his five-year-old son from his second marriage, with a not-so-benign neglect. When Wyatt's live-in girlfriend Noreen (Katherine Darling) walks out on him, he has no one to help him look after Noah, so he contacts Daisy (Katherine Celio), his twenty-one-year-old daughter from his first marriage, and asks her to move into the house, offering her free room and board in exchange for keeping an eye on her step-brother. Though Daisy hasn't spoken to her father in close to ten years, she takes Wyatt up on his offer, but learns fast that Noah has been taught little in the way of order or boundaries, and she begins to suspect his misbehavior is more than simple bad manners. At the same time, as Wyatt leaves Noah to his well-meaning but ill-equipped daughter, he tries to convince Noreen to take him back. The first feature film from writer and director Alejandro Adams, Around The Bay was an official selection at the 2008 Cinequest Film Festival in San Jose, California. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Steve Voldseth, Katherine Celio, (more)
- 1999
Produced by Tiger Aspect for Britain's Channel 4, Shockers was a trio of 65-minute "urban thrillers," originally telecast from October 19 to November 2, 1999. The first episode, "Déjà vu," was about a couple (Kerry Fox, Lennie James) trying to put the pieces together after their son was killed in a car accident. In "The Visitor," a mysterious "cousin" caused a chain of bizarre events in a flat occupied by three longtime friends. And in "Dance," widowed father Mike (Douglas Hodge) entered into a romance with Deborah (Christine Tremarco), with startling consequences. After its official 1999 run, Shockers was briefly revived with the one-off 2001 thriller "Parent's Night," wherein a mother gets revenge on the bullies who goaded her son into suicide. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
Part high-tech spy thriller and part psychological study, Eye of the Beholder was Ewan McGregor's first feature film following his mainstream breakthrough performance in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. The Eye (Ewan McGregor) is an agent of the British Secret Service, equipped with the latest in high-tech crime fighting gadgetry and assisted by his indefatigable collegue, Hilary (k.d. lang). The Eye's latest assignment is a surveillance project; the son of a well-known politician has been spending a great deal of money on someone, and they would like to know who and why. A little sleuthing reveals that the mysterious person taking the cash is a woman named Joanna (Ashley Judd), but the trail gets much stickier when the Eye witnesses Joanna pulling a knife and killing the politician's son. Normally, he'd take the shortcut to putting her behind bars, but some time ago he lost contact with his daughter when his wife left him; Joanna reminds the Eye of his daughter, and he's too fascinated with her to bring her to justice. The Eye now follows Joanna obsessively, and discovers that she's also involved with a blind man (Patrick Bergin) and has a history of emotional instability from being abandoned by her father at a young age. Eye of the Beholder was directed by Stephan Elliott, best known for the comedy The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Ewan McGregor, Ashley Judd, (more)
The second of three films by co-writer/director Oliver Stone to explore the effects of the Vietnam War (Platoon and Heaven and Earth are the others), Born On The Fourth Of July tells the true story of Ron Kovic (Tom Cruise), a patriotic, All-American small town athlete who shocks his family by enlisting with the Marines to fight in the Vietnam War. Once he is overseas, however, Kovic's gung-ho enthusiasm turns to horror and confusion when he accidentally kills one of his own men in a firefight. His downfall is furthered by a bullet wound that leaves him paralyzed from the chest down. He returns home, spends an appalling, nightmarish stint in a veterans' hospital, and follows an increasingly disillusioned and fragmented path that ultimately leaves him drunk and dissolute in Mexico. However, Kovic somehow turns himself around and pulls his life together, becoming an outspoken anti-war activist in the process. The film is long but emotionally powerful; many consider it Stone's best work and Cruise's best performance. Both were nominated for Oscars, as was the film itself, but only Stone, who co-wrote the film with Kovic from the latter's book, won for Best Director. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi
- Starring:
- Tom Cruise, Raymond J. Barry, (more)
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