Phil Hunt Movies

Longtime documentary director Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney, Aileen Wuornos: The Selling of a Serial Killer) eschews the format with which filmgoers generally associate him to tell this affecting tale of Chinese émigrés looking to earn a healthy, albeit illegal, living in the U.K. Ai Qin is a desperate mother from Fujian who is willing to pay the Snakehead gang 25,000 dollars to smuggle her into the U.K. Once there, Ai Qin plans to send the majority of the money back to China order to support her son and family. But life in the U.K. isn't easy, even for the hardest-working Chinese immigrant. Not only does Ai Qin live with 15 other immigrants in a suburban, two-bedroom house, but with three million other migrant workers forming the foundation of the United Kingdom's hospitality, food supply, and construction industries, the search for better-paying jobs that will help them pay back their sizeable debts are never-ending. In keeping with Broomfield's decidedly real-world approach to filmmaking and in order to maintain authenticity, the director cast an actual former migrant worker, Ai Qin Lin, who had once been illegally smuggled into the U.K. (and has since gained legal citizenship) in the lead role. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Stewart Sugg made his directorial debut with this low-budget British comedy-drama. Returning home to London after a long absence, Benny (Douglas Henshall) can't find the proper footing in an ever-changing world. He's in contact with phone-sex talker Letitia (Emily Woof), meets her, and learns she's actually his childhood sweetheart, Claudia, daughter of the local shop owner. Chaos reigns when Benny's buddies look for loot hidden in the shop by a gangster (Miles Anderson). Shown at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

A John D. MacDonald novel was the source material for A Flash of Green. Ed Harris plays a reporter for a Florida resort-town newspaper. His best friend is shady county-commissioner Richard Jordan. When Harris shows signs of sympathizing with a local ecology group that is dead set against a new land-fill development, Jordan tries to keep the editor quiet with a bribe. At first, Harris acquiesces, but rapidly develops a conscience when Jordan enlists a local right-wing terrorist group to keep the ecologists in line. A secondary plot involves Harris' romance with Blair Brown, an affair tainted by the fact that Harris' wife lies comatose in the hospital. Thanks to its pro-eco stance, A Flash of Green was financed by and telecast as an edition of PBS' American Playhouse. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi