Paul Popowich Movies

When an alcoholic extraterrestrial living in a small Northern Ontario town finds God, his spiritual journey leads him on tour with a local bar in the feature debut of director Rob Stefaniuk. Soon after crash-landing in a remote Ontario town, innocent alien Phil strikes up a warm friendship with an open-minded young boy and a remarkably intelligent beaver. A stranger in a strange land, Phil eventually begins to fit in by drinking plenty of hard liquor and jumping in on jam sessions with the local bar band. Beneath the picturesque natural wonder of Niagara Falls, the General (John Kapelos) at the "Top Secret American UFO Base" plots to bring Phil to his base for a series of grisly medical experiments. Informed by his friend the beaver that there is a ship in Niagara Falls which he could use to get back home, the drunken Phil continues to spiral into alcoholism before attacking a cigarette machine and getting sent to prison. Having found Jesus during his stint behind bars, a rehabilitated Phil sets out on tour with the bar band while attempting to dodge the bullets of the General's feared assassin Madame Madame (Nicole deBoer). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

When a slippery street musician falls for his beautiful neighbor, he suddenly finds himself drawn into a dangerous world of treachery and deceit. Tivoli was the kind of neighbor a guy couldn't help but notice, and Silver Man had been noticing her more with each passing day. But Tivoli is currently entangled in a volatile relationship with her pathological boyfriend Jake, who currently owes a large debt to feared gangster Leo the Lion. Now, as Silver Man makes his move for Tivoli, he realizes that falling for this particular girl could be the last mistake he ever makes. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Dark Angel begins its two-season run with a feature-length episode establishing both characters and premise. Back in the year 2009, young Max Guevara (Geneva Locke) escaped from Manticore, a sinister laboratory creating human prototypes with heavy doses of animal DNA. A lab creation herself, Max managed to get away with several of her "siblings" from Manticore's X-5 program. Now it is 2019: The world is in turmoil in the wake of "The Pulse," a seismic phenomenon which destroyed all computer technology. The 19-year-old Max (Jessica Alba) lives in a crime-ridden ghetto with a group of alienated teens and dopers, working as a bicycle messenger by day and a cat burglar by night. (And why not? Max's cat DNA has endowed her with superhuman strength and agility.) She pulls this "double shift" in order to finance an ongoing search for the secrets of her past, and for her genetically engineered brothers and sisters. Enter scruffy cyberjournalist Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), a crusader against the corruption that has engulfed the government and its police. Persuading Max to join his cause, Logan gives her her first assignment: to guard a federal witness and her daughter. But Max may not be around to help -- not if she is tracked down and captured by Manticore minion Donald Lydecker (John Savage), the obsessed scientist who "created" her. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

One of the most controversial (and widely-reported) stories of the early 1990s is vividly dramatized in this made-for-cable movie. In 1992, Allen Schindler, a navy sailor serving on the USS Belleau Wood, is savagely beaten to death while on leave in Japan. Allen's grieving mother Dorothy Hajdys-Holman (Bonnie Bedelia) becomes even more distraught when the representatives of the United States Navy refuse to provide her with full details on her son's murder. Then comes the ultimate shock: A newspaper reporter informs Dorothy that her son was gay, and that this might have been the reason he was killed. But if the Navy has anything to say about it, the entire matter will be swept under the rug, with Dorothy remaining as much in the dark as the rest of the world: A deal has already been cut with one of Allen's killers, who after a secret court-martial is given what amounts to a legal slap on the wrist. Radicalized by the incident and its aftermath, Dorothy joins forces with a crusading journalist to force the Navy to reveal the whole truth--and she isn't about to let the court-martial of Allen's other assailant to be conducted behind closed doors! The upshot of this high-profile case was the creation of the Service Members' Legal Defense Network, assuring that no branch of the armed services would ever again be able to conspire to cover up a major crime. Its title selected by the real-life Dorothy Hajdys-Holman, who served as the film's technical advisor (not surprisingly, the Navy refused to cooperate at all), Any Mother's Son made its Lifetime cable network debut on August 11, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tommy (Anthony Rogers) is a young stamp collector who gets his friend Ralph (Lucas Evans) to trade him a stamp from Ralph's father's collection in this engaging children's fantasy. Ralph and sister Nancy (Jill Stanley) try to buy it back from the local collectable store with no success. The siblings instead come up with a stamp collection from 1928 which includes a letter from a little boy. The letter contains magical rhymes that when recited shrink Ralph down to size. He is then able to travel around the world on various stamps to exotic places. Ralph learns that a rare collection of stamps awaits him when he arrives in Australia. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide