Dana Craig Movies

Like Alfred Hitchcock's Rope, the low-budget, black-and-white thriller Running Time was edited to disguise its cuts, giving the illusion that the film takes place in real time. Cult hero Bruce Campbell (The Evil Dead) stars as Carl. As the film starts, Carl is getting out of prison, and he tells the warden (veteran character actor Art La Fleur) that he plans to go into the laundry business, which he learned while working in the prison. Carl's old high school football buddy and literal partner-in-crime Patrick (Jeremy Roberts) picks him up outside the gates with a hooker in the back of his van. Things take an awkward turn when the hooker turns out to be Janie (Anita Barone), whom Carl dated and unceremoniously dumped in high school. After hitting it off and patching it up with her, Carl and Patrick head straight to their planned heist -- robbing the warden's laundry business. Along the way, they pick up their safecracker, Buzz (Stan Davis), Carl's prison buddy, and their driver. Carl is dismayed to find that Patrick has hired Donny (Gordon Jennison), a junkie with poor social skills, to drive for them. Their robbery plot goes awry when Buzz finds out that the warden replaced his safe while Patrick was supposed to be casing the office. During the delay, Patrick bickers with Carl, and there's unnecessary bloodshed. To make matters worse, the payload turns out to be far less than expected, Donny is nowhere to be found, and the police are on their tail. Wounded and desperate, Carl makes plans to meet up with Patrick at Janie's apartment. Writer/director Josh Becker shot Running Time on 16 mm, in sequence, in ten days. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Partly based on Charlie Chaplin's My Autobiography, this humorous and dramatic biopic features an all-star cast including Oscar nominee Robert Downey Jr., Dan Aykroyd, Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Kline, Diane Lane, and Chaplin's real-life daughter, Geraldine Chaplin, who portrays his mentally ill mother. With the use of flashback, an elderly Chaplin discusses his autobiography with his editor (Hopkins), who urges him to be more vulnerable and emotionally honest with his memoirs while journeying through his poverty-stricken childhood, closest friendships, many marriages, merciless pursuit by J. Edgar Hoover (Kevin Dunn), and ingenious invention of "The Little Tramp." Highlighted works such as The Gold Rush (1925) and The Great Dictator (1940) illustrate significant turning points in Chaplin's prolific filmography. Director Richard Attenborough's film also explores the circumstances surrounding Chaplin's exile from America and his eventual return to receive an honorary Academy Award. ~ Lisa Kropiewnicki, Rovi

Babe Ruth is a made-for-TV biopic about the titular baseball legend, here played by Stephen Lang. The film covers the events of Babe's life from his orphanage childhood to his retirement from baseball in 1935. Recounted are Babe's two marriages, the first to the benighted Helen Woodford (Yvonne Suhor) and the second to down-to-earth showgirl Claire Hodgson (Lisa Zane); Babe's frequent tiltings with Col. Ruppert (Donald Moffat), autocratic owner of the New York Yankees; Babe's periodic slumps and suspensions; his "wine, women, and more women" lifestyle; his unrealized dream of becoming a team manager; his record-breaking 60th home run in 1927; and his last-stand "three-homer" game for the Boston Braves in his valedictory 1935 season. Too rushed and surfacy to be totally successful, Babe Ruth is nonetheless closer to truth than the sentimentalized John Goodman feature film The Babe (1992), and infinitely superior to William Bendix's atrocious The Babe Ruth Story (1948). As a bonus, real-life baseball great Pete Rose shows up in a one-minute cameo as Ty Cobb. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Aspiring actor Mike (Kirk Cameron) is convinced he's on the cusp of stardom when his character on the TV soaper "Big City Streets", Strong Waverly, is scheduled to emerge from a coma and speak his very first lines. At the same time, Luke (Leonardo DiCaprio) prepares to move out of the Seaver household and into the home of his foster family, the Kimballs. Trouble begins when Mike accidentally tips off Carol (Tracey Gold) about a "secret" plot twist that will soon be revealed on the TV show--and things get worse when he is forced to choose between his acting career and Luke's wellbeing. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Corabeth Godsey (Ronnie Claire Edwards) is convinced that her husband Ike (Joe Conley) is cheating on him when she finds a letter signed "Pamela." But though he begs Corabeth not to file for divorce, Ike stubbornly refuses to reveal the identity of his mysterious correspondent. And on the anniversary of their first date, Drew (Tony Becker) pressures Elizabeth (Kami Cotler) to prove her love for him by going "all the way". ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi