Heidi Levitt Movies

An emotionally scarred fifty-something female, a high-profile but haunted British novelist, and a heroic dissident-cum-Soviet psychiatric hospital veteran who all formed an unbreakable bond while help prisoner in a World War II concentration camp reunite for the first time in forty years on the peaceful grounds of a renovated pastoral farm in Jefferson Lewis's adaptation of internationally acclaimed author Matt Cohen's popular novel. Paolo Barzman directs the Canadian production. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Country music star Toby Keith writes and stars in this road movie comedy inspired by his chart-topping hit of the same name. Beer for My Horses opens to find small-town deputies and longtime buddies Rack (Keith) and Lonnie (Rodney Carrington) quietly enforcing the law in a small Southern town. Things are relatively quiet in their neck of the woods, so when a violent drug lord (Carlos Sanz) kidnaps Rack's girlfriend (Claire Forlani) in response to seeing his brother (Greg Serano) get arrested, Sheriff Landry (Tom Skerrit) implores them to sit tight and let the professionals handle the case. But Rack and Lonnie aren't about to let Rack's girlfriend suffer any harm at the hands of the notoriously vicious kingpin, and after enlisting the aid of taciturn, bow-and-arrow-toting fellow lawman Skunk Tarver (Ted Nugent), the trio sets out to rescue the girl and ensure that justice is served. The CMT Films production is directed by Michael Salomon (A Glimpse of Hell), with Willie Nelson and Barry Corbin filling out the supporting cast. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Director Wayne Wang and screenwriter Paul Auster had enough storylines and characters left over from their charming comedy Smoke to make another film, so they shot Blue In The Face immediately after Smoke was completed. The film once again centers on the Brooklyn Cigar Store and manager Auggie (Harvey Keitel), although most of the other characters are different. The store owner's frustrated wife Dot (Roseanne) is one of them, and one of the plotlines follows her attempts to seduce Auggie. Madonna, Michael J. Fox, Lily Tomlin, and Lou Reed (as himself) also put in appearances. Blue In The Face was shot without a complete script and presents a unique combination of distinctive performances, oddball characters, improvisations, and raffish scenes. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

Victor Nuñez's Coastlines centers on Sonny (Timothy Olyphant), who is returning home after his release from prison. When he asks for money owed to him by local crime boss Fred Vance (William Forsythe), Vance responds by blowing up Sonny's home (causing the death of Sonny's father). Sonny moves in with old friends Dave and Ann (Josh Brolin and Sarah Wynter), even though Dave is now a policeman. Ann, who has grown bored by her husband's conversion from wild man to cop, begins an affair with Sonny. Nuñez wrote this script before his breakthrough films Ruby in Paradise and Ulee's Gold, but directed it after making those movies. Coastlines was screened at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

An unborn child has to be convinced that moving into the big, bad world is a good idea in this comic fantasy. Elizabeth (Bridget Fonda) and her husband Kevin (Campbell Scott) are a couple expecting a baby, who is due at any time, and when labor sets in, they rush to the hospital in anticipation of the blessed event. But after Elizabeth spends many hours in labor, nothing seems to be happening, throwing both her and her husband into a state of panic. As it turns out, their son-to-be, Milo (Anton Yelchin), is waiting in the otherworldly Life Training Center, where children about to be born are shown the ropes of how life on Earth works by a staff led by Mr. Gordon (Douglas Spain). Milo, however, has gotten cold feet, and decides he doesn't want to put up with the bother of life on Earth. Having a child refuse to make the journey into the real world could upset the balance of the universe, so fallen angel Elmore (Albert Finney) is given a final chance at redemption by the Powers That Be -- Elmore is to take Milo on a tour of Earth and convince him to say the five magic words, "I want to be born." Delivering Milo was shown at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival, and made its North American debut at the Palm Springs Film Festival the same year. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Director Wim Wenders and writer Sam Shepard, who collaborated on the award-winning film Paris, Texas, once again join forces for this dark drama of a man trying to turn over a new leaf late in life. Howard Spence (Sam Shepard) is a veteran actor who has been a popular Western star since the mid-'70s. Spence's onscreen image as a strong, principled lawman is a severe contrast to his life off the set, which has been dominated by drinking, drugs, and promiscuous womanizing. However, Spence has begun to find his hedonistic life a shallow existence, and one day, in the midst of filming his latest movie, he simply hops on his horse and rides away, eventually making his way to the small Nevada town where his mother lives. Mother (Eva Marie Saint) has little interest in seeing her wayward son after so many years, but she does share a recently discovered bit of information with him -- one of Spence's former girlfriends stopped by with word that she had given birth to his son years before. Spence borrows his father's old car and drives to Butte, MT, where he finds Doreen (Jessica Lange), the woman who was his lover years ago. Doreen runs a tavern where her son, Earl (Gabriel Mann), plays for the locals with his rock band; Spence is in fact Earl's father, but the young man has no interest in meeting his biological father, and shuts out Spence as the actor tries to get to know him. As Spence struggles to find some sort of familial connection in Butte, he makes friends with a young woman named Sky (Sarah Polley), only to discover she was also fathered by him during his rowdy younger days. Don't Come Knocking's distinguished supporting cast includes Tim Roth, George Kennedy, Fairuza Balk, Julia Sweeney, and Tim Matheson. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In a 1950s-era alternate universe where domesticated zombies play a functional role in society by delivering the milk, carrying the mail, and even helping out with household chores, one boy is about to find out just how big of a personal responsibility "pet" ownership truly is. When the Earth passed through a cloud of space dust and the dead arose from their graves to devour the flesh of the living, it first seemed that all hope for humanity was lost. Society's rapid slide into chaos, however, was soon halted when scientists at a company called ZomCom created a special collar that turned the rampaging animated corpses docile. Now, thanks to ZomCom, everything is under control -- or is it? Timmy Robinson (K'Sun Ray) isn't quite convinced. Quiet and withdrawn, the skeptical young boy spends so much time locked away in his room that he's almost become invisible around the household. His mother Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss) has recently purchased a zombie to help keep things tidy around the house though, and when the creature attempts to engage the curious youngster in a game of catch, a friendship is forged between boy and zombie that finds the amiable gut-muncher nicknamed Fido (Billy Connolly) practically becoming a part of the family. Things take a turn for the worse however, when Fido's collar malfunctions and Timmy's neighbors begin dying in droves. When ZomCom's top zombie control specialist Mr. Bottoms (Henry Czerny) moves in across the street from Timmy, the increasingly complicated situation threatens to place a serious stumbling block in the path of human-zombie relations. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Jonathan Darby made his directorial debut with this thriller, set in Kentucky (but filmed in Orange County, VA). Jackson Baring (Johnathon Schaech) wants his girlfriend, Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow), to meet his mother, Martha (Jessica Lange), so he brings her home for Christmas to Kilronan, their sumptuous Kentucky estate and horse farm. Later, after Helen gets pregnant, they marry and return to Kilronan to have the baby, but Martha aggressively intrudes and manipulates, telling obstetrician Dr. Hill (Hal Holbrook) how to deal with the birth and forbidding Helen from seeing Jackson's invalid granny, Alice (Nina Foch). After learning some of Martha's past history from Alice, Helen soon decides she must make an escape from her demented mother-in-law. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

The November 22, 1963, assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy shocked the nation and the world. The brisk investigation of that murder conducted under the guidance of Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren distressed many observers, even though subsequent careful investigations have been unable to find much fault with the conclusions his commission drew, the central one of which was that the assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, acted alone. Instead of satisfying the public, one result of the Warren Commission Report was that an unimaginable number of plausible conspiracy theories were bruited about, and these have supported a sizeable publishing mini-industry ever since. In making this movie, director Oliver Stone had his pick of supposed or real investigative flaws to draw from and has constructed what some reviewers felt was one of the most compelling (and controversial) political detective thrillers ever to emerge from American cinema. Long before filming was completed, Stone was fending off heated accusations of artistic and historical irresponsibility, and these only intensified after the film was released. In the story, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) is convinced that there are some big flaws in the investigation of Oswald (Gary Oldman), and he sets out to recreate the events leading up to the assassination. Along the way, he stumbles across evidence that a great many people had reason to want to see the president killed, and he is convinced that some of them worked in concert to frame Oswald as the killer. Among the suspects are Lyndon Baines Johnson (the next president), the CIA, J. Edgar Hoover, and the Mafia. Over the course of gathering what he believes to be evidence of a conspiracy, Garrison unveils some of the grittier aspects of New Orleans society, focusing on the shady activities of local businessman Clay Shaw (Tommy Lee Jones). Garrison's investigations culminate in his conducting a show trial that he knows he will lose and which he is sure will ruin his career in order to get his evidence into the public record where it can't be buried again. This movie won two of the many Academy Awards for which it was nominated: one for Best Photography (Robert Richardson) and the other for Editing (Joe Hutshing). ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

American independent filmmaker Lodge Kerrigan returned after a six-year hiatus with this formally challenging tale of a disheveled man desperately searching New York City for his young daughter. Keane takes its name from its central character, a middle-aged man (Damien Lewis) who wanders Port Authority with a seemingly tenuous grasp of his sanity, muttering to himself and causing altercations with passers-by. He claims to have lost his daughter at a bus station, and consistently pleads for assistance from indifferent authority figures. When he's not roaming the streets, he uses his meager savings to rent out a room nightly in a cheap hotel; there, he meets Lynn (Amy Ryan), a single mother with a daughter, Kyra (Abigail Breslin), almost the same age as Keane's missing child. As he grows closer to Lynn and Kyra, he starts to see the young girl as instrumental in deciphering his own loss. Keane premiered at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival before securing a 2005 theatrical release. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

A charming elderly Jewish writer who lives in a state of "permanent confusion" finds his vivid imagination becoming the bane of his existence in director Jan Schütte's adaptation of Nobel Prize-winning author Isaac Bashevis Singer's richly textured short stories. Max Kohn (Otto Tausig) is an Australian émigré whose mind is constantly spinning. He's an accomplished author of short stories who lives in New York City and is so steeped in tradition that he still uses a typewriter. Despite the fact that confirmed bachelor Max has a virtual harem of female admirers, he spends the majority of his free time with worrisome kindred soul Reisele (Rhea Perlman). It's during a trip to speak in nearby Hanover that Max begins editing his latest story -- a mischievous tale of a Miami retiree who embarks on a series of misadventures. Of course, it doesn't take Max long to lose himself in his own creation, and before he knows it, he's mixed up in two feverish romances and an unsolved murder. Upon snapping back to reality, Max begins to feel as if his own written word has begun to manifest itself. A meeting with world-weary former student Rosalie (Barbara Hershey), with whom he shares a mutual attraction, follows, and later while heading to Springfield for yet another speaking engagement Max discovers that he has misplaced his prepared speech. In the aftermath of that and various other mix-ups, Max decides to start writing a new story based on his recent adventures and featuring a protagonist named Harry -- a thinly veiled stand-in for the author himself. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

For her second feature, Canadian director Kari Skogland (The Size of Watermelons) treads Tarantino turf with the violent visuals of this crime drama. Small-time hoods Eddie (Donal Logue) and Lucas (Gregory Sporleder) go to a rural area to collect a debt but instead get a dose of sexual humiliation from thugs they encounter there. With stoned Mamet (Callum Keith Rennie) accompanying them, they return to the farm, battle it out, and leave with a big cocaine stash, property of druglord Horace Burke (Paul Sorvino). Soon the trio is pursued by both criminals and cops. Skogland made TV commercials and music videos before her first feature. Her Men With Guns is not to be confused with John Sayles' Men With Guns, released the same month. Shown at the 1998 Rotterdam Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

A frenetic, bloody look at mass murder and the mass media, director Oliver Stone's extremely controversial film divided critics and audiences with its mixture of over-the-top violence and bitter cultural satire. At the center of the film, written by Stone and Quentin Tarantino, among others, are Mickey (Woody Harrelson) and Mallory (Juliette Lewis), a young couple united by their desire for each other and their common love of violence. Together, they embark on a record-breaking, exceptionally gory killing spree that captivates the sensation-hungry tabloid media. Their fame is ensured by one newsman, Wayne Gale (Robert Downey, Jr.), who reports on Mickey and Mallory for his show, American Maniacs. Even the duo's eventual capture by the police only increases their notoriety, as Gale develops a plan for a Super Bowl Sunday interview that Mickey and Mallory twist to their own advantage. Visually overwhelming, Robert Richardson's hyperkinetic cinematography switches between documentary-style black-and-white, surveillance video, garishly colored psychedelia, and even animation in a rapid-fire fashion that mirrors the psychosis of the killers and the media-saturated culture that makes them popular heroes. The film's extreme violence -- numerous edits were required to win an R rating -- became a subject of debate, as some critics asserted that the film irresponsibly glorified its murderers and blamed the filmmakers for potentially inciting copy-cat killings. Defenders argued that the film attacks media obsession with violence and satirizes a sensationalistic, celebrity-obsessed society. Certain to provoke discussion, Natural Born Killers will thoroughly alienate many viewers with its shock tactics, chaotic approach, and disturbing subject matter, while others will value the combination of technical virtuosity and dark commentary on the modern American landscape. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide