David Matalon Movies

A ruthless young stockbroker is murdered in his Wall Street office. No sooner have the detectives made an arrest than the suspect is also killed. Acting upon the likelihood that both victims were rubbed out by a professional assassin, the DA's office bears down upon the Mob -- and in so doing uncover a stock swindle of 21st century dimensions. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

British writer-director Maria Giese filmed this independent sports drama, which centers around the wasted opportunities of young footballer Jimmy Muir (Sean Bean). Muir works in a brewery and lives with his parents and younger brother in the hard-scrabble industrial city of Sheffield, England. He loves to play soccer, but he is arrogant, disrespectful, and frequently drunk, and he has never made much of his talents. While playing for a local pub's team, Jimmy is spotted by Ken Jackson (Pete Postlethwaite), who recruits him for a higher league. Meanwhile, Jimmy embarks on an affair with a young Irish woman named Annie Docherty (Emily Lloyd), and he gets her pregnant. Jimmy gets offered a tryout with a professional club, Sheffield United. But the night before his tryout, he beds a stripper and gets roaring drunk. The next day he is useless, and he blows his big chance to make something of himself. Annie, who badly wanted him to succeed to get them both a better life, then leaves him. Jimmy finally realizes that he must change if he is going to have any kind of a future. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide

When New York psychiatrist Bill Capa (Bruce Willis, in an uncharacteristically un-smirking performance) visits Los Angeles to take over his murdered colleague's therapy group, he finds himself embroiled in the thick of a mystery when he bumps into (literally) Rosa (Jane March) and begins a torrid affair. Double-identities, death threats and love scenes abound as he delves deeper into the case to uncover the truth about his friend's death. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide

Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom's follow-up to the underrated Once Around earned far more attention than its predecessor thanks to the judicious casting of perennial thinking woman's heartthrob Johnny Depp and a certain up-and-coming thespian by the name of Leonardo DiCaprio. A prisoner of his dysfunctional family's broken dreams in tiny Endora, IA, Gilbert (Depp) serves as breadwinner and caretaker for his mother and siblings following his father's suicide and his older brother's defection. Momma (Darlene Cates) is a morbidly obese shut-in who hasn't left the house in seven years; her children include retarded Arnie (DiCaprio), who's about to turn 18 despite a host of negative medical forecasts, and terminally embarrassed Ellen (Mary Kate Schellhardt), who's emerging from an awkward adolescence. When he's not taking care of the difficult but tender Arnie, Gilbert spends his time fixing up the family's tattered farmhouse, working at a failing mom-and-pop grocery store and hanging with local misfits Bobby (Crispin Glover), an overly ambitious junior undertaker, and Tucker (John C. Reilly), a handyman who hankers after a job at the new burger franchise. Into this complicated but essentially unchanging social universe steps Becky (Juliette Lewis), a thoughtful young woman who's been escorting her nomadic grandmother from state to state in a mobile-home caravan. As Becky teaches Gilbert to finally consider his own happiness for a change, she disrupts both his family obligations and his long-running affair with a lonely housewife (Mary Steenburgen). Adapted by Peter Hedges from his own novel of the same name, What's Eating Gilbert Grape was the first and only film role for non-actress Cates, whom the filmmakers discovered on an episode of the Sally Jesse Raphael Show titled "Too Heavy to Leave Their House." ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide