Guy Riedel Movies

A crafty couple run the Christmas Day gauntlet by racing to visit their divorced parents' four separate households in this Vince Vaughn/Reese Witherspoon comedy that proves the holidays are no time for relaxing. Brad (Vaughn) and Kate (Witherspoon) have made something of an art form out of avoiding their families during the holidays, but this year their foolproof plan is about go bust -- big time. Stuck at the city airport after all departing flights are canceled, the couple is embarrassed to see their ruse exposed to the world by an overzealous television reporter. Now, Brad and Kate are left with precious little choice other than to swallow their pride and suffer the rounds. Along the way, they perform in a church nativity play at the behest of Kate's mother's (Mary Steenburgen) pushy pastor Phil (Dwight Yoakam), contend with Brad's gruff father, Howard (Robert Duvall), and bullying brothers, Dallas (Jon Favreau) and Denver (Tim McGraw) -- a pair of trained UFC fighters -- and pay a visit to Brad's spacy, New Age mother, Paula (Sissy Spacek), who recently made waves in the family circle by marrying her son's childhood friend. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Sylvester Stallone returns to the director's chair for Rocky Balboa, the fifth sequel to the film that made him a superstar 30 years before. The movie begins with Rocky (Stallone) still mourning the death of his loyal and beloved wife, Adrian, who died three years previously after losing a battle against cancer. Rocky owns an Italian restaurant and spends his days living in his working-class Philadelphia neighborhood, visiting with his customers, and telling stories about his past. His grown son has a job as a business professional, but the relationship between the two is strained. Rocky's growing dissatisfaction leads him to attempt to purge the feelings of frustration and loss by applying for a boxing license. When the current heavyweight champion, Mason "The Line" Dixon (Antonio Tarver), needs to rehabilitate his image as a pretty boy who has never shown any real heart in the ring, his manager offers Rocky an exhibition match. This comeback allows Rocky to get his own life back on track, while also offering him the opportunity to help those around him redeem themselves and once again be a symbol of hope for the common man. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Boy meets girl who's already met all sorts of boys and girls in this teen-slanted comedy. Matthew Kidman (Emile Hirsch) is a straight-laced and highly ambitious high school student who plans to study at Georgetown University and dreams of a career in politics. While most of his classmates are in the throes of an epidemic of senioritis, Matthew is obsessed with schoolwork and has a hard time relaxing and having fun. But he finds himself a bit less focused on his future career when Danielle (Elisha Cuthbert), a beautiful 19-year-old blonde, moves in next door. Danielle is playful, spontaneous, and doesn't always remember to draw her shades, and before long Matthew is head over heels in love. Danielle soon finds herself taken with Matthew as well, but their relationship takes an unusual turn when he discovers that, before she moved to town, Danielle had a successful career as a porn actress. Matthew is able to convince Danielle that she's cut out for better things in life than appearing in porn videos, but his advice doesn't especially please Kelly (Timothy Olyphant) or Hugo (James Remar), two porn moguls who figure Matthew owes them big-time after convincing their leading lady to drop out of the adult industry. The Girl Next Door -- which, appropriately enough, shares its title with a 1999 documentary about adult film superstar Stacy Valentine -- also features Timothy Bottoms, Paul Dano, and Chris Marquette. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Inspired by author Robert A. Caro's massive biography of President Lyndon Baines Johnson, the made-for-cable Path to War retraces the world-shaking events occurring between LBJ's jubilant inaugural in 1965 and his tired, dispirited decision not to seek another presidential term in 1968. At the crux of these tumultuous three years is the war in Vietnam, which forces Johnson (here played by Michael Gambon) to shunt his proposed "Great Society" to the back burner. Though famous in political circles as a wrangler and compromiser, LBJ cannot seem to do anything right in pursuing the war; nor are his chief advisors, the hawkish Robert McNamara (Alec Baldwin) and the dove-ish Clark Clifford (Donald Sutherland), able to forge a permanent policy agreement. As Clifford warns Johnson that "escalation will ruin you, and all the great good you want to do," McNamara presses for a continuation of the war lest America lose face and Vietnam fall to the Communists. The story unfolds with the inexorability of a Shakespearean tragedy, with Johnson as a modern-day Macbeth, Richard III, and King Lear rolled into one. Of interest to non-history buffs is the appearance of two original cast members of the 1969 film M*A*S*H: Donald Sutherland as Clark Clifford and Tom Skerritt as William Westmoreland. Directed by political-movie veteran John Frankenheimer, Path to War made its HBO cable network debut on May 18, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

After having been outmatched in the live-action family film department by rival Nickelodeon in recent years, Disney jumps back into the kid-friendly fray with this comedy about a seventh grader (Alex D. Linz) who's mercilessly picked on by his school's bullies and by his principal (Larry Miller). When his parents (Nora Dunn and Robert Carradine) inform Max that they're moving at the end of the week, he takes the opportunity to exact several forms of creative revenge on his many tormenters. When it subsequently turns out that the Keebles aren't leaving town after all, little Max is left to the mercy of those he's just humiliated. Max Keeble's Big Move is the second feature film from Tim Hill, the nephew of famed director George Roy Hill (The Sting). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Peter Gibbons (Ron Livingston) is a computer programmer working for Initech in Houston. Every day, he and his friends Samir (Ajay Naidu) and Michael Bolton (David Herman as not THAT Michael Bolton), suffer endless indignities and humiliations in their soulless workspace from their soulless boss, Bill Lumbergh (Gary Cole). For Peter, stuck in his cookie-cutter apartment with paper-thin walls and IKEA furniture, every day is worse than the one before it -- so every day is the worst of his life. To cap it off, Initech has hired a pair of "efficiency experts" to downsize the company. One Friday night, Peter's soon to be ex-girlfriend Anne (Alexandra Wentworth) forces him to go to an occupational hypnotherapist to relieve work stress. While Peter is under hypnosis, the therapist keels over and dies. As he never snaps out of his hypnotic state, Peter has a new outlook on life. If something annoys him, he just ignores it or walks away from it. He is completely relaxed and enjoying life for the first time in a long time. On Monday, Peter skips work and sleeps in. He gets up for lunch and drives down to a restaurant next to his office and asks the waitress he's had a crush on, Joanna (Jennifer Aniston), on a date. When Peter stops into the office to pick up his organizer, he's called in to talk to the efficiency experts. Relaxed and friendly, Peter charms them as he describes everything wrong with the office, including his boss. Even as Peter now appears at work only as the mood strikes him, the experts decide he's management material and give him a promotion even as they lay off the hardworking Samir and Michael. Peter then convinces his friends to exact revenge on Initech based upon an idea from Superman III. Not everything works out quite as planned. Office Space originated from writer/director Mike Judge's first animated short of the same name, created in 1991. The short was about Milton (reproduced in the film by Stephen Root), a damaged office drone whose complaints and threats about his sufferings go unheeded. ~ Ron Wells, All Movie Guide

This made-for-cable black-comedy stars Beau Bridges as a governor in a future United States, with an unusual plan for his state. Bridges stars as Jim Farley, the Governor of Idaho, who decides that the only way to keep the new immigrants out of his state is to close down the borders. Defying the President (Phil Hartman), he gets some help implementing his plan from some zealots in militias. Bridges won the Emmy for his performance. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide

Sex, drugs, lies and betrayal form the basis of this gritty crime thriller that centers on two white guys, Pooch and Big Boy, lifelong friends who decide they want a piece of the local drug trade action in their old neighborhood. They end up being distracted by aspiring-model and pathological-liar Eva, who involves them in an increasingly kinky menage-a-trois that results in jealousy between the friends. Still the two, with the help of their pal Juanito, are getting close to having total control and will be able to make a proposition to the mob behind it all. Unbeknownst to the others, Pooch is working as a spy for the police, but toward the end, he is undecided about whether he should help them, or help himself. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This psychological thriller was cowritten by Steven Pressfield, who went on to become a successful novelist with The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000) and historical fiction such as Gates of Fire and Tides of War. Linda Hamilton stars as Lauren Porter, a well-regarded professor of psychology who fears that she may be suffering from multiple personality disorder. As a young girl, she received psychological scars when her mother murdered her stepfather and then committed suicide. She approaches one of her students, Tom Beckwith (James Belushi), a former cop who has quit the force in order to study psychology, and tells him of her concerns. Although he is struggling with his own relationship with his daughter, Beckwith agrees to trail Porter, and before long she has indeed slipped into a totally different personality, that of Lena, a club-hopping swinger. When Lena gets into trouble with a man she's picked up, Beckwith intervenes and receives a brutal beating. Soon, the murder of an investigator and the death of Porter's ex-husband are laid at her feet. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Paralyzed in a 1984 accident, writer/director Neal Jimenez (of River's Edge fame) channelled his own experiences and emotions into his 1991 film Waterdance. Eric Stoltz stars as a young writer left incapacitated by a hiking accident. He is placed in a paraplegic ward, peopled by patients of all races and emotional states. Together with his new-found friends, Stoltz rebels against the hospital system and his own debilitation. Helen Hunt and Wesley Snipes are among the costars in this effective update (though not a remake) of 1950's The Men. Waterdance was given a brief theatrical release in 1992 before being telecast on PBS' American Playhouse in early 1993. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide