Carl-Jan Colpaert Movies

Barbara Hershey stars in this understated road movie. Kate (Hershey) flags down a cab one rainy night in Times Square and tells the British-Indian cabbie (Naveen Andrews) to drive until they get to the desert. Fleeing from an abusive relationship, she offers the driver $300 a day for a week. As they wend their way through America's wide expanse, these two lonely souls begin to talk and understand one another. Drowning on Dry Land was screened at the 1999 Flanders Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

David Rabe's popular play of Hollywood immorality and decadence is brought to the big screen by director Anthony Drazan and an all-star cast that includes Sean Penn, Robin Wright-Penn, Kevin Spacey, Meg Ryan, Chazz Palminteri, Garry Shandling, and Anna Paquin. The film is set in the Hollywood Hills and tells the story of Eddie (Penn) a drinking-smoking-snorting-womanizing casting director and his philandering partner-roommate Mickey (Spacey). Along with their buddies Artie and Phil, they sit around and pontificate about the meaning of life -- that is, the meaning of their lives, of which there is very little. Eddie is in love with Darlene (real-life wife Wright Penn), but she is also seeing the married Mickey. When Artie brings Eddie and Mickey a "care package" in the shape of a pretty, disillusioned hitchhiker named Donna (Paquin), they take turns throwing her around until, yet again, their own empty pathetic lives preoccupy their paranoid minds. As people and relationships deteriorate everywhere, the guys try to pick Phil by giving him the gift of a washed-up exotic dancer, Bonnie (Ryan). Of course she ends up just more abused than ever as she and the rest of the gang hit rock bottom. ~ Arthur Borman, All Movie Guide

Josh Evans wrote and directed this cynical glimpse at power players and hustlers working the shadowy side of the film industry. After his mother's death, talented eccentric Sonny Daye (William McNamara) arrives on the Hollywood scene. His brother, Franky Syde (Frank Whaley), confident of Sonny's abilities, allows crass, scurrilous producer Sid Dalgren (Tony Danza) to see Sonny's journal. Recognizing Sonny's gift, Sid makes moves to manipulate and exploit him. Sid's girlfriend, Vanessa (Natasha Gregson Wagner), sees Sonny in a different light. The Glam cast includes director Evans' mother, Ali MacGraw. Some of the Glam character names link with characters introduced in Evans' directorial debut, Inside the Goldmine (1994), a film that also featured Wagner, the daughter of Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner. Shown at the 1997 Vancouver Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

A touching and unusual love story, The Whole Wide World was based on a memoir by Novalyne Price Ellis, in which she recalled her brief romance with Robert E. Howard, creator of Conan the Barbarian and one of the finest and most prolific pulp writers of his day. In 1933, Novalyne Price (Renee Zellweger) is a pretty but shy Texas schoolteacher who would like to be a writer some day. A friend offers to introduce her to Howard (Vincent D'Onofrio), who writes broad, bold yarns about superhuman heroes and damsels in distress and has little patience for writers of more pretentious fiction. Novalyne likes Howard and he seems to like her, but she finds him a hard man to deal with. He lives in the world of his stories, and he devotes as much time as possible to his bedridden mother, which leaves him little time to pursue a romance. But when Howard discovers that another man has been courting Novalyne, he's heartbroken -- even if they didn't have a conventional romance, he felt there was a special emotional bond between them, and he hates to see it thrown away. Renee Zellweger and Vincent D'Onofrio both deliver fine performances and are a believable (if unconventional) romantic couple; D'Onofrio also co-produced. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide