Andrea Sperling Movies

Mark Ruffalo stars and directs his first feature with Sympathy for Delicious, a drama about a crippled DJ (actor/writer Chris Thornton) in modern-day Los Angeles who discovers that he has the power to heal everyone but himself. James Franco co-stars in the Corner Stone Entertainment. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

A twentysomething misfit dedicates his life to giving the drummer some, even when the drums are only imaginary, in this comedy written and directed by comic Ari Gold. Power (Gold) grew up in a small mining town in New Mexico, where his father (Michael McKean) always imagined his son would one day join him in digging copper from the earth. But Power has a dream of playing the drums, and since he doesn't have a drum kit, he's become a master of "air drums," flailing his arms in the manner of Neil Peart or Keith Moon against a huge but nonexistent set of traps. Power's desire to become the world's greatest air drummer doesn't earn him much respect at home, so he travels to Mexico, where he learns of an air-drumming competition in Newark, NJ. Power hits the road for the garden state and meets Carlos (Steven Williams), a master air drummer who becomes his guide in the art of not really playing. Power also gets some much-needed encouragement from Annie (Shoshannah Stern), a sweet born-again girl living upstairs from him. But when Power learns that his father back home is leading a strike to save jobs for the employees at the local copper mine, winning the title becomes a matter of defending the honor of his family and his hometown, and he dedicates himself to defeating arrogant country music star Dallas Houston (Adrien Grenier), who is favored to win. Adventures of Power also stars Jane Lynch, Travis Johns, and Jimmy Jean-Louis. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A withdrawn, deaf, and mute teen adopted by her godparents following the death of her single father finds that life in her dysfunctional new home can be quite deadly in But I'm a Cheerleader director Jamie Babbit's slick and tense teen thriller. The last word Dot (Camilla Belle) ever spoke was when her mother died at the age of seven. Subsequently thrust into a world of silence as a result of her catastrophic loss, Dot lives in a world of withdrawn solitude. When the death of her father renders the muted teen both homeless and orphaned, her suburban godparents, Paul (Martin Donovan) and Olivia Deer (Edie Falco) readily agree to take Dot in and ensure that she has a place to stay as she finishes her high-school education. All is not well in the Deer household, however, and after being rejected and ridiculed by the couple's teenage daughter, Nina (Elisha Cuthbert), Dot soon becomes something of a human confessional to the troubled souls that surround her. From father Paul's twisted incestuous longings to mother Olivia's pill-popping excess and daughter Nina's murderous plan to do away with her leering dad, everyone has something to say to the girl who can say nothing. With Nina's prominent social life quickly unraveling and tensions within the household threatening to explode into violence, Dot is about to reveal that she has a few secrets of her own that are sure to complicate matters. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The director of such off-beat independent films as In the Soup, director Alexandre Rockwell once again teams with that film's star to deliver this Los Angeles-based comedy concerning superstition and intersecting lives. Things aren't looking so good for television clown Banana's (Steve Buscemi) career, and the fact that his estranged wife, Suzi (Jennifer Beals), has just been arrested for assaulting his girlfriend, Lily (Karyn Parsons), just serves to compound Banana's despair. Teaming with sidekick Binky (Peter Dinklage) to enlist the aid of bail-bondsman Mo (David Proval), Banana and Binky discover that Mo is currently negotiating the release of hip-hop mogul Lenny's (Daryl Mitchell) wife, Sandra (Rose Rollins). The hapless group soon teams to help Mo by finding a suitable kidney donor for the bail-bondsman's ailing son, and though they quickly happen across a drunk (Peter Stormare) who fits the bill, the trouble comes in keeping the prospect in the hospital. Doing their best to help Mo's son under increasingly chaotic circumstances, personal tensions flare as each character desperately tries to simultaneously battle their own inner demons. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The doors are opened on a group of misfits living in a seedy motel on the edge of Los Angeles in the comedy No Vacancy. At the run-down Pink Motel, the owner (Joaquim de Almeida) is furious with his daughter when he finds out she's been sleeping with her boyfriend. This doesn't make her very different from most of the people staying at his establishment, where attractive young women wake up with men they don't recall meeting, sleazy guys cavort with hookers, and most of the tenants are ready to clobber each other. The cast includes Christina Ricci, Lolita Davidovich, Gabriel Mann, Steven Schub and Robert Wagner. No Vacancy was screened at the 1999 Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Morgan J. Freeman directed this comedy-drama that takes place in the desert town of Baxter Beach, California, where the locals, lookers, visitors and slackers include dreamer Blue (Brendan Sexton III), pipe-bomb babe Ely (Christina Ricci), all-terrain-vehicle champ Pete (Casey Affleck), nerdy Sandy (Sara Gilbert), TV star Skye (Kate Hudson), and chubby Cale (Ethan Suplee). Blue's dad, who had hoped to bring water to the town, died mysteriously in a hotel fire, leaving an abandoned water slide, and Blue hopes to fulfill his father's dream by completing the water slide attraction. Actress Skye is just passing through with her father, a pop-culture prof. (John Heard), but they're forced to stay in town after a truck-spill leads to a quarantine and the presence of both an FBI agent (Michael Ironside) and an EPA agent (Aunjanue Ellis). Skye gets caught up in local fun and games (orange baseball, potato cannon salvos), while her dad reminisces about the '60s with UFO fanatic Caroline (Lucinda Jenney). Shown at the 1998 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Superb black-and-white photography highlights this independent drama. John Lee (Peter Alexander) is the son of a Chinese-American father and a French mother, living in California shortly after World War II. John's grandfather was a Chinese laborer brought to America to help lay tracks for the Continental railroad, and John has inherited an obsessive love of trains. When John discovers that the short-line railroad that runs from Merced, California, to the Yosemite Valley is soon to be shut down, he persuades his father to back him as he takes over the line and attempts to restore it. John hires two experienced railroad men to help him run his new railway: conductor Robinson (Henry Gibson and traffic manager Skeeter (Michael Stipe). As he tries to put the Yosemite Valley Railroad back on its feet, he becomes romantically involved with a beautiful park ranger (Jeri Arredondo) and exchanges subtle flirtations with both Skeeter and his sister Wendy (Diana Larkin). However, his all-consuming interest in the railroad prevents these relationships from going anywhere, and his family begins to lose patience with him as he digs himself deeper into a business that seems doomed. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A group of gay and lesbian teen characters addresses the camera directly in this pseudo-documentary about the travails of queer adolescence in early-'90s Los Angeles. Andy (James Duval), who hides his sensitive side beneath a nihilistic exterior, really yearns to find a nice boyfriend and settle down the way his pal Steven (Gilbert Luna), an aspiring filmmaker, has with boyfriend Deric (Lance May). Meanwhile, their sex-crazed friend Tommy (Roko Belic) has been kicked out by his parents for being homosexual. The only seemingly carefree members of this adoptive family are Michele (Susan Behshid) and Patricia (Jenee Gill), a lesbian couple whose desire to raise a child together leads the boys to participate in a group sperm donation during one of the film's many scenes of these characters just hanging out and rapping about AIDS, fag-bashing, homophobia, and alienation. In-between polemicizing and posing in front of Steven's camera for interviews, Andy meets college student Ian (Alan Boyce), who seems, at least for a while, to be Mr. Right. Just as Andy and Ian's relationship begins to blossom, Steven and Deric's starts to fall apart, but nothing's for certain in director Gregg Araki's angst-ridden world. Framed as 15 vignettes, each one introduced by an ironic intertitle and many of them interspersed with graphic sexual and commercial images, Totally F***ed Up marked the end of Araki's no-budget phase; the glossy, gaudy Doom Generation would follow two years later. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

A gentle film critic hooks up with a violent drifter in this HIV-positive road movie, which marked the emergence of writer/director Gregg Araki into the art house mainstream. Jon (Craig Gilmore) has just learned he has the virus that causes AIDS. Still in a state of shock, he stumbles through his usual routine -- until he meets Luke (Mike Dytri), a hunky, gun-toting hitchhiker who has just stolen a car from a pair of homicidal lesbians and shot a trio of would-be gay bashers. Against his better judgment, Jon lets Luke stay at his place and soon finds himself drawn into the nihilistic stranger's world; it doesn't hurt that Luke is also HIV-positive and hot to get inside Jon's pants. Things take a Bonnie and Clyde turn when Luke kills a policeman. The pair go on the lam, first to San Francisco, then all over the western United States. Jon keeps his best friend, Darcy (Darcy Marta), apprised of his situation via a series of ever more infrequent collect calls. But as the road trip continues, Jon becomes increasingly disillusioned with Luke's belief that since they're doomed to die, they should lead consequence-free lives. Like Araki's later movies, The Living End is peppered with pop culture detritus and features a soundtrack heavy on industrial and alternative music -- in this case Psychic TV, Coil, and Fred Gianelli. Marta is a veteran of Araki's earlier Three Bewildered People in the Night, while several other cast members, including Gilmore, would go on to appear in the director's Totally F***ed Up. The Living End's many cameos include performance artist Johanna Went, Eating Raoul director Paul Bartel, Warhol associate Mary Woronov, and Peter Grame, star of the obscure European film Das Gluck Beim Haendewaschen. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide