Mina Badie Movies
When a tragic car accident robs a loving father of both his son and his sense of touch, it's up to one sympathetic nurse to show him that the future still holds hope in a poignant and inspirational drama starring Jenna Elfman, Samantha Mathis, and Randall Batinkoff. Awakening from a two-year coma to find his family gone and his life forever changed, Scott (Batinkoff) soon finds his grief compounded when he literally loses his ability to feel his surroundings. As the pain within his soul begins to manifest itself through the weakening of his physical body, Scott grapples with the memories of his deceased son and struggles to find the energy needed to face another day. Only through the help of kindly nurse Angela, the woman who tended to him in his darkest hour, will Scott be able to release the pain of his past and open himself to the possibility of new love and a brighter future. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jenna Elfman, Randall Batinkoff, (more)
- 2005
A year after his wife's death and nearly a decade since his last visit home, successful New York lawyer Spencer Krane (Michael Houston King) returns home to care for his ailing grandmother in director Reza S. Badiyi's character-driven family drama. Jo McMillan (Julie Harris) has suffered a massive stroke, and now her grandson Spencer has returned home to care for the woman who raised him. As Spencer reconnects with such important people from his childhood as his grandmother's lifelong friend Maude (Ruby Dee) and his childhood sweetheart Sarah Marshall (Tessie Santiago), he gradually begins to realize just how far he has strayed from the values that he had been taught as a young boy. Spencer has experienced a fair share of tragedy over the years, and now as he arrives in the old Florida town of Sanford he may finally find the peace that allows him to come to terms with the past, and look toward the future with a newfound sense of hope. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael H. King, Julie Harris, (more)
A reclusive married couple residing in a lavish seaside home receive a pair of menacing unwelcome visitors in director Jay Anania's tense tale of homebound terror. Carla (Julianne Nicholson) and Bill (Julian Sands) don't get out much, and when a pair of strangers show up and refuse to leave, the tension in their comfortable beach house soon begins to rise. The evening wears on and when the menace of the visitors turns threatening, Bill attempts to take control of the situation before the emotional violence of his malevolent house guests turns physical. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
A handful of New Yorkers with little in common cross one another's paths as they try to sort out their romantic and emotional troubles in this comedy drama from writer and director Eric Schaeffer. Sam Blue (Eric Schaeffer) is a single father who is raising a ten-year-old son, Rocky (Christopher Kovaleski), on his own. Rocky was conceived using an egg Sam purchased on the Internet; after being left at the altar by his fiancée, Sam isn't sure he can stand the pain of another romance, though Rocky wishes he could have a mom. Herb Schweitzer (Alan King) is an elderly man with a sour personality who has pledged to honor the memory of a deceased friend by walking from his apartment to a beach in Manhattan. However, the trip will cover many miles, and these days Herb can barely shuffle to the end of the block. Jody Buller (Jill Sobule) is an eccentric street musician who was given a pacemaker for her weak heart as a child. Jody is convinced this means a broken heart would be fatal, despite her doctor's efforts to convince her otherwise. Malissa Zubach (Elizabeth Reaser) is a young woman who dreams of traveling to other lands, but is stuck in a trailer home caring for her dying mother. Hoping to get a sense of the outside world, Malissa persuades pen pals across the globe to record audio tapes in public places so she can hear the places she wants to see. And John McCabe (Charles Parnell) is a man still struggling to come to terms with the collapse of his marriage, brought on by his own infidelity. Mind the Gap received its world premiere at the 2003 South by Southwest Film Festival, where it received the Special Jury Award for Narrative Feature. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan King, Elizabeth Reaser, (more)
Though equally respected in their field, divorce lawyers Audrey Woods (Julianne Moore) and Daniel Rafferty (Pierce Brosnan) are opposites inside and out of the courtroom. Audrey is meticulous and by the book, while Daniel relies on personality and luck to get by. Despite the difference in methods, neither lawyer has lost a case, and neither plan on ending their streak after being respectively hired by Serena (Parker Posey) and Thorne (Michael Sheen), a celebrity power couple gone wrong. The divorce settlement hinges on a particularly spectacular Irish castle, which both parties would like to keep for themselves. Audrey and Daniel hurry to Ireland with depositions in their eyes, but a growing mutual attraction manages to squirm out from beneath, and, after being immersed in a romantic Irish festival, the rival lawyers wake up married. Reeling, potentially in love (to Audrey in particular's dismay), and faced with the type of media explosion capable of leading to the end of their careers, the mismatched lawyers contemplate how to go about their clients' divorce hearings as man and wife. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Pierce Brosnan, Julianne Moore, (more)
Writer/director Dylan Kidd got a chance to make his script for Roger Dodger into a feature film when he boldly approached Campbell Scott in a café in Greenwich Village and made his pitch. Eventually, Scott would agree to executive produce and star in the film, and was responsible for bringing Jennifer Beals and Isabella Rossellini onboard. Scott stars as the eponymous Roger, a successful New York ad man and self-proclaimed master of reading and manipulating women. The film begins with Roger out for drinks with his co-workers and demonstrating his verbal gifts. "Words are my stock in trade," he explains as he expounds. But he soon learns that his boss, Joyce (Rossellini), wants to end their clandestine sexual relationship. Roger gets another shock when his teenaged nephew, Nick (Jesse Eisenberg of TV's Get Real), shows up unannounced the next day at his job. Nick explains that he's in town for an interview at Columbia and soon admits that he wants Roger to take him out and give him a crash course on women. Soon the pair is out carousing, but when they run into the lovely Andrea (Elizabeth Berkley) and her friend, Sophie (Jennifer Beals), Roger discovers that despite Nick's sexual desperation, the teen is temperamentally unsuited to Roger's transparent womanizing mode of operation. In short, Nick is a sweet, open, and sensitive boy, while Roger proves himself to be a misogynist pig. Their differences grow even starker when Roger decides to crash a party Joyce is throwing that night, and brings Nick along. Roger Dodger was named the Best Narrative Feature in competition at the 2002 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Campbell Scott, Jesse Eisenberg, (more)
The acclaimed graphic novel from crime writer Max Allan Collins becomes this big budget Dreamworks drama from director Sam Mendes and screenwriter David Self. Tom Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan, a morally conflicted Depression-era hit man committing murder in the name of his employer, John Rooney (Paul Newman). A kindly, aging Irish crime boss who raised Sullivan as his surrogate son, Rooney is affiliated with Al Capone in Chicago and thus wields great power in the "Tri-Cities" of Moline, IL; Rock Island, IL; and Davenport, IA. Curious about his father's mysterious profession, Sullivan's son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), stows away in his father's automobile one night and witnesses the execution of a man at the hands of Sullivan and Rooney's biological son, Connor (Daniel Craig). Although Michael keeps his promise to remain silent about what he's seen, the paranoid and unstable Connor tries to wipe out the entire Sullivan clan anyway, succeeding only in killing Sullivan's wife, Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and youngest son, Peter (Liam Aiken). Enraged at this and another surprise betrayal by the Rooneys, Sullivan embarks on a path of bloody retribution, Michael in tow. Although he intends to leave his boy with relatives in the rural town of Perdition once the coast is clear, he ends up exposing Michael to the goriest aspects of his talents, slaughtering former associates as he dodges contract assassin Maguire (Jude Law) and cripples the cash flow of the Rooney and Capone organizations through a series of bank robberies, attempting to force either mob family to offer up the sequestered Connor as a sacrifice. Inspired by the popular Japanese comic book series Lone Wolf and Cub and based loosely on an episode from the life and career of notorious real-life crime figures John and Connor Looney, Road to Perdition co-stars Stanley Tucci as legendary Chicago mobster Frank Nitti. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Hanks, Paul Newman, (more)
Norman Ollestad's erotic drama Malibu Eyes begins with a young woman discovering that her parents and her boyfriend will not be joining her in the Malibu beach house in which they were to vacation. The young woman begins to spy on the sexual shenanigans of the neighbors, even going so far as to videotape them surreptitiously. Soon these actions stir up feelings in her, and she becomes embroiled in the various couplings and uncouplings going on in the community. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
In this Dogma 95-inspired first feature for acclaimed performers Jennifer Jason Leigh and Alan Cumming, the two star as Joe and Sally Therrian, a couple who have recently reconciled after a yearlong separation, and who decide to throw a sixth anniversary party in their honor. They invite a bevy of Hollywood types, including Skye Davidson (Gwyneth Paltrow), a young, beautiful, Ecstasy-pushing actress appointed to play a character based on
Sally in the new feature film based on Joe's successful novel. Also featured are Cal and Sophia Gold (played by real-life marrieds Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates), the former a co-star of Sally's and the latter her best friend who has given up the business to raise a family; Mac (John C. Reilly), the director of the new film and his actress wife Clair (Jane Adams), who has continued working after the recent birth of their child; Judy and Jerry Adams (Parker Posey and John Benjamin Hickey), the Therrians' managers; and Gina (Jennifer Beals), Joe's ex-girlfriend, who is often regarded as his first big love. Things are complicated when their contentious neighbors (Mina Badie and Denis O'Hare) make an appearance, and a mystery gift causes the event to unravel over the course of one long evening. The film was also written by Cumming and Leigh, another first for both actors. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
Sally in the new feature film based on Joe's successful novel. Also featured are Cal and Sophia Gold (played by real-life marrieds Kevin Kline and Phoebe Cates), the former a co-star of Sally's and the latter her best friend who has given up the business to raise a family; Mac (John C. Reilly), the director of the new film and his actress wife Clair (Jane Adams), who has continued working after the recent birth of their child; Judy and Jerry Adams (Parker Posey and John Benjamin Hickey), the Therrians' managers; and Gina (Jennifer Beals), Joe's ex-girlfriend, who is often regarded as his first big love. Things are complicated when their contentious neighbors (Mina Badie and Denis O'Hare) make an appearance, and a mystery gift causes the event to unravel over the course of one long evening. The film was also written by Cumming and Leigh, another first for both actors. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Alan Cumming, Jennifer Jason Leigh, (more)
- 1998
Materializing on Earth 147, the Sliders find themselves smack in the middle of a Kromagg weapons test. Captured and threatened with torture, the three travelers are rescued by superior officer Kromanus (Stephen Macht), whose life Maggie (Kari Wuhrer) had saved earlier. Magnanimously, Kromanus puts the captives under light house arrest, allowing them to move about with relative freedom. This turns out to be a mixed blessing when the Sliders are swept up in a fierce military power struggle, and Rembrandt (Cleavant Derricks) becomes a "dead man walking" when he uncovers the horrible truth about the Kromaggs' future plans for the human race. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1996
Picking up where the previous week's "Homefront" left off, this episode finds Sisko and Odo still in San Francisco, still preparing Earth for war against the dominion. The instigators of the hostilities appear to be a band of Changeling infiltrators. But upon further investigation, Sisko comes to the sobering conclusion that the real enemy may be a subversive faction within Starfleet itself. The pivotal character in this drama is Admiral Leyton (Robert Foxworth). First telecast January 8, 1996, "Paradise Lost" was written by Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe from a story by Ronald D. Moore. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1994
- R
- Add Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle to QueueAdd Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle to top of Queue
Jennifer Jason Leigh offers an acclaimed performance as humorist Dorothy Parker, who together with such 1920s luminaries as Robert Benchley, Alexander Woollcott and George S. Kaufman, was a charter member of the legendary Algonquin Round Table. The story is related in flashback form, as Mrs. Parker, in Hollywood to cowrite the 1937 feature A Star is Born with her second husband Alan Campbell (Peter Gallagher), recalls her glory days as an Algonquinite. A great deal of attention is afforded Parker's vituperative bon mots, her alcoholism, her self-destructiveness, her suicide attempts, and her affairs with such literary contemporaries as Charles MacArthur (an uncharacteristically unsympathetic Matthew Broderick) and Robert E. Sherwood (Nick Cassavetes). The one person Parker truly seems to care about is humorist Robert Benchley (Campbell Scott), who prefers to keep their friendship platonic. Director Alan Rudolph attempts to convey the ambience of the 1920s by having dozens of that decade's luminaries appear in fleeting cameos, from Will Rogers (Keith Carradine) to Harpo Marx. Also featured in Mrs. Parker are Tom McGowan as the waspish Alexander Woollcott and Andrew McCarthy as Dorothy's near-invisible first husband, Eddie Parker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jennifer Jason Leigh, Matthew Broderick, (more)
