Rachael Leigh Cook Movies
Born October 4, 1979 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the doe-eyed, fine-boned Rachael Leigh Cook has invited frequent comparisons with the young Audrey Hepburn. The actress began her career at the age of ten as a model, and then broke into acting in 1995 with her role as Mary-Ann Spier in The Baby-Sitters Club. Her next memorable appearance was in The House of Yes (1997), where she played the young Parker Posey. Coincidentally, Freddie Prinze Jr., with whom she would later co-star in She's All That, was also in the film, although they had no scenes together.After The House of Yes, Cook acted in a few forgettable films, the exception being Living Out Loud (1998), in which she played the young Holly Hunter. It was her next film, 1999's She's All That, that garnered her significant attention. As Laney Boggs, Cook went from geek to chic under the tutelage of the most popular boy in school (Prinze Jr.). As the film was essentially billed as an update of My Fair Lady (1964), the comparisons between Cook and Audrey Hepburn seemed particularly apt. Only time will tell if these comparisons extend beyond physical appearance to career trajectory. Taking to the stage (on the screen at least) with her turn in the live adaptation of Josie and the Pussycats, audiences would soon find the attractive actress travelling back in time to the old west in Texas Rangers. An attempt to revive the western from celluloid oblivion, the film documented the true story of the founding of the Texas Rangers and found Cook cast alongside popular actors James Van Der Beek and Oded Fehr. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
If Hollywood can shoehorn William Shakespeare into the teen-movie treatment with Romeo and Juliet, and Jane Austen with Clueless (from her novel, Emma), why not George Bernard Shaw? While his Pygmalion has been staged and filmed endless times, most famously as the musical My Fair Lady, here Shaw goes to high school. This time around, a Los Angeles' school's most popular guy Zack (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) loses his girlfriend Taylor (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe) to television star Brock Hudson (Scream's Matthew Lillard). Zack then vows to his friends that he can take any girl in school and turn her into the prom queen. With five weeks until the prom, his friends pick weird, art nerd Laney Boggs (Rachael Leigh Cook). Zack predictably gets more than he bargained for as he falls in love with his "creation." Eldon Hudson and Kieran Culkin, stars of The Mighty, play Laney's best friend and little brother, respectively. Robert Iscove, director of television's Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella, makes his big-screen debut. ~ Chris Gore, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Freddie Prinze, Jr., Rachael Leigh Cook, (more)
- 1999
A teenager tries to find his memory in a hospital for the dying in this inspiring if downbeat drama. Barney Snow (Elijah Wood) is a young man suffering from amnesia; while he's able to summon up a few vague and disconnected memories of his past, most of it is extremely foggy at best, and he's somehow found his way into a hospital for terminally ill young people, where two of the doctors on staff (Janeane Garofalo and Roger Rees) try to work with him when they can spare time from their other patients. Barney gets to know some of the other patients at the clinic, including Billy the Kidney (George Gore III) and Mazzo (Joseph Perrino), who is battling cancer but not winning the fight. Barney also meets Mazzo's sister Cassie (Rachel Leigh Cook), who seems to be developing a crush on him. The Bumblebee Flies Anyway received enthusiastic notices for its younger cast when it was screened at France's Deauville Festival of American Cinema in 1999. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Elijah Wood, Janeane Garofalo, (more)
Award-winning soundman Ron Judkins makes his directorial debut in this drama about family ties and how they can unravel. Vera (Rachel Leigh Cook) is a young woman with little in the way of ambitions or goals who still lives with her parents, Clyde and Laura (Stuart Margolin and Margot Kidder), in a remote city in Montana. One day Sam (Ryan Alosio) arrives in town, claiming to be interviewing prospective employees for a discount store soon to be built in town. However, it quickly becomes obvious that Sam is telling a tale, and we discover the real reason he's in town. A man Sam once knew who just died in prison gave him a letter, saying he fathered a daughter named Vera, who was given away shortly after her birth to a man named Clyde. When Clyde and Laura admit they are not Vera's birth parents, Vera and Sam head out in search of Vera's biological mother. The Hi-Line was shown in competition at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rachael Leigh Cook, Ryan Alosio, (more)
- 1998
- PG13
Sarah Kernochan wrote and directed this nostalgic coming-of-age comedy-drama with some autobiographical touches. In 1963, budgetary problems at the East Coast boarding school Miss Godard's School for Girls, prompt a merger with a boy's academy. The girls are stunned at the prospect of going co-ed and devise a campaign to sabotage the plan. Screenwriter Kernochan, scripter of Sommersby and 9 1/2 Weeks, won an Oscar when she co-directed the 1972 documentary Marjoe, but this film marks her feature directorial debut creating comedy-drama. The upstate New York seen here is actually Toronto. The title created some confusion, since Kernochan's film received reviews the same month the 1998 New York Film Festival unspooled a new 35mm print of Sergei Eisenstein's silent classic Strike (1924). ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Lynn Redgrave, Gaby Hoffmann, (more)
- 1998
- R
A chiropractor begins a second vocation- professional wrestling. His wrestling name is the Naked Man, and after undergoing a tragedy, he loses his sanity. His delusions lead him to believe that he really is his wrestling alter-ego. ~ All Movie Guide
Based on a true story, this Civil War-era epic centers on the exploits of Sarah Ashby McClure (Dana Delany) and her sister Euphemia (Annabeth Gish) as they try to make their way on the male-dominated West Texas plains. When their home is threatened by Mexican forces and Native American warriors, the sisters lead their family and friends to safety. Based on the book by Janice Woods Windle, True Women also co-stars Rachael Leigh Cook, Angelina Jolie, and Tina Majorino. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dana Delany, Annabeth Gish, (more)
Deserted by her no-good mother Angie (Ally Sheedy), Emma Baker (Rachael Lee Cook) has been raised by her grandfather, a tough but compassionate old coal miner named Clayton Hayes (George C. Scott). Now 15 years old, Emma insists upon a reunion with her drink-sodden mom--only to be raped and impregnated by Angie's current lowlife boyfriend Ray Wilcox (Don Diamont). When Clayton goes to court in hopes of adopting Emma's sickly baby, he is thwarted by a misguided legal system that regards Wilcox as a more suitable guardian! Outraged, Clayton steals the baby and embarks upon a lengthy odyssey, with the authorities dogging his trail and a virtual battalion of truck drivers and other "little people" treating the old man as a folk hero. Produced for the CBS network, the made-for-TV Country Justice premiered January 14, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- George C. Scott, Ally Sheedy, (more)
A wealthy young man wants to wed a painfully ordinary girl, and a few hours with his family will convince anyone why he's doing so in this black comedy. Marty Pascal (Josh Hamilton) is engaged to marry Lesly (Tori Spelling), a dizzy blonde he met when she was working at a doughnut shop, and he bravely decides that it's time she met his family, so he brings her along for Thanksgiving dinner at his mother's house in West Virginia. Bravery is necessary because the Pascals are not an especially healthy or wholesome family. Mother (Genevieve Bujold) explains her philosophy about parenting like so: "You raise cattle; children just happen." In this environment, where refusing your child anything is all but unknown, her youngest son Anthony (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) has grown up to be an overanxious virgin eager to seduce Lesly while Marty's not paying attention. And Marty's twin sister Jackie (Parker Posey), malignily obsessed with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, often re-enacts the murder of JFK using spaghetti sauce for blood (when she can't get ahold of real bullets) and enjoys incestuously seducing Marty (which hardly bothers Mother, who notes that "Jackie's hand was holding Marty's penis when they came out the womb"). The House of Yes was based on the play by Wendy MacLeod; first time director Mark S. Waters (brother of screenwriter Daniel Waters) also adapted the screenplay. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Parker Posey, Josh Hamilton, (more)
This ominous apocalypse thriller sports a fairly ambitious but ultimately confusing plot involving a prophecy which proclaims that the return of Satan will be precipitated by the arrival of eighteen physically-perfect angelic beings. In order to fulfill the prophecy, a secret sect of Etruscan monks conspire with an obsessed geneticist to artificially manufacture the requisite number of perfect specimens, with the only setback being the lack of a suitably beautiful face for each of the eighteen clones. To complete the equation, the monks devise a plan by which they can obtain faces from unsuspecting "donors." The last of the potential candidates is lovely model Rachael Leigh Cook who, after a bizarre series of events beginning with her mother's death, finds herself in the monks' evil clutches. Decent production design gives some class to this direct-to-video production, together with good performances and a pervasive sense of doom. The film ultimately falls short of cult-classic status due to an excessive amount of irrelevant and frequently unresolved subplots -- particularly one involving the family cat. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide
This Disney live-action film is a very loose adaptation of Mark Twain's two novels about boyhood friends in Hannibal, MO, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn which omits some of the darker themes and undertones in the original books. Television star Jonathan Taylor Thomas (of Home Improvement) is the prankish Tom Sawyer. Tom wants desperately to be friends with the renegade orphan boy Huck Finn (Brad Renfro), who lives on his own on the edge of town. Tom is also smitten with the tomboyish Becky Thatcher (Amy Wright), daughter of the town judge. On an adventure one night, Tom and Huck stumble upon a murder in a graveyard. They see Injun Joe (Eric Schweig) killing the town undertaker to get a map to a treasure. Tom's friend Muff Potter (Michael McShane) is wrongly accused of the crime, but Tom and Huck both know the real killer. Huck has made Tom swear not to reveal the truth and both boys fear that Injun Joe will come after them if they squeal. Tom must choose between his friendship with Huck and his desire to vindicate Muff and get the real killer brought to justice. They try to find the treasure and end up confronting Injun Joe in a cave. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Brad Renfro, (more)
Franklin Lazlo (Tom Arnold) is desperate. His carnival is on the skids and he hasn't got the money to make his next payroll. He tries robbery, with little result except to have the police, some professional robbers, and a meter-maid (Rhea Perlman) chasing him. On the way, he takes uptight and harried children's carpool father Daniel Miller (David Paymer) and a van full of children hostage. Franklin and the children get up to some wild hijinks all over town, and gradually the starchy Daniel begins to loosen up. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Arnold, David Paymer, (more)
Based on the characters from the series of best-selling books by Ann M. Martin, The Baby Sitters Club concerns a group of seven girls, each edging into their teenage years, who are close friends and have formed a co-operative baby-sitting service. Their business has become so successful that the girls decide to expand their horizons and start a summer day camp for kids; however, they soon discover that not all the adults in the neighborhood think this is a good idea, and they learn a lesson about cooperation and responsibility. Meanwhile, Kristy (Schuyler Fisk), the leader of the group, lives with her mother (Brooke Adams) and stepfather (Bruce Davison); when her father (Peter Horton), an undependable wanderer, shows up, he asks Kristy not to tell her mother that he's in town, and Kristy is torn about what to say. Stacy (Bre Blair) has another sort of dilemma to deal with; she's tall and pretty and has met a boy who likes her. However, he thinks she's older than she actually is, leading her into a dating dilemma that she may not be ready for. The Baby Sitters Club was the first theatrical feature for actress-turned-director Melanie Mayron; Schuyler Fisk is the daughter of actress Sissy Spacek and director/designer Jack Fisk. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Schuyler Fisk, Rachael Leigh Cook, (more)
