Mark Lipson Movies

Two men return home from the Army to find that their attitudes on life, love, and the town where they grew up have changed in this bittersweet coming-of-age drama. Sonny Burns (Jeremy Davies) and Gunner Casselman (Ben Affleck) are two guys from Indianapolis who were drafted during the Korean War. In high school, Gunner was a football player and big man on campus, while Sonny was a social outcast who kept to himself. Sonny spent most of his hitch in the Army in Kansas City, while Gunner was stationed in Japan and found his perspectives changed by exposure to Asian philosophies. Gunner and Sonny run into each other on a troop train as they return to Indiana in 1954. While they were never close in school, Gunner finds himself reaching out to Sonny, believing that Sonny is a deep thinker, though Sonny spends a lot more time thinking about girls than his place in the universe. Sonny has a girlfriend, Buddy (Amy Locane), who would like to get married; Sonny's mother Alma (Jill Clayburgh) is almost as eager as Buddy to see her son head to the altar, but Sonny doesn't find Buddy very interesting, and he's not sure if he wants to settle in Indianapolis. He's far more attracted to Gail (Rose McGowan), an exotic looking brunette who appeals to his girly-magazine fantasies, but while he can make love to Buddy, he's struck with impotence when Gail offers to sleep with him. Meanwhile, Gunner has fallen in love with Marty Pilcher (Rachel Weisz), a sexy Jewish woman, but Gunner's mother Nina (Lesley Ann Warren), who seems inappropriately fond of her son, doesn't care for Marty and spouts anti-Semitic venom at her son in hopes of driving him away from his new girlfriend. Like Sonny, Gunner finds himself thinking that his destiny lies outside of his home town. Dan Wakefield wrote the screenplay for Going All the Way, based on his own novel. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Not many filmmakers can claim to have freed a convicted murderer from jail, but Errol Morris accomplished that feat with his stunning documentary about Randall Dale Adams. Morris, whose brilliant previous features Vernon, Florida and Gates of Heaven had focused on less substantial subjects, learned of Adams' plight when the director was in Texas in preparation for a film about a psychiatrist who testified in murder trials. In November 1976, after his car broke down on a road outside Dallas, Adams had accepted a ride from a stranger, David Harris. Harris was driving a stolen car, and when Dallas police officer Robert Wood pulled the two men over to check on the vehicle, Harris shot and killed Wood. A jury believed that Adams was the killer, thanks to the perjured testimony of Harris and the misleading accounts of two witnesses. A story about Adams on 60 Minutes helped to bring public attention to the case, but it was Morris' film, which contained extensive interview material with both Adams and Harris as well as stylized reenactments of the crime, that clinched the case for Adams' innocence. He was set free on March 15, 1988. Although Morris' film made many critics' top ten lists, it was unaccountably not nominated for an Academy award, raising doubts about the credibility of the Motion Picture Academy's nominating process in this category. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide

Finnish director Ilkka Jarvilaturi directs an international cast in this deadpan post-Cold War spy farce. Jaded CIA veteran Harry (Bill Pullman) and young SVR agent Natasha (Irene Jacob) are on-again off-again lovers who have little to do in Helsinki except spy on one another, until a courier (Bruno Kirby) shows up with a porno tape bearing top-secret US satellite codes. Natasha wants the tape to get her psychotic boss (Udo Kier) off her back, while Harry needs it to placate his Boy Scout colleague fresh from spy school. History is Made at Night was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Innovative documentary filmmaker Errol Morris often finds a startling surreal edge in the midst of reality, seeking unique subjects, and discovering humor and pathos in odd, off-the-beaten-path locales. After Morris attracted attention with his memorable look at pet owners and pet cemeteries in Gates of Heaven (1978), he traveled into a backwash of quirky humor by filming Floridians in Vernon, Florida (1981). His controversial The Thin Blue Line (1988) helped free the innocent Randall Adams from prison. Morris ventured into drama with The Dark Wind (1991), and he also made a biographical profile of Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time (1992). Now Morris returns with a film he described as "four versions of the myth of Sisyphus." Four eccentrics talk about their seemingly diverse lives, interests, and offbeat occupations: Lion tamer Dave Hoover, following paths trod by his hero Clyde Beatty, offers some curious theories about wild animal thought processes; topiary gardener George Mendo clips hedges to create giraffes, bears, and other creatures; mole-rat specialist Ray Mendez researches the insect-like behavior of these hairless, buck-toothed mammals; robotics scientist Rodney Brooks assembles autonomous robots. Morris finds thematic connections relating the four. While Hoover and Mendo provide footnotes on the fading American scene, Mendez and Brooks look to the future. Contrasting viewpoints are edited into an essay on existence and the human condition, incorporating Morris' reflection on his recently departed parents. Morris and cinematographer Bob Richardson employed a variety of film formats -- black-and-white, color, 35mm, Super-8, and 16mm. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide