Amber Warnat Movies

Despite the efforts of her sleazy attorney, Mr. Butz (David Alan Grier), teen drug dealer/car thief Crystal (Natasha Lyonne) is sentenced to a 25-year prison term, the first segment of which will be served in a youth correctional facility where she will be treated for her rampant bulimia. There, in-between binge/purge marathons with her fellow eating-disordered inmates and relentless harassment of the hapless authorities, she fends off the lesbian advances of her psychotic cellmate, Cyclona (Maria Celedonio), a serial killer who's just received a life sentence. The two escape together and embark on a cross-country road trip in search of Sister Gomez (Vincent Gallo), the beneficent nun who protected Cyclona from the sexual predations of her family during her troubled childhood south of the border. Where writer/director Matthew Bright's original Freeway was a modern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, Freeway 2 riffs on Hansel and Gretel; it borrows only the trailer-park trappings of the earlier film, making the titular allusion to automobiles somewhat tenuous. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

In this strikingly original independent drama from Canada, a young woman finds that her obsession with death is challenged when she falls in love with a handsome medical student. Sandra Larson (Molly Parker) was fascinated with the dead from an early age; as a girl, she and her best friend would find the bodies of birds and small animals and devise funeral rituals for them, though Sandra always took these adventures far more seriously than her compatriot. As Sandra matures into womanhood, her obsession with the deceased begins to develop a sexual component, but her necrophilia is not about lust so much as a spiritual yearning for the light and calm of death's embrace. In college, Sandra studies embalming, which allows her to study and embrace death on a daily basis, and she finds work at a funeral home owned by Mr. Wallis (Jay Brazeau), a man who in his way shares her obsessions. One day at a coffeeshop, Sandra meets Matt (Peter Outerbridge), who is studying to be a doctor; she senses that he knows her secrets, and a tentative romance blooms between them. But while Matt wants to "cure" Sandra of her intimate feelings for death, she finds that he's not capable of understanding her erotic nature, which is directed within herself more than outward toward others. Understandably controversial upon its initial release (though far more subtle and poetic than one might expect given the subject matter), Kissed was the first feature film from director Lynne Stopkewich, who previously distinguished herself as a production designer. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi