Roger Burton Movies
- 2007
Lt. Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford) retires from the force when he inherits a farm from his late uncle Harvey. It isn't long before Disher begins to suspect that his uncle was murdered--along with his prize pig Harvey. Though he recoils at the notion of being stranded on a dusty, dirty farm with dozens of unsanitary animals, Monk swallows hard and agrees to investigate Harvey's death, disguising himself as a migrant worker for the purpose. Aided and abetted by the local constabulary and a friendly farmhand named Oates (James Gammon), Monk is soon harvesting clues left and right--especially the fact that the farm's principal "crop" is of an extremely high value indeed. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
The final days of one of the truly legendary figures of British rock & roll are explored in this biographical drama, which marks the directorial debut of veteran producer Stephen Woolley. Brian Jones (played by Leo Gregory) was one of the founding members of the Rolling Stones, and his incisive blues guitar style, broad range of musical influences, and striking blond good looks helped establish him as part of the true royalty of the British music scene. But by 1969, Jones' life had begun to spiral out of control; his appetite for drugs made him wildly unreliable, his arrests for possession of marijuana prevented the Stones from touring the United States, his bandmates Mick Jagger (Luke de Woolfson) and Keith Richards (Ben Whishaw) had grown tired of working with him (and envious of the attention he received in the press), and his longtime paramour Anita Pallenberg (Monet Mazur) had become involved with fellow Stone Richards. Worried about Jones' drug abuse, the band's tour manager, Tom Keylock (David Morrissey), hires middle-aged carpenter Frank Thorogood (Paddy Considine) to do some repairs at Jones' estate, but also asks him to look after the musician and try to keep him away from dope. Keylock underestimates the power of Brian's personality, and before long, the straight-arrow Thorogood is Jones' household manservant and partner in hedonism, through Thorogood begins to chafe at the emotional games Jones enjoys playing with his new companion. Stoned was adapted in part from three different books on Brian Jones and the Rolling Stones as well as recently uncovered interviews with people who claim to have been involved in Brian Jones' death. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Leo Gregory, Paddy Considine, (more)
Sisters Gabrielle C. and Maria Burton direct the independent comedy Manna From Heaven, written by their mother, Gabrielle B. Burton, and produced by their siblings at Five Sisters Productions. In Buffalo, NY, during the '50s, the wind blows in cash money to the tune of 20 thousand dollars. Believing it was a tangible gift from God, Sister Teresa (Ursula Burton) tries to gather up the money and pay it back 30 years later. However, her family members don't want to give up their free money and can't even get along, including card dealer Inez (Wendie Malick) and con artists Bunny (Shirley Jones) and Ed Burns (Frank Gorshin, in his final film role). Also starring Seymour Cassel, Shelley Duvall, Cloris Leachman, Harry Groener, Faye Grant, Jill Eikenberry and Louise Fletcher. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Maria Burton, Ursula Burton, (more)
- 1999
French filmmaker Jean Vigo made only four films prior to his death in 1934 at the age of 29 (only one a full length feature), but all of them are today recognized as landmarks of the European cinema, and Zero For Conduct and L'Atalante are often cited among the greatest films of their time. Vigo: Passion For Life is a dramatic biography that explores his brief life and tumultuous career. Born the son of a famous figure in the French anarchist movement, Jean Vigo (played here by James Frain) suffered from poor health throughout his life; he contracted tuberculosis as a young man, and met his wife Lydu Lozinska (Romane Bohringer) when both were receiving treatment in a sanitarium. Vigo made A propos de Nice in 1929 as an attack on bourgeois French society; the premier led to a riot, the first of many controversies surrounding Vigo's work (Zero For Conduct was completed in 1932, but its anti-authoritarian stance caused it to be banned until 1945). Vigo's fragile health was already beginning to fail him while he was filming L'Atalante; a fall into an icy river while trying to retrieve a camera only added to his ills, and he edited most of the film at home, too sick to leave. However, he was passionate about his art to the end, constantly battling producers and authorities to make films as he chose to make them. He died in 1934, the same year L'Atalante was released. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Romane Bohringer, James Frain, (more)
In this high-tech thriller, Dade Murphy (Jonny Lee Miller) has been fascinated with computers all his life; at the age of 11, he was able to break into the computer network of several top Wall Street investment and banking firms, and he nearly caused a major stock market crash in the process. As punishment, Dade was forbidden to use a computer until his 18th birthday, but now that he's of age, he's diving back into his PC head first. Dade meets up with a group of fellow hackers: tough-talking cyber gamer Kate, aka Acid Burn (Angelina Jolie), junior hacker Jesse Bradford, born prankster Cereal Killer (Matthew Lillard), Nikon (Lawrence Mason), named for his photographic memory, and telephone expert Phantom Phreak (Renoly Santiago). Dade and his pals aren't out to destroy systems or do cybercrime for profit; they simply want to know more about the systems they encounter, and they like raising some good-natured havoc. But in their travels through cyberspace, they discover The Plague (Fisher Stevens), a former hacker turned computer security expert with a huge multinational corporation. The Plague has not only done the unthinkable and gone into anti-hacker enforcement, he's secretly allied himself with a group of criminals and is using his expertise to drain funds from corporate bank accounts and transfer them to himself and his mistress, Margo (Lorraine Bracco). The Plague is also smart enough to leave clues that would lead investigators to someone else -- in this case, Dade and his friends -- and has a secret weapon at his disposal, a computer virus that could wipe out the entire world wide web in a matter of minutes. Several sequences for Hackers were shot at New York City's Stuyvesant High School, where coincidentally several months after filming, several students were arrested by F.B.I. agents for their involvement in computer hacking. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jonny Lee Miller, Angelina Jolie, (more)
