Anne Meredith Movies

Cavedweller is an adaptation of Dorothy Allison's novel of the same name. Anne Meredith, who also adapted Allison's Bastard Out of Carolina, wrote the script, and the film was directed by Lisa Cholodenko (Laurel Canyon). Kyra Sedgwick stars as Delia Byrd. As the film opens, Delia loses her wayward rock-star husband, Randall (Kevin Bacon in a bit part), to a car accident, and decides to take her angry, heartbroken young daughter, Cissy (Regan Arnold, who played the tormented little sister in Blue Car), from Los Angeles back to her hometown in rural Georgia, where Delia left her two daughters and her abusive husband, Clint (Aidan Quinn), many years ago, to join Randall on the road. "Those people are not gonna be happy to see you," warns Delia's friend, Rosemary (singer Jill Scott in her film debut), but Delia is determined to reclaim her daughters. Cissy irrationally blames Delia for Randall's death, making the drive to Georgia an unpleasant one. Upon arriving there, Delia finds that she is not remembered fondly. Her taciturn grandfather (Myron Natwick) reluctantly takes her and Cissy in, but Delia soon learns that Clint is dying, and that her daughters, Amanda (Vanessa Zima) and Dede (April Mullen), are living with Clint's fire-and-brimstone mother (Jackie Burroughs), who has no intention of letting the girls see her. Realizing he has wronged her, Clint agrees to help Delia get custody of the girls, in exchange for her caring for him until he dies. Cavedweller was shown at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival before premiering on Showtime. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

Having created an empire on girly shows and skin flicks, Jim Mitchell and Artie Mitchell achieved mainstream success with Behind the Green Door (1972), one of only a handful of hardcore porn movies to do so. Brothers Emilio Estevez and Charlie Sheen star in the film about the life and troubled times of porn's dynamic duo. Opening with the 1991 fratricidal murder of Artie (Sheen) at the hands of Jim (Estevez, who also directs), the film flashes back to their father lecturing them on the importance of family. In 1967, while studying film at San Francisco State, Jim's professor (Peter Bogdanovich) upbraids him for including numerous leering shots of half-naked women in his student works. Soon Jim along with his brother, fresh out of the Army, starts a smut studio in an old warehouse. Their business takes off, and in no time they are being harassed by the police for obscenity. Along the way, the two hire former Ivory Snow model Marilyn Chambers, get married, and snort half of the cocaine in Bolivia. After the fleeting success of Green Door, their lives spiral into a drug-addled hell. Jim eventually bottoms out, but Artie, wracked by a profound inferiority complex, slides into cocaine dementia and begins to threaten Jim's family. Things eventually boil over, culminating in that bloody night in 1991. This film was screened at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Accomplished actress Anjelica Huston, daughter of John Huston, made her directorial debut with this absorbing, often wrenching story of child abuse in the 1950s American South. Based on a novel by Dorothy Allison, the film (narrated by Laura Dern) tells the tale of Bone (Jena Malone), a poor white girl so named because she was born right after her mother survived a terrifying car crash. While Bone is still a small child, her single mother, Anney (Jennifer Jason Leigh), meets and marries the sweet Lyle (Dermot Mulroney), and the two add another daughter to the family before Lyle dies in an auto accident. Anney is next courted by the less good-natured Glen (Ron Eldard), who takes out his rage on Bone both physically and sexually, as Bone becomes even more disillusioned at her mother's inability to get away from her monstrous husband. Set in South Carolina in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Bastard Out Of Carolina touches on many aspects of life, family, and hardship amidst the poor white of the South. TNT owner Ted Turner refused to air the film, ostensibly because of its difficult subject matter, but the film goes out of its way to handle its material with as little exploitation as possible. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi