Robert Jones Movies

Five brothers and sisters find their uncle has a big surprise hidden in his estate in this comic fantasy for the whole family. Not long after World War I breaks out, five children -- Cyril (Jonathan Bailey), Robert (Freddie Highmore), Anthea (Jessica Claridge), Jane (Poppy Rogers), and Lamb -- find themselves in dangerous circumstances when their father is sent off to fight, and their mother volunteers to be a field nurse. Unable to care for themselves, the children are sent to the country, where they stay with their eccentric uncle Albert (Kenneth Branagh) and his ill-tempered son, Horace (Alexander Pownall), in Albert's ramshackle home. Uncle Albert has more than a few rules about what the children can and cannot do, but his strictest edict is that the children must never go into his greenhouse. Of course, the children's curiosity gets the better of them, and they sneak in to discover their uncle's big secret -- the building is home to Psammead (voice of Eddie Izzard), an ugly and often bad-mannered "sand fairy" who has the ability to grant wishes. However, the kids discover that Psammead's wishes only last for 24 hours, and that they have a strange habit of backfiring on their beneficiaries. 5 Children & It was based on the classic book for children by E. Nesbit; Psammead was realized onscreen with a puppet created by Jim Henson's celebrated Creature Shop. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When a London modeling agency booker dozes off while waiting for the midnight subway train, the subterranean terror that awaits her in the underground tunnels will send her screaming for her life through a dark labyrinth in this horror entry directed by Christopher Smith and starring Run Lola Run's Franka Potente. Awakening to discover that the midnight train has passed and she is locked in the station, Kate (Potente) reluctantly steps onto a mysterious empty train for a ride she will not soon forget. As the train grinds to a stop in the pitch black tunnels of the London Underground, Kate realizes that she is not alone in the darkness and if she has any hope of surviving until dawn she'll have to fight for her life against an unimaginable horror too terrifying for the light of day. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Director Stephen Frears returns to the grittier themes of his earlier films for the urban thriller Dirty Pretty Things. Residing in London, the medically trained Okwe (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Nigerian immigrant working as a taxi driver and a hotel concierge, but he still lives on the edge of poverty. He shares a room with Senay (Amélie's Audrey Tautou making her English-language debut), a Turkish refugee who works as a maid at the hotel. As illegal immigrants, Okwe and Senay live in fear of being deported. One night, working at the front desk, Okwe receives a call from prostitute Juliette (Sophie Okonedo) to check a broken toilet, where he makes a horrifying discovery. He reports it to the manager Sneaky (Sergi Lopez), who blackmails Okwe into staying quiet about it. Okwe soon discovers the presence of a shady business operation that sends him into the seedy London underworld. Senay becomes lured in with hopes of being able to fund her escape to America. Dirty Pretty Things marks the screenwriting debut of Steve Knight, co-creator of the game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Take a trip backstage at the renowned Edinburgh Festival to explore the curious egos of three emerging talents in the feature debut from director Annie Griffin. A stage-trained theater purist eager to share her talent and enthusiasm with the outside world, Faith (Lyndsey Marshall) has been honing her one-woman show about Dorothy Wordsworth to perfection. Laid-back Irish comic Tommy O'Dwyer (Chris O'Dowd) is not so purely driven. A veteran of the club circuit desperate to break big, Tommy takes to seduction as a means of securing a vote. Though the presence of established television comic Sean Sullivan (Stephen Mangan) at the festival indeed shakes the confidence of his less famous competitors, the resentment he shows to those who haven't yet become a household name leads to a bitter cycle of resentment that could quickly sink his reputation among his peers. It's not all about the laughs at Edinburgh though, and as Faith, Tommy, and Sean play cut-throat on the comedy scene an experimental Canadian theater troupe prepares an elaborate act that's sure to stun the crowd. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Before his commercial breakthrough with Boogie Nights (1997), writer/director Paul Thomas Anderson made this low-key drama. John (John C. Reilly), a half-bright loser stranded in Reno, is down to his last few bucks when Sydney (Phillip Baker Hall), taking pity on him, buys him breakfast and offers him a few tips on making money in the casinos. Two years later, John has become Sydney's partner, but his lack of common sense goes from problematic to dangerous when he falls in love with Clementine (Gwyneth Paltrow), a cocktail waitress who isn't above turning a few tricks when she needs to make money -- and isn't any brighter than John. Hall and Reilly, both first-rate character actors, are cast in rare leading roles, and Paltrow is cast strongly against type as a part-time prostitute with a serious lack of street smarts. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

First-time feature director Marc Munden's Miranda is a story about a man obsessed with an elusive woman. Frank (John Simm) is a librarian who falls hard for Miranda (Christina Ricci) the second he sees her in the library. She is secretly helping the nefarious Christian (John Hurt) in a real estate scam involving the library. Miranda, a master of disguise, soon travels to London where she goes to work on Nailor (Kyle McLachlan). She does not know that Frank is following her. Miranda was screened at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

An overweight man leaves his fiancée on their wedding day, only to realize years later that she's the one and only woman of his dreams in a romantic comedy that reunites Big Nothing co-stars Simon Pegg and David Schwimmer, this time with Schimmer in the director's chair. It's not easy to win back a woman after leaving her at the altar, but when an out-of-shape man finally realizes just what a mistake he's made, he vows to run a high-profile marathon in order to convince his ex-fiancée that the rich and handsome man she's about to marry isn't the guy for her. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Director of award-winning short films Ben Hopkins embarked on this ambitious feature project with Robert Jones, the producer of The Usual Suspects. The screenplay is inspired by Central European folklore, spaghetti Westerns and industrial history. But the film, which runs like a fable, has its roots in folktales rather than history. It is the end of the 19th century and progress has arrived in Silesia. Travelers do not stop at the town anymore because the railway track is laid past the small settlement. Incomes have dropped, and so has the number of inhabitants. Noah Taylor plays Simon, a 'holy fool' of sorts, persecuted by fellow villagers who hold him responsible for everything from the failure of the crops to the milk going sour. Simon, who resembles a scarecrow, lives in a hut outside the village. He earns his living emptying the sewers, existing on dry bread and the occasional herring or pickle given by the wife of a rabbi. He knows how to entertain the village children with his magic tricks and devilish masks. At the same time, he feels he actually is pursued by the devil, which makes him do all kinds of evil things, only increasing his isolation. There is also the poor but good-looking Jew, Dovid, who keeps proposing to the beautiful widow Leah, who rejects him. Dovid devises a plan to build the village economy, and in the process gain her affection. He pays a visit to the eccentric poet esquire and agrees to a business deal which entails the esquire allowing a new railway station to be built on his property in return for Dovid reading his newly published anthology. Unfortunately, Hase Sean McGinley, a wealthy Christian merchant with more money and little respect for the Jewish villagers, is also interested in the railway project. Simon Magus is the story of a village caught between two worlds -- the new industrial order and the old, rural world of tradition and superstition. The camera work of Nic Knowland is outstanding, as is the confident performance by Noah Taylor, the teenage David Helfgott of Shine. The rest of the cast is quite international as well -- Irishman Stuart Townsend as Dovid, the merchant; South African-born Embeth Davidtz as Leah, the widow and Dutch star Rutger Hauer cast against type as the gentle poet squire. Various subplots, however, often carry the story in directions which distracts audience attention. Simon Magus competed at the 49th International Berlin Film Festival in 1999. ~ Gönül Dönmez-Colin, All Movie Guide

An ex-convict is mysteriously drawn to two intriguing women after becoming involved in a car accident while passing through a sleepy Ontario town in director Marc Evans' enigmatic drama. Invited into the home of high-functioning autistic Linda (Sigourney Weaver) after getting into a car accident that involved Linda's daughter, ex-con Alex Hughes (Alan Rickman) does his best to gracefully accept Linda's selfless generosity. His situation grows increasingly complicated, however, when Alex finds the seductive allure of town sexpot Maggie (Carrie-Anne Moss) too powerful to resist. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The life of poet and novelist Sylvia Plath -- one of the most celebrated literary figures of her generation -- is brought to the screen in this controversial screen adaptation. Born in Boston, MA, in 1932, Plath (played by Gwyneth Paltrow) developed a precocious talent as a writer and published her first poem when she was only eight years old. That same year, tragedy introduced itself into her life as Plath was forced to confront the unexpected death of her father. In 1950, she began studying at Smith College on a literary scholarship, and while she was an outstanding student, she also began suffering from bouts of extreme depression; following her junior year, she attempted suicide for the first time. Plath survived, and, in 1955, she was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to study in England at Cambridge. While in Great Britain, Plath met Ted Hughes (Daniel Craig), a respected author who would later become the British Poet Laureate; the two fell in love, and married in 1958. However, marriage, family, and a growing reputation as an important poet failed to bring Plath happiness, and as she became increasingly fascinated with death in her later poetry and her sole novel, The Bell Jar, and after Hughes left her for another woman, her depression went into a tailspin from which she would never fully recover. Sylvia was adapted in part from Birthday Letters, a collection of poems Ted Hughes published in 1998, in which he dealt with his marriage to Plath in print for the first time. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A proud Welsh community finds their civic pride and sense of community threatened by a team of surveyors in this charmingly eccentric comedy. Reginald Anson (Hugh Grant) and George Garrard (Ian McNeice) are a pair of British cartographers with Her Majesty's Ordnance Survey Office, who arrive in the small Welsh town of Ffynnon Garw, where, thanks to a linguistic quirk stemming from the British domination of Wales, many of the citizens in this town lack proper surnames and instead are identified by occupations or personal characteristics, such as Ivor the Grocer (Robert Blythe) or Johnny Shellshocked (Ian Hart). The town's greatest pride and most prominent landmark is a mountain (named, like the town, Ffynnon Garw), which they claim is the first mountain in Wales, and which helped protect the village from any number of Romans, Saxons, Norsemen, and other foreign invaders over the centuries. However, Reginald and George have some bad news for the townsfolk: under British law, a land mass must be at least 1,000 feet tall to qualify as a mountain, and according to their measurements, Ffynnon Garw comes in at only 930 feet, making it just a big hill. The citizens are shocked, insulted, and angry, and after much debate and careful measuring, Anson and Garrard conclude that they did shortchange Ffynnon Garw, but the most generous estimate still puts it at only 984 feet. Convinced that the town's honor and reputation is at stake thanks to these meddling Englishmen, the good people of Ffynnon Garw hatch a plan by which they will add fifteen feet to their "hill;" meanwhile, the easily befuddled Anson finds himself falling under the romantic spell of a beautiful but firm-willed local woman, Betty of Cardiff (Tara Fitzgerald). Believe it or not, this seemingly fanciful comedy was actually based on a true story. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An outlaw is goaded into taking on justice at its most brutal in this hard-edged Western set in rural Australia in the 1880s. Charlie Burns (Guy Pearce) is a criminal living in the outback. He and his two brothers, Arthur (Danny Huston) and Mikey (Richard Wilson), are on the run from the law for rape and murder. Arthur is a violent and dangerous sociopath with a much longer rap sheet than his siblings and a reputation for hiding out in villages so lawless the police are afraid to visit them, while Mikey is a much younger and more impressionable chap.

The authorities capture Charlie and Mikey after a bloody shootout, and the brothers are handed over to Capt. Stanley (Ray Winstone), a British lawman sent to Australia to help bring order to the colonies. Stanley proposes a deal to Charlie, explaining that it's Arthur he really wants, and that he's willing to spare the childlike and terrified Mikey if Charlie can find Arthur and murder him. Charlie, realizing that this is his only hope to save his simpleton younger brother (who is scheduled to be hanged on Christmas Day), agrees and sets out to find and execute his other brother, who he believes has gone too far into the world of crime. As Charlie scours the backwaters of Australia, he encounters Jellon Lamb (John Hurt), an educated yet thoroughly menacing bounty hunter. In time, Charlie finds his brother, but isn't certain if he can carry out his mission. Meanwhile, Stanley struggles to bring a European sense of civility to the rough and tumble land he now calls home, while his wife Martha (Emily Watson) becomes the focus of the lustful appetites of the men in town. The Proposition was written by rock star and novelist Nick Cave; he previously collaborated with director John Hillcoat on the film Ghosts... of the Civil Dead. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Near the end of The Usual Suspects, Kevin Spacey, in his Oscar-winning performance as crippled con man Roger "Verbal" Kint, says, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist." This may be the key line in this story; the farther along the movie goes, the more one realizes that not everything is quite what it seems, and what began as a conventional whodunit turns into something quite different. A massive explosion rips through a ship in a San Pedro, CA, harbor, leaving 27 men dead, the lone survivor horribly burned, and 91 million dollars' worth of cocaine, believed to be on board, mysteriously missing. Police detective Dave Kujan (Chazz Palminteri) soon brings in the only witness and key suspect, "Verbal" Kint. Kint's nickname stems from his inability to keep his mouth shut, and he recounts the events that led to the disaster. Five days earlier, a truckload of gun parts was hijacked in Queens, NY, and five men were brought in as suspects: Kint, hot-headed hipster thief McManus (Stephen Baldwin), ill-tempered thug Hockney (Kevin Pollak), flashy wise guy Fenster (Benicio Del Toro), and Keaton (Gabriel Byrne), a cop gone bad now trying to go straight in the restaurant business. While in stir, someone suggests that they should pull a job together, and Kint hatches a plan for a simple and lucrative jewel heist. Despite Keaton's misgivings, the five men pull off the robbery without a hitch and fly to Los Angeles to fence the loot. Their customer asks if they'd be interested in pulling a quick job while out West; the men agree, but the robbery goes horribly wrong and they soon find themselves visited by Kobayashi (Pete Postlethwaite), who represents a criminal mastermind named Keyser Soze. Soze's violent reputation is so infamous that he's said to have responded to a threat to murder his family by killing them himself, just to prove that he feared no one. When Kobayashi passes along a heist proposed by Soze that sounds like suicide, the men feel that they have little choice but to agree. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide