Sullivan Stapleton Movies

A youngster is given an inside look at a criminal empire that also happens to be his family in this independent drama. Teenage Joshua Cody (James Frecheville) is suddenly on his own after his mother's drug habit catches up with her, and he's taken in by his grandmother Smurf (Jacki Weaver), usually regarded as the black sheep of the family. Joshua quickly learns Smurf's reputation is well deserved; she and her four sons are members of a mid-level crime syndicate that operates out of her home in Melbourne. Baz (Joel Edgerton) looks after the money and is urging Smurf to move into something legit, Pope (Ben Mendelsohn) is a criminal jack-of-all-trades who never lets go of a grudge, Darren (Luke Ford) is an enforcer with an unfortunate weak streak, and Craig (Sullivan Stapleton) is a drug dealer who has become addicted to his own product. When Baz is murdered, the family's voice of reason is gone, and the unstable Pope takes the lead in the family's hierarchy; as suspicions fall on Joshua, the quiet newcomer is moved out of the house to keep him safe. Nathan Leckie (Guy Pearce) is a police detective who has found out who Joshua is and what he knows, and he tries to convince the teenager to help him put the Cody family behind bars, though Joshua isn't certain about his loyalties to these outlaws who are also his blood. The first feature film from director David Michod, Animal Kingdom was an official selection at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, where it received the World Cinema Jury Prize for Best Dramatic Feature. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Children have a very good reason to be afraid of the dark in this flashy horror story. Matilda Dixon was a genially eccentric woman who, in the 1850s, lived in a New England town known as Darkness Falls. Matilda was well known to the local children for her habit of paying them for teeth they'd lost, but when two youngsters mysteriously disappeared, Matilda was lynched by an angry mob wrongly convinced that she had murdered the kids. In the year 2002, former Darkness Falls resident Kyle Walsh (Chaney Kley) lives in Las Vegas and is still desperately afraid of the dark since a childhood run-in with the ghost of Matilda Dixon left him severely traumatized. While police and psychiatrists scoffed at Kyle's stories about Matilda's spirit, his childhood friend Caitlin (Emma Caulfield) is alarmed when her nine-year-old brother Michael (Lee Cormie) begins having nightmares very much like those which disturbed Kyle's rest for years. Like Kyle, Michael has little luck convincing most grown-ups that the white-robed specters he sees in the dark are real, so Caitlin asks Kyle to return to Darkness Falls to help get to the bottom of his story. Darkness Falls marked the directorial debut of filmmaker Jonathan Liebesman. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Set in Victoria, Australia, the made-for-TV Witch Hunt concerns an infant girl named Hannah, who is abducted by her grandmother Barbara Thomas (Jacqueline Bisset). Hannah's father David Overton (Cameron Daddo), convinced that Barbara is the head of a coven of witches, inaugurates a desperate nationwide search for his missing daughter. However, David may have a sinister agenda of his own, as indicated by the fact that his wife recently died under mysterious circumstances. Originally telecast by Australia's Network Ten on May 2, 1999, Witch Hunt later aired in the U.S. courtesy of cable's Lifetime network. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Sleazy real estate wheeler-dealer Ben Egan (Aden Young) is brought up short when a deal catastrophically falls through. After he hits a policeman, Egan winds up doing several months of community service at a youth drop-in center. Before that, he had been all set up to marry the boss's daughter (Tammy MacIntosh) and rise swiftly in the old man's firm. The woman who runs the center (Essie Davis), and one of the children get his attention and he begins to have charitable thoughts occasionally. However, old habits die hard. When he learns that the youth center is situated in a prime development area, he tries very hard to get hold of the property. Will his growing conscience break through the shell he has built around it in time to prevent him from closing this deal? ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi