Ron Gabriel Movies

When dad decides to leave the family dairy in the hands of his two spoiled teenage daughters in order to take a much-needed vacation, the self-absorbed girls find that saving the struggling business may take even more effort than maintaining their high-ranking status among the popular set in a hilarious Disney Channel Original Movie starring singing sensations Aly and AJ. Taylor and Courtney Callum have always had it easy, thanks to the hard work of their father in getting the family dairy up and running. Lately business isn't what it used to be, though, and after years of working day and night to provide for his family, Taylor and Courtney's dad needs a little time off. When dad insists that Taylor and Courtney look after the day-to-day business of the dairy while he's out of town, the prospect of saving the family business may finally provide the incentive needed for these two girls to stop thinking about themselves for once and pitch in for the good of the whole family. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Campbell Scott stars in this zany send-up of '50s body-snatching, alien invasion flicks. Scott plays Dr. Karel Lamonte, a pipe-smoking atomic scientist fresh from the Atomic Academy, who finds himself in the small town of Exceptional Vista -- situated somewhere between Fetus and New Imbroglio -- just before a large meteor strikes the local TV tower. Does this herald the beginning of a bizarre alien invasion? The town is littered with unusual characters: Sandy (Fiona Loewi) has an unnervingly close relationship with her brother, Guy (Tom Everett Scott); the town's sole policeman (Hardee T. Lineham) seems more interested in spanking Sandy than in solving crimes; and the mayor (Bernard Behrens) is a religious fanatic who claims that the aliens were sent from God to punish us for watching TV. When freshly gnawed-upon corpses start appearing at the edge of town, Dr. Lamonte responds like any other red-blooded atomic scientist: he bathes with a naked, inflatable likeness of himself. Top of the Food Chain was screened at the 1999 Vancouver Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Chase Phillips, a chronically depressed, emotionally exhausted mother finally hires a helper while she attempts to recover in a tiny cottage upon Martha's Vineyard where she stays with her sons. The helper is the much younger Elizabeth. At first, Chase despises her and treats her terribly. Elizabeth refuses to be broken by the barrage of verbal battering as she is intimate with the problems of the mentally ill. Elizabeth's sister is in an asylum and treats her worse than Chase does. Elizabeth takes it for as long as she can, but one night breaks and blows up at Chase, forcing the ailing mother's depression to abate. Eventually Chase gets better and things are fine until she drops a bomb on the family and formally declares her love for Elizabeth. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

A mother and daughter flee to a strange abandoned town to seek out answers to the daughter's nightly psychological turmoil in Brotherhood of the Wolf director Christophe Gans' adaptation of the popular survival horror video game. Sharon (Jodelle Ferland) is a very sick child, yet rather than seeing her child suffer the cruel indignities of the medical profession, Rose (Radha Mitchell) ignores her husband's (Sean Bean) pleas and absconds with her ailing daughter to the fog-enshrouded town of Silent Hill. A town drenched in darkness and inhabited by a strange collection of menacing specters, Silent Hill seemingly swallows young Sharon whole upon arrival. Determined to get her daughter back at any cost, Rose sets out to explore the mysterious Silent Hill, only to discover an evil so powerful that it possesses the ability to transform anything it wishes. With the deeply disturbing history of the town slowly coming into focus through the dense fog, Rose soon realizes that both she and her daughter may be little more than simple pawns in a much larger, and seemingly supernatural, game. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Caroline and Lloyd (Judy Davis and Kevin Spacey) are a married couple constantly at each other's throats, masters at crafting acid-tongued barbs at the other's expense. Indeed, they are so obsessed with belittling each other that they never stop -- not even at gunpoint. Such is the premise of the acerbic comedy The Ref, which shows what happens when this quarrelsome duo is taken hostage. The gunman is Gus (Denis Leary), a thief on the run from the police, who kidnaps the couple as an insurance policy, planning to use their home as a hideout. But their incessant bickering proves more than Gus bargained for, forcing him -- for the sake of his own sanity -- into the unenviable role of peacemaker. To make things even worse for Gus, he discovers that he has taken the couple hostage the night of their big Christmas party, and the guests are already on the way. Not wanting to leave Lloyd and Caroline unattended, Gus opts to attend the party, pretending to be the couple's marriage counselor. This naturally leads to a series of comic confusions, as the hostage crisis and marital tensions head towards their inevitable conclusion. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

The price of fame is murder -- or at least it is in the mind of one woman in New Hampshire. Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) has spent most of her life wanting to be famous; she's attractive, speaks well, and imagines herself to be intelligent ("imagines" is the key word here), so she has set her sights on becoming a TV anchorwoman. However, opportunities for female broadcasters are hard to come by in Little Hope, New Hampshire, and she's convinced that her husband, the once handsome but now flabby restaurant manager Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), is just getting in her way. Suzanne gets herself a spot hosting a weather report on a local public access station, and is preparing a documentary called "Teens Speak Out," which puts her in touch with a trio of high school students -- Jimmy (Joaquin Phoenix), Russell (Casey Affleck), and Lydia (Alison Folland) -- who are even more desperate for attention than she is. When Suzanne hatches a plot to get Larry out of her life once and for all, she uses Jimmy, who has developed a serious crush on her, to do her dirty work, but Larry's sister Janice (Illeana Douglas), who has long believed there was something fishy about Suzanne, eventually begins to realize what happened to her brother. Nicole Kidman won a Golden Globe award for her work in this film, which represented something of a comeback for director Gus Van Sant after the commercial and critical disaster of Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. Screenwriter Buck Henry plays a small role as a high school teacher. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide