Gretchen Mol

A 21st Century New York City detective finds himself experiencing a surreal blast from the past when he's struck by a speeding car and transported back to 1973 in this ABC series inspired by the popular British television series of the same name. 2008: Detective Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) is in hot pursuit of a dangerous criminal when he's suddenly run down right in the middle of the street. Subsequently awakening in the same city circa 1973, Detective Tyler is forced to police the streets of a city locked in the cold grip of chaos. The Vietnam War is raging halfway around the world, the Watergate scandal is making headlines across the country, criminals are running the streets, and more than half of the police force is on the take. To make matters even worse, cell phones haven't been invented yet, desktop typewriters have yet to be replaced by the personal computer, and no one has ever heard of such a thing as an MP3 player. Devoid of his high-tech crime fighting equipment and forced to operate under a shady new moral code, Detective Tyler constantly clashes with his new boss at the 125th Precinct. Lieutenant Gene Hunt (Harvey Keitel) is the kind of cop that values brawn over brains, and the other members of the 1-2-5 are just as tough. Detective Ray Carling (Michael Imperioli) may ask few questions, but he's definitely the right guy to have in your corner when the going gets tough. And despite the fact that the women of the police force are still woefully underused, Police Women's Bureau member Annie Norris (Gretchen Mol) is often the smartest person in the room. Annie dreams of the day she'll become a real cop, but the prevailing sexism of the era is preventing that from happening for the time being. Even so, she's the only person that Detective Tyler can turn to as he attempts to regain his bearings and find a way back home. Meanwhile, fresh-faced rookie Detective Chris Skelton (Jonathan Murphy) may clash constantly with Lieutenant Hunt and Detective Carling, yet he proves a valuable ally for Detective Tyler. If Detective Tyler could only find a way back to 2008, he could tell his true love Maya Daniels (Lisa Bonet) about how Annie's workplace battles back in 1973 opened the doors that would allow Maya to become an official member of the force nearly four decades later. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A man attempts to deal with a truly remarkable variety of personal and emotional problems in this comedy drama based on the real-life experiences of comedian and author Jeff Nichols. Jeff (Seann William Scott) is a man edging into his thirties who has a serious drinking problem along with Attention Deficit Disorder, Dyslexia and Tourette's Syndrome; to say Jeff has a hard time dealing with others stretches the boundaries of understatement, and he devotes a fair share of his day to support meetings, even ones dealing with conditions which don't involve his problems. Jeff prefers to blame his wealthy parents (Dierdre O'Connell) and (Denis O'Hare) for his problems, even though they haven't done much besides stand aside as he's burned down their home. Unable to hold down a job, Jeff has been evicted from the garage he was renting from Bert (Kevin Conway), who can no longer handle his many eccentricities, but with nowhere else to go, he somehow charms his way into the heart and home of Lynn (Gretchen Mol), a woman he met at a support group for people with relationship problems. While Lynn is a walking mass of phobias regarding men and romance, she discovers something in the damaged Jeff that encourages her to take a chance on him. Adapted from Nichols's autobiography The Little Yellow Bus, Trainwreck: My Life As An Idiot was the first theatrical feature from director Tod Harrison Williams. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Much of the group responsible for MTV's The State -- including director/actor David Wain and performers Ken Marino, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Joe Lo Truglio -- reunite for this outrageous, irreverent, and raunchy sketch comedy, which skewers the Ten Commandments. In the framing sequences, comedian Paul Rudd (who collaborated with much of the cast on Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter) stands on a black stage with giant Biblical tablets projected behind him and promises to deliver ten mini-stories, each loosely based on one of the commandments, from "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me" through "Thou Shalt Not Covet." For all of the storyteller's efforts, however, he is constantly, comically distracted by interferences, particularly those emanating from intrusions by his multiple girlfriends. The stories are nonetheless told one by one in short-film form, beginning with a sketch in which Stephen (Adam Brody) goes skydiving with his intended, Kelly (Winona Ryder), but forgets to wear his parachute and gets stuck in the mud, waist-deep, which draws gawkers, media, and in time, worshipers. Several of the subsequent stories consist of raunchy, jet-black riffs on sexual perversion, including one about a virginal librarian (Gretchen Mol) entangled in a sultry and messy affair with a Mexican, and another memorable bit about a nutty surgeon who plays a prank by burying a pair of scissors in a patient's stomach and is then sent to prison -- where he experiences brutal sexual abuse at the hands of other men. As an added bonus, the picture packs in a fully animated sequence, narrated by several crack-smokers, entitled "The Lying Rhino." ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Celebrated and vilified in equal measure, the pinup goddess Bettie Page inspired a legion of followers -- and an indecency scandal -- by appearing in a series of nude, sado-masochistic, and/or revealing magazine spreads in the 1950s. An era later, writer/director Mary Harron casts a knowing eye upon the woman who indirectly gave birth to modern pornography in the biopic The Notorious Bettie Page. As a teen, Page (Gretchen Mol) is a smart, plucky girl with ambitions beyond her Tennessee roots. Suffering varying degrees of abuse from her father, her first husband, and suitors of dubious virtue, Page makes her way to New York City, where an amateur photographer discovers her lounging on the beach. It isn't long before images of the shapely brunette reach Irving and Paula Klaw (Chris Bauer and Lili Taylor), brother-and-sister entrepreneurs who publish illicit magazines dedicated primarily to men's fetishes. The casual nudist Page eventually finds herself acquiescing to their requests to don thigh-high boots, whips, and chains, which raise the ire of the smut-fearing senator Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn). The Notorious Bettie Page had its North American premiere at the 2005 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

After a detour into lighter and more compassionate fare with Nurse Betty and Possession, Neil LaBute returns to the themes of his earlier films with this dark and corrosive look at male-female relationships. Adam (Paul Rudd) is a chubby, bespectacled nebbish of a college student who makes money in his spare time as a security guard at the university's art museum. One evening at work, Adam spies another student preparing to deface a statue -- Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), a beautiful art major who is offended by a fig leaf that's been used to "censor" a statue of a nude male, and is prepared to replace the disguised member with spray paint. Adam can't quite bring himself to kick Evelyn out of the museum, and she responds by giving him her phone number. Adam and Evelyn begin dating, and as she challenges his ideas about art and morality, she begins remaking Adam into the sort of boyfriend she'd prefer. Under her influence, Adam loses weight, gets contact lenses, changes his hairstyle, starts dressing better, and assumes a cooler and more confident personality. Adam's pal Philip (Frederick Weller) notices the changes in his friend and isn't happy with the way Evelyn has been molding Adam to her specifications. Adam and Evelyn have dinner one night with Philip and his fiancée, Jenny (Gretchen Mol), and before long Philip and Evelyn are at each other's throats as Adam and Jenny cower along the sidelines. The tensions between Philip and Evelyn exacerbate uneasiness between Jenny and her husband to be, while at the same time, Jenny and Adam begin to recognize a mutual attraction that's long lurked beneath the surface. The Shape of Things was adapted by LaBute from his stage drama of the same name; a selection of songs by Elvis Costello comprise the soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Created and produced by the seemingly unstoppable David E. Kelley, the weekly 60-minute series girls club played like a cross between Kelley's Ally McBeal and Aaron Spelling's Charlie's Angels. The emphasis was on three young and attractive female lawyers who were best friends and roomies at Stanford Law School and shared a North Beach loft apartment while enduring their rookie year at the prestigious San Francisco firm of Myers, Berry, Cherry and Fitch. The dramatis personae included ambitious blonde Lynne (Gretchen Mol), sassy brunette Sarah (Chyler Leigh), reserved redhead Jeannie (Kathleen Robertson), and the girls' genially chauvinistic boss, Nicholas Hahn (Giancarlo Esposito). girls club posted poor ratings and garnered terrible reviews when it debuted over the Fox Network on October 21, 2002, leading industry wags to predict that the series' first telecast would also be its last. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A man who has made murder his business is thrown into the underbelly of an unfamiliar criminal world in this thriller. Jack Carter (Sylvester Stallone) is a ruthless hired killer whose bloody career in Los Angeles has driven a wedge between himself and his family in the Northwest. When he learns that his brother has died, he flies back to Seattle, hoping to pay his respects and reconnect with his relatives. At the funeral, his brother's wife, Gloria (Miranda Richardson), and her daughter, Doreen (Rachael Leigh Cook), are wary of Jack's attempts to reach out to them, but when he learns that his brother's death was no accident, Jack forms an uneasy alliance with Doreen to find the killers and deal out his own brand of justice. Get Carter is based on the novel Jack's Return Home by Ted Lewis, which was previously filmed in 1971 with Michael Caine as the gangster seeking revenge. Caine also appears in this remake as Cliff, the boss of Jack's late brother; Mickey Rourke, Alan Cumming, and Gretchen Mol also highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Originally staged on Broadway in 1953 and filmed two years later, William Inge's Pulitzer Prize-winning romantic drama Picnic went before the cameras a second time in 2000 as a made-for-TV movie. Josh Brolin stars as Hal Carter, a handsome and impecunious drifter who shows up in a tranquil Kansas town to pay a visit to his wealthy pal Alan Benson. Hal's arrival coincides with the town's upcoming Labor Day festivities, so naturally he is invited to stay a while. Alan soon regrets welcoming Hal into his community when the charismatic drifter falls in love with Alan's fiancée, Madge Owens (Gretchen Mol) -- and the feeling is definitely mutual. Meanwhile, Hal's presence awakens the dormant passion between two of the town's middle-agers -- spinsterish schoolteacher Rosemary Sydney (Mary Steenburgen) and her erstwhile beau Howard Bevans (Jay O. Sanders) -- and also has a disturbing effect upon Madge's mom, Flo (Bonnie Bedelia), and kid sister, Millie (Chad Morgan). Though lacking the star power embodied by William Holden and Kim Novak in the 1955 movie version of Picnic (and also bereft of that film's Oscar-winning musical score), the TV remake nonetheless possesses its own special charm, thanks to the deft directorial hand of Czech filmmaker Ivan Passer. The "new" Picnic aired over the CBS network on April 16, 2000. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The sometimes rocky relationship between art and politics in America in the 1930s -- as well as the gulf between the wealthy and the struggling -- sets the stage for Tim Robbins' ambitious comedy-drama Cradle Will Rock. Pulling together a variety of threads from actual events, Robbins examines the lives and ambitions of a variety of creative mavericks and figures of power. Orson Welles (Angus Macfadyen) and John Houseman (Cary Elwes) are working with Marc Bliztstein (Hank Azaria) to stage the latter's leftist musical "The Cradle Will Rock" for the WPA-funded Federal Theater Project. After Congress cuts funding for the embattled Federal Theater over the perceived leftist slant of their presentations, the project is canceled on the day of its premier. Welles and his cast respond by marching 21 blocks from the theater where the show was to open to another venue where, in deference to Actors Equity regulations, they perform the entire show from the audience. A member of Welles' cast, Aldo Silvano (John Turturro), is a dedicated actor from Italy who is trying to resolve his attitudes about his family, who loyally support Mussolini, to Silvano's disgust. Meanwhile, El Duce's former mistress, Margherita Sarfatti (Susan Sarandon), is consorting with industrial tycoon Gray Mathers (Philip Baker Hall) -- whose wife, Contesse LaGrange (Vanessa Redgrave) is a friend and supporter of Welles' project. Elsewhere, Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) has hired expatriot Mexican artist Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades) to create a mural for his projected Rockefeller Center, but the two are soon locking horns over their different views on art, politics and the work at hand. And a ventriloquist fallen on hard times, Tommy Crickshaw (Bill Murray), finds himself trying to teach both comedy and speaking without lip movements to a pair of would-be performers at a WPA-backed vaudeville house. William Randolph Hearst (John Carpenter), Marion Davies (Gretchen Mol), Frida Kahlo (Corina Katt), and Olive Stanton (Emily Watson) are also woven into the tapestry of this historical epic, which premiered at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A wacky screwball sex comedy for the kids and grandpa too? Seinfeld's Jason Alexander makes his directorial debut with this gentle but funny coming-of-age story set in 1955 about Lenny (Ryan Merriman), a 14-year-old from the Bronx who is dedicated to witnessing a copulating couple. His early attempts at spying on his mom and her new corpulent husband Polinsky are thwarted when he is sent to live with his aunt Norma and uncle Phil in Queens for the summer. He soon learns that Norma is pregnant. No sex. All looks lost until he meets Hedy (Gretchen Mol), a fetching though lovelorn night nurse. Lenny also befriends the equally randy John, who informs him that he has started a sex club with a couple of neighborhood gals. Though the club is all talk, they all discuss the mechanics of coital engagement with language that is equal parts gutter and sex-ed. Meanwhile, as Lenny spies on Hedy, he inadvertently befriends her. Together they muse about the complexities of love and wistfully remember their respective dead fathers. Just Looking is a sweet-minded film about the great mystery of the teenaged years. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

What do you do when you've loved someone literally all their life? As Music From Another Room opens, five-year-old Danny is with his father, a U.S. Army doctor, when Dad is faced with an emergency. It seems Grace Swan (Brenda Blethyn), an old friend of the family, is in the last stages of labor and there's no time to get her to the hospital. Danny ends up helping his father deliver the infant, and moments after birth, Danny is holding the baby in his arms, convinced this is the girl he will marry someday. 20 years later, Danny (played as an adult by Jude Law), now an artist educated in England after the death of his father, is back in the States to help restore a church, and he meets Anna Swan (Gretchen Mol), the girl he helped deliver now all grown up and very beautiful. However, she's also become cold and cynical, and has a fiance to boot, so while Danny's attraction to her hasn't dimmed in two decades, it's clear winning her heart will be an uphill battle. The increasingly eccentric Swan family isn't much help either, including sweet but dizzy Grace, eggheaded father Richard (Bruce Jarchow), angry feminist Karen (Martha Plimpton), shy and blind Nina (Jennifer Tilly) and self-centered lout of a doctor Billy (Jeremy Piven). Screenwriter Charlie Peters steps up to the directors chair for this romantic comedy with a superb supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Black-and-white Sven Nykvist cinematography highlights this Woody Allen comedy about fame and obscurity among Manhattan celebs. Journalist Lee Simon (Kenneth Branagh), makes a play for actress Nicole Oliver (Melanie Griffith), subject of his current story. Lee is separated from his wife Robin (Judy Davis), a schoolteacher who's totally lost and insecure -- until TV producer Tony Gardella (Joe Mantegna) becomes fascinated with her. Concerned about her possible sexual inadequacies, Robin recruits a prostitute (Bebe Neuwirth) to instruct her on oral sex techniques. On the town, Lee becomes transfixed by a blond supermodel (Charlize Theron), who teases him throughout the night, eventually dropping him before they get home. Lee's relationship with book editor Bonnie (Famke Janssen) is solid, and she's due to move into his place. However, he suddenly becomes romantically involved with waitress-actress Nola (Winona Ryder), complicating his agreement with Bonnie. Lee's efforts to sell his screenplay take him to the Stanhope Hotel, where he arrives just as spoiled young movie star Brandon Darrow (Leonardo DiCaprio) is fighting with his girlfriend (Gretchen Mol), trashing his hotel room, and insulting hotel staffers. When Darrow and his entourage head off to Atlantic City, Lee tags along, but as life swirls about him, a dismal dawn awaits. In addition to the Stanhope, locations included Barbetta's Restaurant, Ziegfeld Theatre, Soho's Serge Soroko Gallery, Flamingo Club, Jean-Georges Restaurant, and the Trump Marina Hotel and Casino (donated by Donald Trump, who portrays himself in a cameo at the Jean-Georges). Shown at the 1998 Venice Film Festival, this was the opening night selection of the 1998 New York Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Abel Ferrara directed this erotic thriller adapted by Ferrara and Christ Zois from a short story by science fiction author William Gibson (in his Burning Chrome collection). Global corporations rule the world, and corporate raider Fox (Christopher Walken) and his deputy X (Willem Dafoe) could pocket $100 million if they can get top scientist Hiroshi (Yoshitaka Amano) to defect from one corporation to another. Fox offers singer Sandii (Asia Argento) $1 million to seduce Hiroshi away from his wife, family, and employer. An affair develops between Sandii and X, while she studies facts about Hiroshi's life. She departs on her assignment, but betrayals ensue, with Fox and X soon becoming targets themselves. With opening credits in three languages (English, German, Japanese), the soundtrack features the score-composition debut of hip-hopper Schoolly D, music which plays over a blank screen at the wrap-up (since the film has no closing credits). This Gibson short story was a property once in development by director Kathryn Bigelow. The title story of Gibson's Burning Chrome collection was planned as the second Heavy Metal movie, intended for live-action and scripted but never filmed. Shown in competition at the 1998 Venice Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide