Joanna Adler Movies

Shot over the course of four years, director Rachel Fleisher's documentary introduces viewers to six homeless Los Angleans including a heroin-addicted Skid Row dweller, and families that have fallen back on temporary housing. Along the way Fleisher becomes a character in her own story by reaching out to her subjects while telling their stories. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Writer/director Alan Brown makes his feature-length debut with the comedy drama Book of Love, following his award-winning short film O Beautiful (released as part of Boys Life 4: Four Play). High school history teacher David (Simon Baker) is newly married to the lovely Elaine (Frances O'Connor). When they welcome the fresh-faced, teenaged student Chet (Gregory Smith) into their lives, both begin to feel a strain on their marriage after awhile. Book of Love premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 as part of the dramatic competition. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

This Big Apple-based romantic comedy charts the tumultuous relationship between liberal arts student and budding chef Al (Freddie Prinze Jr.) and his first girlfriend, Imogen (Julia Stiles), a self-possessed freshman who wants to become an artist. After meeting in a bar, the pair jump into a giddy, passionate affair that's grown-up enough to include face time between the young lovers and Al's DJ mom and TV-chef dad (Henry Winkler). After a summer abroad, however, Imogen feels like the relationship is robbing her of her youth, and the couple must struggle with romantic and domestic growing pains. Meanwhile, their wacky friends -- who include porn stars (Selma Blair and Zak Orth), stoners (Rosario Dawson), a mullet-haired lunkhead (Shawn Hatosy), and a Jim Morrison look-alike named Jim Morrison (Ashton Kutcher) -- provide laughs, advice, and sexual temptation. The debut film from writer/director Kris Isacsson, the teen-themed Down to You marked a change of pace for normally grown-up Miramax Films. In addition to a slew of recent rock and pop, the film prominently features music from such downtown New York fixtures of the past decade as Deee-Lite ("Groove is in the Heart") and Cibo Matto ("Moonchild"). ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

By 1965, Jack Smith was exhibiting versions of Normal Love, mixing his soundtracks live and often re-editing the film as it was being shown. After Smith's death, Jerry Tartaglia prepared this restored 105-minute version, which premiered in 1997. Although shot on backdated color-film stock and paced more languidly than Flaming Creatures, Normal Love again features women and cross-dressed men in an idyll of sexual anarchy. Smith filmed almost entirely outdoors, emphasizing pinks and greens in the scenery, costumes, and props, and combining textural passages with allusions to film icons such as the Mummy and the Werewolf, Maria Montez, and Busby Berkeley. The inspired finale is set atop a massive pink cake (where the dancing Cake Cuties include Andy Warhol). The Yellow Sequence, an additional 20 minutes of footage -- in which gold tones predominate and the players include Tiny Tim -- was also restored by Tartaglia as an addendum to Normal Love, and the two films are inevitably shown together under the single title. ~ Nicole Gagne, Rovi