George Ratliff Movies
- 2009
Don DeLillo's farcical novel gets the big-screen treatment with this story of a college football player (Josh Hartnett) whose fascination with nuclear war leads him to look at the game in a whole new way in this ATO Pictures production. George Ratliff directs from a script adapted by David Gilbert, with Sam Rockwell and Kat Dennings set to co-star. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Josh Hartnett, Sam Rockwell, (more)
Sam Rockwell and Vera Farmiga star in director George Ratliff's uncomfortable psychological thriller Joshua, as Brad and Abby Cairn, an affluent young stockbroker and his wife, raising children in New York City. Their firstborn, the nine-year-old Joshua (Jacob Kogan) is a frighteningly intelligent child - to such a degree that he thinks and acts decades ahead of his age. Nearly always clad in formal wear and demonstrating limitless brilliance as a pianist - with a marked predilection for "dissonant" classical pieces - Joshua gravitates toward his gay aesthete uncle (Dallas Roberts) as a close friend, but distances himself from his immediate kith - particularly when Abby brings a newborn baby sister home from the hospital and unwisely alienates the young tyke. As the days pass, one at a time, the mood at the house regresses from healthy and happy to strange, unsettled and disorienting; meanwhile, bizarre events transpire. As the baby's whines drive an already strained Abby to the point of a nervous breakdown, Joshua devolves from eccentric to downright sociopathic behavior, discarding all of his toys, disemboweling a stuffed animal, and killing off pets. One at a time, family members also begin to suffer tragic fates - but are they Joshua's fevered and psychotic doings or merely the result of happenstance? ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Rockwell, Vera Farmiga, (more)
There's hardly a community in America does doesn't offer some sort of a spook show or haunted house for kids during the Hallowe'en season, but the Hell House, sponsored by the Trinity Assembly of God Church in Dallas, TX, is something a bit different -- rather than scaring kids with folks dressed up as ghosts of vampires, the Hell House offers bizarre performance pieces in which youngsters are offered a glimpse of the fates church elders believe will await them if they stray from the path of a strict Christian life. The skits include tales of a gay man dying of AIDS-related illnesses, a woman bleeding to death after an abortion, a teenage girl who is date raped after being fed drugs at a rave party, and Satanists performing a human sacrifice. Hell House is a documentary that examines the "Hell House" phenomenon (which has inspired a large number of imitators around the country, and has been parodied on television shows such as King of the Hill and The Simpsons), offering a look at the preparations that go into the annual presentation and a glimpse into the lives of the people who stage and perform the cautionary fables. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 1997
This low-budget independent film is a satirical melodrama containing references to director Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960). In a small Texas town, an emotionally unstable native son, Perkins (Terrance Rogan) returns after a long absence to find that his brother Duane (Trent Turner) has been elected sheriff. Much to Perkins' shock, he also discovers that the ambitious and greedy Duane is having an affair with Perkins' wife Liz (Sallie Guy). Perkins also learns that the family ranch has been turned into a failing emu farm, and that his abusive, chain-smoking mother (Patt Vee) has passed away and left him only the family gun collection. Purgatory County (1997) was featured at the South by Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, where writer and director George Ratliff was awarded honorable mention in the narrative feature competition. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
