Gary Farmer Movies

Luke Kirby and Keith Carradine star in director Leonard Farlinger's adaptation of author Brad Smith's laid back neo-western novel. Ray Dokes (Kirby) has just been released from prison, and now as the laconic ex-con makes his way back home he is stunned to see just how much progress has transformed the countryside of his youth. Looking to lie low for a while, Ray heads to the farm of his good friend Pete Culpepper (Keith Carradine). A garrulous farmer who's drowning in debt, Pete is a true Texas cowboy whose corn seems too stubborn to grow this season. The first order of business for Ray is to visit his old flame Etta (Lisa Ray, but things have gotten complicated since Ray was put away and making his way to the woman he loves isn't going to be nearly as easy as he had hoped. Soon after hooking up with firebrand jockey Chrissis (Rachel Leigh Cook), Ray discovers that his old nemesis Sonny Staunton (Noam Jenkins) - the wealthy heir to a thoroughbred dynasty - is currently attempting to buy up as much farmland as possible in order to start breaking ground on a luxurious new golf course. It seems that Etta is the only member of the rural community bold enough to stand up against Sonny, but when a valuable thoroughbred goes missing from Staunton Stables the desperate entrepreneur forces the sale of the area's few remaining farms. Realizing the danger of contending with such a powerful and determined man (after all, it was Sonny who got Ray locked away in the first place), Ray does his best to sideline Sonny's nefarious plan and save the remaining farmlands without making the one false move that could land him back in jail. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

When gunshots ring out in a tragic roadside shooting, police officer Delbert Nez winds up dead. His close friend Officer Jim Chee (Adam Beach) is the first on the scene, and upon spotting an elderly, drunken Navajo Shaman named Ashie Pinto (Jimmy Herman) with the murder weapon tucked in his belt, he takes the man into custody as the prime suspect. Though Pinto does not confess to the crime, the case against him is strong, and Detective Joe Leaphorn (Wes Studi) begins to look into the case at the behest of his wife, Emma (Sheila Tousey) -- who remains staunchly convinced that her relative was set up. As Chee and Leaphorn investigate the case, they are troubled to discover a number of inconsistencies in the murder. How did Pinto get to the scene of the crime when he has no means of transportation? And how could the elderly Pinto be the man that Officer Nez said he apprehended as a vandal in his final communication to police headquarters? When their investigation leads Chee and Leaphorn to a local trading post run by a shady man named John McGinnis (Keith Carradine), the case soon begins to come into focus as the body count rises and the spirit of the coyote lurks in the shadows awaiting its next victim. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

After countless faithful translations to the big screen -- not to mention one timeless, Oscar-winning musical version -- Charles Dickens' tale of downtrodden London youth is given a gritty, contemporary spin in this independent Canadian production. This time told from the point of view of the Artful Dodger, Twist transposes the story of Oliver Twist to modern-day Toronto, where Dodge (Nick Stahl) is a smack-addicted male hustler working the streets when he comes across foster-home runaway Oliver (Joshua Close). The two strike up a fast friendship and Dodge makes the boy his apprentice, introducing him to a world of drugs, prostitution, and squalid, rent-free living, overseen by the formidable pimp Fagin (Gary Farmer). But Oliver finds his loyalties torn between his nascent attraction to Dodge and his son-like affection for Nancy (Michèle-Barbara Pelletier), the girlfriend of and pusher for the powerful drug dealer Bill Sykes. Written and directed by former child actor Jacob Tierney (The Neon Bible), Twist first made its appearance on the festival scene at the 2003 Venice and Toronto fests. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

The Hallmark Hall of Fame production Dreamkeeper is a four-hour television miniseries. Teenager Shane Chasing Horse (Eddie Spears) is a member of the Dog Soldiers gang on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His mom (Sheila Tousey) asks him to take his grandpa Old Pete Chasing Horse (August Schellenberg) to the All Nations Storytelling Powwow in Santa Fe, NM. Shane owes money to some gangsters, so he agrees in order to get out of town. As they drive across South Dakota in a beat-up old Ford, Grandpa tells stories about magical Lakota legends. The stories are re-enacted with the help of computer-generated images. Dreamkeeper was broadcast on ABC in 2003. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Veteran Canadian filmmaker Mort Ransen follows the critical and commercial success of Margaret's Museum (1995) with this unusual romance between a young man and a much older woman in the backwaters of British Columbia. Carrie (Lynn Redgrave) is an aging, hard-drinking widow. Her estranged daughter Sylvie (Lolita Davidovich) is trying to sell Carrie's café, the locals are trying to kick Carrie out of her house, and Carrie's dead husband's friend Burt is making romantic advances on her. All seems bleak until a dashing young stranger named Shawn (Tygh Runyan) suddenly ingratiates himself into Carrie's house, life, and eventually her bed. Soon she awakens from her drunken tailspin and reaches out to her daughter. Though Shawn seems utterly unfazed by the 40-some year gulf between he and Carrie, he also proves to be deeply unbalanced. This film was screened at the 1999 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

The deep bond formed between a troubled nephew and his simple uncle, whose character is reminiscent of Lenny from Of Mice and Men, is the focus of this Canadian melodrama set during the Depression in rural Ontario. Nine-year old Verlin will not talk, or cannot talk. His concerned and overprotective mother takes him to a doctor. She is angry at her husband Ferris whom she believes is indifferent to her boy's plight. When Ferris's child-like brother Henry comes to visit, the boy's life begins to change. Henry spends time with boy and teaches him about life. The two befriend Mabel, a retired, town prostitute with physical disabilities. The three outcasts become very close as they encounter obstacles to their friendship. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this sexually charged thriller, Rich (Corey Haim) is an 18-year-old working at an exclusive ski resort while his older brother Wes (Corey Feldman) serves out a sentence in the state prison. Rich becomes strongly attracted to Megan (Nicole Eggert), a beautiful young woman whose father owns the resort -- and whose mother died under mysterious circumstances. Rich and Megan fall into a passionate affair, but when Megan begins to suggest that their lives would be better if her father were out of the way, Rich has to ask himself just how far he's willing to go for love. Blown Away was released in two versions -- an R-rated version and an un-rated cut that features more nudity and more suggestive love scenes. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A women's softball team prepares for the Labor day championship tournament in this uneven feature. While the women work to ready themselves for the big game, their boyfriends are boozing and carousing. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The Big Town is Chicago, circa 1957. Matt Dillon stars as a small-town crapshooter who heads to the Windy City to seek his fortune. There he becomes the pawn of two high-rolling professional gamblers, played by Lee Grant and Bruce Dern. He later gets mixed up in a revenge scheme cooked up by Diane Lane, the embittered wife of strip-joint owner Tommy Lee Jones. Before he knows what's happened, Dillon is embroiled in two torrid romances, one with Lane and the other with "nice" girl Suzy Amis; he also nearly loses his life by ending up in the middle of a deadly feud between Dern and Jones. Based on The Arm, a novel by Clark Howard, Big Town tends towards uneveness, a result perhaps of the defection of its first director, Harold Becker. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A guy looking for easy money gets a lot more than he bargained for in this noir-flavored independent comedy. John Person (Jon Favreau) is a struggling actor living in Los Angeles who is starting to buckle under the pressure of his own failures. With no acting jobs coming in and a massive credit card debt to pay off, John works part-time as a courier but needs a big payday if he's ever going to get back on his feet. Out of the blue, a strange man in the neighborhood makes John an offer that seems too good to be true -- in exchange for delivering a suitcase to a man in Baker, CA (midway between L.A. and Las Vegas), John will receive $27,000 in cash. John's first tip off that something odd is going on comes when, along with the suitcase, he's given a loaded gun and instructions to defend the package with his life if necessary, but he's just desperate enough to go along. However, things become more complicated when John misses his connection in Baker; he's suddenly followed by a number of threatening eccentrics, is informed by an FBI agent that his benefactor in L.A. has become the victim of a grisly murder, and incurs the wrath of Cowboy (Sean Bean), the ominous trucker who was supposed to pick up the suitcase. The Big Empty features a stellar supporting cast, including Kelsey Grammer, Melora Walters, Daryl Hannah, Joey Lauren Adams, and Rachael Leigh Cook. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Three generations of method acting giants unite for this crime thriller written by Kario Salem and directed by Frank Oz. Robert De Niro stars as Nick Wells, an aging thief whose specialty is safecracking and who is on the verge of retiring to a life of ease, running his jazz club and romancing his girlfriend Diane (Angela Bassett). But before he can ride off into the sunset, Nick is pressured to do one last job by his mentor and business partner, a flamboyant and extravagant upscale fence named Max (Marlon Brando). Max is plotting the heist of the Montreal Customs House, and he's got a man on the inside, Jackie Teller (Edward Norton), a talented but volatile crook who has managed to ingratiate himself with the facility's staff as a fellow employee suffering from cerebral palsy. Jackie bristles at Nick's interference in "his" score, however, and threatens violence when it seems he's going to be cut out of the action. In the meantime, Nick grows increasingly ill at ease about the operation, as it violates his two most important dictums in thievery: always work alone and never pull a job in your own city. The part of Max in The Score was written specifically for Brando by screenwriter Salem, although the improvisational star and his director Oz reportedly clashed during filming. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide