Jon Cornick Movies

Nearly a decade after impressing audiences at the 1999 Toronto International Film Festival with their engaging coming-of-age story Goat on Fire & Smiling Fish, filmmakers Derick and Steven Martini return to deliver this period drama following two families whose lives are profoundly affected by complex relationships, real estate woes, and Lyme disease. Set on Long Island in the late '70s, Lymelife opens to find a suburban community swept up in fear after local resident Charlie Bragg (Timothy Hutton) is diagnosed with Lyme disease. Charlie's tightly wound neighbor Brenda Bartlett (Jill Hennessy) is determined not to let her gentle 15-year-old son, Scott (Rory Culkin), suffer a similar fate, and has taken to duct-taping his cuffs to ensure that he remains Lyme disease-free. Meanwhile, as Charlie convalesces, his wife, Melissa (Cynthia Nixon), goes to work for Brenda's philandering husband, Mickey (Alec Baldwin), a respected real estate developer. All the while, Melissa remains clueless to the fact that she was hired more out of lust than as a friendly favor to a neighbor in need. For years, Scott has pined after Charlie and Brenda's daughter, Adrianna (Emma Roberts), and strangely enough, it seems that she's finally starting to return his affections. Tensions are running particularly high in the neighborhood lately, and when Scott's older brother, Jimmy (Kieran Culkin), arrives home on leave from the army, his confrontations with his tempestuous father, Mickey, threaten to trigger repercussions that will affect the lives of everyone involved. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

This TNT miniseries stars Alec Baldwin as Robert Jackson, the Supreme Court justice who served as the head prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal that took place in Nuremberg after the horrors of WWII and the Holocaust. The film follows Jackson from his preparations for the trial to the outcome of the trial itself, paying particular attention to the interplay between Jackson and the Nazi thugs he is trying to prosecute. Brian Cox co-stars a Hermann Goering, Hitler's right-hand man, while Christopher Plummer plays British prosecutor Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, and Jill Hennessey portrays Elise Douglas, Jackson's invaluable secretary and sometime lover. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

A darkly comic whodunit about greed, deceit, and romantic deception, Goodbye Lover stars Patricia Arquette as Sandra, a seemingly moral and obsessively cheerful woman who sells real estate and is fascinated by the movie The Sound Of Music. But Sandra has a secret; while she's married to Jake (Dermot Mulroney), an ad executive who is having problems with both his career and his drinking, she's having an affair with his brother, Ben (Don Johnson), a successful public relations man. Ben, on the other hand, is already dallying with Peggy (Mary-Louise Parker), a woman on his staff who is beautiful but insecure, though she has a darker side few people know about. When Ben decides to break it off with Sandra so he can pursue his relationship with Peggy, Sandra is furious, and, knowing Jake would be just as angry, tells him about their affair. A vengeful Jake confronts Ben, which leads to a knock-down, drag-out fight -- and Ben's death, as he falls from a window. Ben leaves behind a hefty insurance settlement, and soon the surviving characters are scrambling over the money. Enter Police Detective Rita Pompano (Ellen DeGeneres), who has seen too much in her time on the force to not develop a deep cynicism about the people she protects -- or to not be tempted to get in on the payday herself. Goodbye Lover was directed by Roland Joffé, in something of a departure from his best-known work in high-minded dramas such as The Killing Fields and The Mission. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide