Travis Fine Movies

One man's insatiable appetite for sex begins upending his life in this biting independent comedy. Jack (Nestor Carbonell) is a photographer known to his friends as "Jack the Dog," thanks to his compulsive womanizing; Jack seems incapable of staying with one partner for long before he finds himself attracted to someone else, and given his good looks and easy charm, Jack doesn't have much trouble convincing the women he meets to spend the night with him. Deep inside, Jack wants to change, and he tries to put himself on the straight and narrow by marrying Faith (Barbara Williams). Jack and Faith soon have a son, Sam (Andrew J. Ferchland), whom Jack dotes upon, but Faith turns out to be a poor advertisement for long-term monogamy; she's not especially warm or forgiving, and she's started to show her age, which only intensifies Jack's taste for younger women. Jack soon slides into chronic infidelity, and Faith leaves him, relocating to London and leaving Sam behind. This is good news as far as Jack's concerned, but as he tries to watch over his son, while also seducing an endless parade of beautiful women, Jack finds himself increasingly puzzled by the opposite sex, and he wonders if he might have a problem he hasn't learned to deal with. Jack the Dog received its world premiere at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

This romantic comedy in the vein of There's Something About Mary and American Pie concerns the story of Michael Delaney (Jerry O'Connell), a struggling cartoonist who makes a bet with seven buddies over who will be the last to marry. Several years later, the pot has boiled down to two: Michael, who is battling gambling debts in Las Vegas, and diehard bachelor Kyle Bremmer (Jake Busey), who is a self-proclaimed ladies' man. Michael tries to get Kyle to wed within 30 days in order to rescue himself from financial turmoil. When Natalie (Shannon Elizabeth) enters the picture as Kyle's new intended bride (as set up by Michael), she and Michael end up falling for one another, setting up a competition for her affections by the two men. Tomcats is the feature directorial debut for screenwriter Gregory Poirier. ~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide

In this two-part miniseries, the formative days of rock & roll are relived through the experiences of a fictional musical quartet called the Heartaches. The group is led by the handsome Tyler (Brad Hawkins), whose heart belongs to Lyne (Bonnie Somerville), the female member of the band. Along the bumpy road to fame, Tyler achieves enormous success, his ego swelling with every new gig -- and the chasm between himself and his three fellow band members growing ever wider. Eventually Lyne breaks up with Tyler, finding success of her own in a most unexpected fashion. The soundtrack reverberates with expert re-creations of vintage rock & roll tunes, while B.B. King shows up to offer a rendition of Bob Dylan's "Fur Slippers." Shake, Rattle & Roll: An American Love Story was telecast on November 7 and 10, 1999. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

We'd rather not rehash the sordied Menendez murder case in this space; besides, it isn't necessary, inasmuch as no fewer than two TV movies were produced on the subject in 1994. The first was Fox's Honor Thy Father and Mother; the second, telecast less than a month later, was Menendez: A Killing in Beverly Hills. Two hours longer than the first film, Menendez spends half of its running time recounting the events leading up to the Menendez brothers' murder of the parents, while the second half devotes itself to their overpublicized trial. Lyle and Eric Menendez are played, respectively, by Damian Chapa and Travis Fine. Edward James Olmos and Beverly D'Angelo costar as the ill-fated parents, while Margaret Whitton is cast as attorney Leslie Abramson. Once past the most lurid aspects of the case-notably the Menendez boys' insistence that their crime was motivated by extreme parental abuse-this 4-hour wallow gets pretty tiresome. Menendez was originally telecast in two parts, on May 22 and 23, 1994. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Several years have passed since the events of the previous film, and yet again the makers of Good Guys dolls -- a line which included the homicidal Chucky -- decide to reinstate their product line. Unfortunately, some of the materials used are still imbued with the evil spirit of serial killer Charles Lee Ray (voice of Brad Dourif), whose soul once inhabited the Chucky doll... and who returns to action in a spanking new Good Guy body. Determined at first to finish the job he started by swapping bodies with young Andy (Justin Whalin) -- who is now a teenager in military school -- Chucky decides to change tactics, setting his sights on a much younger boy. When Andy becomes aware of the situation, he is compelled to put a stop to Chucky's Satanic antics once and for all. The signs of a creatively-depleted horror franchise are evident (they had already shown themselves in the previous installment), but there is still enough juice left for the spooky climax, which borrows a riff from Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse. ~ Cavett Binion, All Movie Guide

Season One of The Young Riders begins in 1860, as a rambunctious teenaged hothead known only as The Kid (Ty Miller) signs on as a rider for the Central Overland Express mail service in Sweetwater, Wyoming. This particular branch of the service is overseen by stationmaster Teaspoon Hunter (Anthony Zerbe, a grizzled-old-codger type who is doing his best to live down his past as a gunslinger. Before long, several other youthful buckaroos have joined up as riders, including natural-born scout Billy Cody (Stephen Baldwin), straight-shooter Jimmy Hickok (Josh Brolin), taciturn mute Ike McSwain (Travis Fine), half-Kiowa Indian Buck Cross (Gregg Rainwater), and short-tempered Lou McCloud (Yvonne Suhor)--who, unbeknownst to anyone (at least at first), is a girl in male disguise. Emma Shannon (Melissa Leo) is the station's cook and resident "earth mother", while local lawkeeper Marshall Cain (Brett Cullen) is Emma's would-be beau. This season, Don Collier makes the first of many recurring appearances as versatile general store keeper William Tompkins, who hopes to one day be reunited with the wife and daughter who'd been stolen by the Sioux years earlier; the taciturn Ike demonstrates time and again that it would take a bolt from Heaven to persuade him to abandon his curious set of values; and the Riders come to the defense of runaway slaves, abandoned and abused children and wrongly persecuted Native Americans, and overall demonstrate a stronger sympathy for the abolitionist North than the slaveholding South in the months leading to the Civil War. As for historical accuracy. . .well, you can't have everything. The season ends with a two-hour finale, involving the Young Riders' dangerous encounter with a vigilante character clearly based on the infamous "Kansas Raider" Quantrill. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide