John Ashton Movies

Luke Wilson, Giovanni Ribisi, and Gabriel Macht headline director/co-screenwriter George Gallo's fact-based period comedy detailing the rise of the internet porn business in the mid-'90s. Businessman Jack Harris (Wilson) made his living solving other people's problems. Wayne Beering (Ribisi) and Buck Dolby (Macht) were two technological innovators with a plan to make a mint by selling pornography online. When Jack met Wayne and Buck, it was a match made in money heaven. Before long the trio was making 200,000 dollars a day, but it wouldn't last. When a young porn star begins muscling Jack from one side and the FBI starts asking questions on the other, the foolproof plan to get wealthy beyond his wildest dreams becomes an inescapable trap that threatens to break up his family and destroy his livelihood. Kelsey Grammer, Kevin Pollack, Terry Crews, and Christopher McDonald co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Jane Doe:'Til Death Do Us Part is one of several Hallmark Channel TV-movies starring Lea Thompson as suburban housewife and mom Kathy Davis (Lea Thompson), who unbeknownst to her family occasionally moonlights as an undercover special agent and "problem solver" for the NSA. This time around, Armand Nostrum (Tom Castranova), a notorious illegal arms dealer serving a life term in prison, apparently dies of heart failure just before he was to blow the whistle on the others in his operation. Kathy--code name "Jane Doe"--is brought into the case when Nostrum's body disappears from the prison hospital, despite the tightest of security measures. As she tries to figure out what has happened and why, the possibility arises that the "dead" man was anything but! This is the episode in which Kathy is finally permitted to tell her husband Jack (William R. Moses) of her covert activities--and in the bargain, our heroine honors us with a lengthy and very broad imitation of a "typical" Mafia princess! Jane Doe: 'Til Death Do Us Part first aired March 11, 2005. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Alaskans may be used to a big snowfall every once in a while, but not the sort that hits Juneau in this disaster picture. Jack (C. Thomas Howell), his wife Lia (Caroleen Feeney), and their friend Neil (Thomas Ian Griffith) all work for the Environmental Protection Agency in Juneau, Alaska's capital city. One day, while they are tagging animals for a research project in the mountains near Juneau, a sudden avalanche occurs; Jack is immediately killed, and Lia is believed dead by search party leader Grant (R. Lee Ermey). Neil eventually finds and rescues Lia, but he sinks into a deep depression, convinced that he's responsible for Jack's death. A few years later, a large petroleum concern wishes to install a large pipeline through Juneau's mountain range to transport oil. Lia, who had moved away, comes back to Alaska to protest the proposed pipeline, believing that this will mean more avalanches and more loss of life. Neil is certain that she's right, and together they fight the all-powerful oil company, which is not above using violence to get its way. Avalanche was shot on location in Alaska, with the state's pristine natural beauty one of the film's most notable features. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Hawaiian surfer dudes Stew (Steve Van Wormer) and Phil Deedle (Paul Walker), fraternal twins, are about to be expelled from school, so their wealthy and concerned father (Eric Braeden) offers summer camp in Wyoming as a solution. Arriving in Jackson Hole with their wet suits, the Deedle twins are like fish out of water, and a series of accidents put them in a hospital. Mistaken for new recruits by Yellowstone Park ranger Capt. Pine (Douglas Ashton), the duo go along with the error after meeting their training officer, the attractive Lt. Jesse Ryan (A.J. Langer), but they are unprepared to adapt to life in the wild, as they cope with mountainside rappelling, sleeping in tents, eating worms, and dealing with hordes of prairie dogs unleashed by ex-ranger Frank Slater (Dennis Hopper), who seeks vengeance for his past problems in the park. There are several pop-culture references, including a cameo by Bart the Bear (of The Edge). ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

In this high-speed action drama, a mutual need for transportation forces a car thief and a newspaper journalist, hot on the trail of a corrupt senator, into a stolen car. What neither knows is that one of the briefcases stashed in the truck is filled with money and belongs to a gangster who will stop at nothing to have it. On the other hand, there are equally greedy cops who want the money too. Mere moments after they take the car, the others are in hot pursuit and a crash-laden, tire-screeching, engine-roaring pursuit begins. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A 12-year old boy inherits the Minnesota Twins in this baseball comedy that is aimed toward younger viewers. Young Billy, a normal twelve-year old, is nuts about baseball and knows almost everything there is to know about the game. He should, his grandfather owns the perennial losers, the Minnesota Twins. When grandpa dies, he leaves the Twins in Billy's hands. Naturally the players are skeptical, especially after Billy designates himself as team manager. But with a combination of guile, knowledge and determination, Billy earns their grudging respect and the team begins a winning streak. Initially, Billy reminds the team that baseball is supposed to be fun, but he soon forgets that as he becomes increasingly involved in the adult world of competition, management and team politics. His three friends are angered that he no-longer has time for them. Billy gets made when the first baseman starts going out with his mom. Eventually the burned out Billy must again learn how to be a kid. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this drama, a caring doctor investigates a child's home life and deduces that the boy's bizarre infections are psychosomatic and are directly linked to his mother's mental instability. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this made-for-cable movie, a bail bondsman (John Ashton) deals drugs on the side and thinks he's struck it rich when he conceives a scheme to steal counterfeit money. When the mob comes calling for it, he tries to set up a fellow employee (Kevin Dobson) as the culprit. ~ John Bush, Rovi

Love, Lies and Murder is based on a true story that began its tragic unspooling on March 19, 1985 in Garden Grove, California. 23-year-old wife and mother Linda Brown is murdered. She leaves behind her computer-consultant husband Clancy Brown, her 17-year-old sister (Sheryl Lee), a 14-year-old stepdaughter (Moira Kelly) from her husband's previous marriage, and an 8-month-old infant. When police investigate, the stepdaughter confesses to the killing. This closes the case--until Mr. Brown callously marries his late wife's sister, and doubts begin to stir as to whether or not the stepdaughter was coerced into confessing. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

American humorist Jules Feiffer and French director Alain Resnais are oddly paired for this satirical comedy about an American cartoonist in Paris. Adolph Green is a stunner as Joey Wellman, a cantankerous American cartoonist traveling abroad for the first time. In tow is Lena Apthrop (Linda Lavin), and the two are ostensibly journeying to Paris to attend a comic-strip exhibition in which Wellman's work is included. But it turns out the exhibition is just an excuse for Wellman to track down his errant daughter Elsie (Laura Benson), who has left Cleveland to take up literature at the Sorbonne. Her professor, Christian Gauthier (Gerard Depardieu) happens to be a big fan of Wellman, and he corrals the cartoonist and Lena to go to the fashionable country estate of his mother Isabelle (Micheline Presle), who tries to put up with her son's American friends. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

Based on a true story, the two-part TV movie I Know My First Name Is Steven tells the tragic story of Steven Stayner. At age seven, Steven was kidnapped by two men who held him captive in a tiny shed for seven years. One of the men, a habitual child abuser named Kenneth Parnell, sexually assaulted Steven on an almost daily basis during the boy's ordeal. At age 14, Steven finally was able to escape and return to his family. But we are shown that Steven's safe return was far from the happy ending it appeared to be. He's forced to adjust to a family he'd never really known, to convince himself that his parents had never forgotten him, and to put his seven-year hell behind him. While I Know My First Name Is Steven ends on an upbeat note, the real Stayner died in a motorcycle accident only a few months after this film was first telecast in May 1989. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

An aspiring writer faces up to the responsibilities of marriage and family in this romantic comedy from writer, director, and producer John Hughes. Despite the misgivings he pours out to best friend Davis McDonald (Alec Baldwin), Jake Briggs (Kevin Bacon) marries high-school sweetheart Kristy (Elizabeth McGovern). After an abortive attempt at graduate school in New Mexico, the couple settles in suburban Chicago. Jake fakes his way into a job as an advertising copywriter, while Kristy settles into her own corporate job. The couple faces the typical ups and downs of any new marriage, especially after Davis visits with a bimbo on his arm, regaling his pal Jake with tales of the good life. A few years later, Kristy decides to stop taking her birth-control pills -- and tells Jake about it three months later. Plagued by doubts, unfulfilled ambitions, and images of a fantasy girl (Isabel Lorca) he once spotted in a club, Jake resists the idea of fatherhood. Then he finds out he has low sperm count and, his manhood thus challenged, lines up for fertility clinic-assisted stud duty. The birth doesn't go as smoothly as Jake expected, however, setting the stage for climactic realizations. Edie McClurg, who played the nosy school secretary in Hughes' Ferris Bueller's Day Off, makes a cameo appearance as an officious neighbor. In addition, a who's who of other Hughes alums and Hollywood stars lend their faces and voices to a series of closing-credits shots in which each suggests a name for the titular baby. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

In a gender-reversed version of his previous hit Pretty in Pink, John Hughes retreads all-too- familiar ground in Some Kind of Wonderful, the story of a sensitive, young would-be artist, Keith (Eric Stoltz), who vies for the affection of his high school's popularity queen, Amanda (Lea Thompson), seemingly out of some deep-rooted insecurity regarding his social ineptitude. He enlists the help of his butch best friend and fellow misfit, Watts (Mary Stuart Masterson), unaware that she secretly pines for him. While she goads him to give up his pointless pursuit of Amanda, he encounters one other small obstacle -- Amanda's rich bully of a boyfriend, Hardy (Craig Sheffer), who threatens Keith with a face rearrangement. Undeterred, Keith decides he will, by any means necessary, escort his dream girl to the prom -- but not before he buys her expensive jewelry with the money from his college fund in order to impress her. (Hughes expects the audience to side with Keith when his father protests.) Some Kind of Wonderful is pure fantasy, but the plot is too tired and flawed for it to be completely satisfactory escapism. Still, the performances are all-around good and the ending is slightly more likeable than its predecessor's. Hughes decided to use the original Pretty in Pink ending, which had been dropped from the original after poor audience response at the advance screenings. ~ Jeremy Beday, Rovi