John Robinson Movies
From role to role, actor John Robinson exuded an all-American presence and look that made him a shoe-in for portrayals of average, well-rounded young men, but he also projected a subtly haunting quality that lent him perfectly to material with a slight edge. On that note, Robinson is arguably best known for his contributions to Gus Van Sant's explosive 2003 drama Elephant -- the tale of a high school massacre inspired by Columbine -- where he played John, a genial and responsible young man burdened by an alcoholic father. (In fact, Van Sant and co. displayed the blonde-haired Robinson's face very prominently on the film's posters). Robinson grew up in Lake Oswego, OR, and experienced his first brush with show business thanks to Van Sant, who discovered him and recruited him forsaid part. The young actor scored an equally memorable follow-up via a collaboration with director Catherine Hardwicke playing legendary daredevil skateboarder Stacy Peralta in the period drama Lords of Dogtown (2005), and enjoyed small turns in the Pierce Brosnan western Seraphim Falls and the effects-heavy sci-fi action saga Transformers. In 2008, Robinson teamed up with director Kelly Reichardt and star Michelle Williams for a supporting role in the gentle slice-of-life drama Wendy and Lucy. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi
Old Joy director Kelly Reichardt crafts this intimate tale of Wendy, an alienated Indiana woman who packs up her car and sets her sights on Alaska, but finds herself stranded in a small Oregon town with no money and only her faithful dog, Lucy, to keep her company. When Wendy realizes that there's nothing keeping her in her home state of Indiana, she makes the decision to relocate to Alaska and seek out work at the local fish cannery. With her four-legged friend Lucy in the passenger seat next to her, Wendy stops off to get some rest in a small Oregon town. The following morning, when Wendy attempts to start her car, the engine fails to respond. But this is only the first in a series of snowballing events, because as Wendy waits for the local garage to open she heads to the supermarket to pick up some dog food for Lucy. Opting to shoplift the puppy chow since she doesn't have much cash to speak of, Wendy subsequently finds herself in the local jail thanks to an overzealous employee. By the time Wendy pays her fine and gets back to the supermarket, Lucy is gone. Unfortunately the dog pound doesn't open until the following morning, and after receiving some help from a kindly local, Wendy gets some particularly bad news about her car. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Michelle Williams, John Robinson, (more)
When recently retired cat burglar Elizar Perla vanishes after emerging from the shadows for one last score, his concerned daughter Marty (Gina Gershon) begrudgingly agrees to assist the art collector whom her father had stolen from to recover his priceless artwork. Elizar has just proven that he still has what it takes to play the old game by taking art collector David Gray for all he's worth, but immediately after completing the job, the legendary yegg simply disappears into the dark. Marty is understandably distraught by this strange development, though Gray suggest that Elizar will likely return to his daughter as soon as the stolen artwork is recovered. But while Marty reluctantly agrees to help Gray find the missing valuables, she's about to discover that some stolen pieces possess a value that can't be measured in currency. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Gina Gershon
- 2007
- R
The feature debut from writer/director Jess Manafort, this bittersweet teen comedy centers on a group of kids on the last day of school in 1999. With an ensemble cast featuring Lyndsy Fonseca, Amber Heard, and Alexa Vega, the film follows several students as they relish the advent of summer vacation and struggle with drugs, sex, and the unpredictability of the future before them. The Beautiful Ordinary screened at the 2007 Los Angeles Film Festival. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi
- Starring:
- Amber Heard, Alexa Vega, (more)
An ancient secret threatens to unleash the powers of darkness on a group of modern prep school students when the sole survivor of a cursed bloodline returns to lay claim to the powers denied to him centuries ago in a supernatural teen thriller from director Renny Harlin and screenwriter J.S. Cardone. The story begins in 1692, when five families from the Ipswich Colony of Massachusetts formed a covenant of silence that would forever protect their remarkable powers. One family went too far, though, and as a result of their transgression they were forever banished from the land. Flash forward to the new millennium and the four Sons of Ipswich are now the student elite at the prestigious Spenser Academy. Bound by their sacred ancestry and sworn to silence, these four teens share a secret so remarkable that it has served to protect their families for hundreds of years. The past has a way of coming back when you least expect it though, and when the fifth Son of Ipswich returns seeking to harness the powers denied him in the past, the battle is on to ensure the safety of The Covenant and lay the one descendent who threatens to reveal their secret to rest once and for all. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Steven Strait, Sebastian Stan, (more)
Frequent television director David Von Ancken (Oz and The Shield) offers a thrilling meditation on the true nature of revenge with this post-Civil War era tale of a one man's quest to put his nemesis in the ground, and another man's struggle to survive at any cost. Deep in the snowy mountains of the American West, a lone man named Gideon (Pierce Brosnan) basks, lost in thought, in the warm glow of a small fire. When a shot suddenly rings out and a bullet whizzes just inches from his head, Gideon is suddenly pulled from his repose. His reaction is too slow, however, to save him from the impact of a second bullet fired immediately thereafter; a bullet that painfully lodges itself into the soft flesh of Gideon's tired shoulder. The man who fired these bullets is Colonel Morsman Carver (Liam Neeson), and Carver's goal is to hunt Gideon down like an animal and extract painful revenge for a past transgression that left Colonel Carver forever changed. From this point on, there will be no peace in either man's life as a harrowing game of kill-or-be-killed is played out against the backdrop of the awe-inspiring and deceptively treacherous wilderness where the unforgiving law of the land takes deadly precedence over the civility of modern society. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi
- Starring:
- Liam Neeson, Pierce Brosnan, (more)
The true story of the kids who created modern skateboard culture is recreated in this drama. In the early '70s, skateboards were seen as a fad of the 1960s that had all but died out, but in a rough-and-tumble Venice, CA community known as "Dogtown," that was about to change. Tony Alva (Victor Rasuk), Stacy Peralta (John Robinson), and Jay Adams (Emile Hirsch) were three guys who liked to surf the rugged beaches around Venice and hung out at the Zephyr Surf Shop, a store run by Skip Engblom (Heath Ledger) that stocked gear for adventurous surfers and skateboarders. With the advent of new urethane wheels that connected with concrete in a way old metal and rubber wheels could not, Tony, Stacy, and Jay began exploring ways to translate radical surf style to skateboarding, and the guys invented a new way to skate inside the smooth, round surfaces of empty pools, employing vertical moves and edge flips that added a new and dramatic spin to skating. It didn't take long for word to spread about the wild new style of the Z-Boys, and they quickly became local celebrities, and later nationwide skating stars, though sudden fame took its toll on these young men. The true story of Lords of Dogtown was previously the basis of the acclaimed documentary Dogtown and Z-Boys, directed by former Z-Boy Stacy Peralta, who like Tony Alva served as a consultant on this project. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Emile Hirsch, Victor Rasuk, (more)
- 2004
- R
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Actress and filmmaker Asia Argento directed this faithful screen adaptation of the fictional J.T. Leroy's fictional memoir, which documents a boy's truly harrowing road to adulthood. Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett) is the seven-year-old son of Sarah (Asia Argento), an unstable and unwed mother who abandoned her son and left him to be raised by foster parents. Jeremiah has come to love his guardians, and is devastated when Sarah arrives at their doorstep, demanding her child back. Threatening Jeremiah with torture if he tries to run away, Sarah introduces her young son to drugs and encourages her one-night-stand paramours to help "discipline" her son when she feels his behavior is inappropriate. Sarah marries a man named Emerson (Jeremy Renner), but abandons him shortly afterward; Emerson responds by molesting Jeremiah, and soon the child is left in the care of his grandparents (Peter Fonda and Ornella Muti), members of a fundamentalist Christian sect which emphasizes child discipline that's strict to the point of abuse. After three years, Sarah returns with a new husband, Kenny (Matt Schulze), and takes Jeremiah (now played by Dylan Sprouse and Cole Sprouse) with her; Kenny spends most of his time on the road as a trucker, and Sarah supports the family at home as a stripper and a prostitute. Sarah also begins dressing her son is girl's clothing, which excites the perverse appetites of Sarah's latest boyfriend, Jackson (Marilyn Manson); she soon leaves Jackson and pairs off with Chester (Jeremy Sisto), a biker with a dangerous way of making a living. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened as part of the "Directors Fortnight" series. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Asia Argento, Jimmy Bennett, (more)
Director Gus Van Sant returned to the low-key style of his early independent efforts with this semi-improvised exploration of how violence makes its way into a typical American high school. Eric (Eric Deulen) and Alex (Alex Frost) are two close friends who are students in a well-to-do suburb of Portland, OR. Eric and Alex are at once ordinary and misfits; while they seem to be confined to the edges of the clique-oriented social strata of high school, little about their behavior draws attention to itself. Or at least not during a typical school day; on their own time, the two boys are fascinated by Nazi iconography, enjoy violent video games, tentatively explore homoerotic desires, and coolly begin to make plans for an armed ambush of the school, drawing up working diagrams of the lunch room during study hall and buying rifles over the Internet. Drawing an expected degree of controversy, Elephant had its world premiere when it was screened in competition at the 2003 Cannes Film Festival, where it won both Best Director for Van Sant and the Golden Palm award. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
- Starring:
- Alex Frost, Eric Deulen, (more)
A comedy detailing the war of the sexes with some new twists, this film stars Angus MacFadyen as Houston Blackett, a men's magazine owner whose mother suddenly dies in the Rocky Mountains. His mother has evidently left the estate not to her estranged son, but to her lover, a local girl named Zane (Penelope Ann Miller). Houston is aghast at the news, and his machismo is put to the test in the form of Zane, who takes no guff, especially from an objectifying type, as well as the people near him, who also begin to turn on him, including a reporter (Kathryn Harrold) and her tough assistant (Mary Kay Place). The film also features Ann-Margret as Houston's unforgiving, harsh mother-in-law, veteran actress Millie Perkins as his housekeeper, and writer/director Karen Leigh Hopkins as a single mother caught up in Houston's dilemma. ~ Jason Clark, Rovi
- Starring:
- Angus MacFadyen, Penelope Ann Miller, (more)
- 1997
A female literary editor is found murdered in an apartment occupied by a fast-rising young author, and by the author's lawyer. Though both of the "roommates" offer good alibis, the detectives are decidedly skeptical. What happens next unfolds like one of the author's steamy romance novels -- but this time, there might not be a happy ending. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
The tragic and true story of a family dealing with AIDS is re-told in this heart-wrenching made-for-cable drama. Amy Madigan and Dennis Boutsikaris star as Roxy and Vinnie Ventola, a successful television screenwriting couple. After struggling to become pregnant and finally conceiving a child, the couple learns that their newborn has AIDS. Soon afterward, the two parents are also diagnosed with the fatal virus. The film follows the family as they struggle to deal with the social, spiritual and physical tolls that the disease exacts on its sufferers. ~ Bernadette McCallion, Rovi
- Starring:
- Amy Madigan, Dennis Boutsikaris, (more)
The surreal and the supernatural join forces in this extremely unusual "AIDS musical." The story features the ghost of the French-Canadian airline steward (played by Normand Fauteux) who, according to And the Band Played On, Randy Shilts' book about the AIDS epidemic, was the origin of one of the largest outbreaks of HIV. Known as "Patient Zero" by the Centers for Disease Control, the handsome and promiscuous steward was basically the "Typhoid Mary" of the AIDS phenomenon. In the story, Patient Zero comes back from limbo as a ghost to see his friends suffering from the syndrome: some dying, the rest protesting at ACT-UP rallies. He realizes that his memory has been vilified as the extremely promiscuous source of all this suffering. However, it is only when he becomes aware of an exhibit being prepared at the Toronto Natural History Museum, one which singles him out yet again as the villain, that he becomes aware that the exhibit's curator is an unusual being in his own right. In fact, the show is being put together the famous nineteenth-century explorer of the upper Nile, Sir Richard Burton (John Robinson), inexplicably still living, working at the museum, and filled with misguided homophobia. Though no one else can see Zero, Burton can, and eventually the two become lovers and the ancient explorer comes to view "Patient Zero" as "the heroic slut who inspired safe sex." Musical numbers include a high-camp underwater ballet production of Tell Me The Story of My Life. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi
- Starring:
- John Robinson, Dianne Heatherington, (more)
- 1993
Ben Cross plays hit man with the vestiges of a conscience in Cold Sweat. After killing the wrong person, Cahill (Cross) is all for packing it in. He agrees to one more murder, only to find that the people he's dealing with are far more morally bankrupt than he. The intended victim is a nasty businessman who is cuckolding not only his partner, but also Cahill's contact. The sex is a lot more intense than the violence in Cold Sweat, which just might explain the title. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi
- Starring:
- Shannon Tweed, Ben Cross, (more)
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