John Davis Movies
A woman haunted by the untimely death of her former fiancée attempts to ease her psychic suffering by marrying another man and living the idealistic suburban life in director Jason Ruscio's vivid existential drama. Laura (Petra Wright) was in her mid-twenties when her fiancée Chris (Kip Pardue) was stricken down by a taxi in the streets of Manhattan. Flash forward nine years and Laura has remarried and given birth to a child, yet the pain of her past prompts her to embark into a series of promiscuous and self-destructive extramarital affairs. Having never truly dealt with the death of Chris, Laura seeks out the aid of a therapist as the memories come flooding back accompanied by a tidal wave of grief-stricken emotion. Her mind slowly consumed by tragedy and her fragile psyche finally shattered by her failed attempts to seek solace in the comforts of her past, Laura's affair with her husband's best friend Paul finds her harrowing journey careening to a dangerous and unpredictable end. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Petra Wright, Kip Pardue, (more)
Neely (Chelsea Altman) is a struggling actress living in New York. Her Mexican boyfriend, Tonio (Demian Bechir), is a cook who's trying to sell his own line of pasta sauces. Lottie (Patricia Clarkson), her eccentric neighbor, is obsessed with a soap opera, "Heartbreak Hospital." Frustrated with her inability to get work, Neely accepts Tonio's proposal of marriage, and plans to honeymoon with him in Mexico. On their way to the airport, she stops to say goodbye to her acting teacher, who tells her about an audition for the soap. To Tonio's chagrin, she gives it a shot. She's totally unprepared, and the other actresses at the audition have their game faces on. But Sunday (Diane Venora), the prima donna lead actress on the show, takes one look at Neely's glasses and her shock of purple hair and, vigilantly protective of her own place as the prettiest actress on the show, insists that Neely be hired. Neely gets the job, and soon finds herself caught up in more intrigue than she bargained for. She quickly finds out that the actresses who steal the spotlight from Sunday tend to get written out of the show quickly. Both Neely's jealous boyfriend and Milo (John Shea), the desperate actor who plays her love interest on the soap, Dr. Jonathan, seem to have trouble telling television from reality, and Lottie goes completely over the edge with her passion for the fictional doctor Milo portrays. Things get completely out of hand when one of the cast members turns up dead. Co-writer Henry Slesar did time writing for the daytime dramas One Life to Live and Edge of Night. Heartbreak Hospital is the feature debut of director Rudolph Gerber. It's based of the novel Murder at Heartbreak Hospital by Lottie Ohrwasher. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
Set in Florida's beach community, Mule Skinner Blues chronicles a group of locals who crave self-expression in the midst of their Southern Gothic lifestyles. Chief among the figures is Beanie Andrew, a fifty-something former alcoholic who acts, sings, dances, writes, and lives in a trailer park outside Jacksonville and who finds work as an extra in a music video. He then presents Stephen with a series of home videos displaying his and his friends' talents. Most of them are out-of-work shrimpers, such as Steve Walker, a Vietnam veteran and troubadour; Ricky Lix, an ill-tempered blues guitarist; Miss Jeannie, a country singer who also has a penchant for yodeling; and Annabelle Lea, an art school grad and costume designer who keeps her departed bulldog's dead body in a backyard freezer. After the music video shoot, Stephen returns to Florida to find the group beginning work on an ambitious horror film called "Turnabout Is Fair Play," which has no completed script; still, the team tries to pull together to make the picture. The subject matter is very similar to Chris Smith's award-winning documentary American Movie, which also followed a struggling group of filmmakers through their production of a very low-budget genre piece.
~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
- 2001
This documentary chronicles East Indian groups of "third sex" individuals living in squalor in Bombay in the midst of a chaotic society that ousts them. The film begins by noting that for centuries eunuchs were considered semi-divine beings, heralded for their marital blessings and feared by many for their powers. When the land was colonized by the British, their ritual castration was outlawed and their religion diminished in the eyes of many of the land's inhabitants. As the climate changed, these hijiras (or eunuchs) were forced to live lives as prostitutes or beggars, despite the reported population of about 1.5 million. Among the figures recorded is Meena, a 38-year old caretaker who stands her own ground and provides shelter to younger outcasts. The brassy, gruff Meena is a respected den mother, but her "family" has many drawbacks, especially with many hijiras becoming infected with HIV due to lack of sexual disease information. When the hijiras travel to Bopha for a convention, they are rejected by its constituents as they are planning a life of sacred celibacy. After berating the film crew for their humiliation, Meena is found a year later with her charges, working as tax collectors for the government. Bombay Eunuch was shot on high-definition video and directed by Alexandra Shiva, Sean MacDonald, and Michelle Gucovsky.
~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
~ Jason Clark, All Movie Guide
- 1998
In this dark comedy, three sisters try to make the most of their lives in a supremely dysfunctional family. Maryann (Catherine Corpeny), Elizabeth (Deborah Hedwall), and Gail (Wendy Hoopes) were raised by their eccentric mother Nora (Olympia Dukakis), mostly without the help of their father Tom (Roy Scheider), a policeman who left the house 15 years earlier and never came back. Now Maryann is a nervous wreck who cries most of the time, Elizabeth is a lawyer who works as a public defender and doesn't enjoy it very much, and Gail prefers to stay home with her dumb lug of a boyfriend, Junior (James Villemarie). However, they're all busy dealing with Nora, who has decided to build a cavern in the basement (with the help of a jackhammer that threatens to destroy the house), and Tom, who has made an unexpected return after developing a survivalist bent. The sisters eventually have to enlist the help of their Uncle Jack (Edward Herrmann), a priest with rather lax moral fiber, to get things back to "normal." This was the debut feature for writer/director Max Mayer. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Olympia Dukakis, Roy Scheider, (more)
- 1986
Not to be confused with the 1975 TV movie Bloodsport, this 1986 production was a spin-off of the recently cancelled police drama series T.J. Hooker. William Shatner is back as the aforementioned Hooker, a cop on special assignment to Hawaii (where the film was lensed). Accompanied by longtime professional colleagues Stacey Sheridan (Heather Locklear) and Jim Corrigan (James Darren), Sgt. Hooker endeavors to protect U.S. Senator Stuart Grayle (Don Murray) and his wife, Barbara (Kim Miyori), from terrorists, only to find that the assignment isn't quite as cut and dried as it seems. Telecast May 21, 1986, on CBS, Blood Sport did not result in a wholesale weekly revival of T.J. Hooker, as the producers evidently had hoped, though reruns of the original series continued to be seen on CBS' late-night schedule until September 17, 1987. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- William Shatner, Heather Locklear, (more)
