Sonya Walger Movies

A cozy coffeehouse serves as the setting for director John Cosgrove's over-caffeinated tale of sexual peccadilloes and complicated relationships starring Mena Suvari, Katherine Heigl, and Breckin Meyer. It's a typical lunch hour in London, and The Black Cat Café is fast filling up with patrons whose sexual lives have become a tangled web of infidelity, kinky idiosyncrasies, and betrayal. Stoned on some of the most potent weed in jolly old England, a neurotic young commitment-phobe attempts to keep his cool when he has an unexpected run-in with his bitter ex-girlfriend. But he's not the only one whose secrets are about to come out today, because after a shy young lady is forced to fend off a boorish blind date whose preconception of her couldn't be more wrong, a possessive boyfriend discovers that his current girlfriend was once a well-known adult film star. Later, after a fragile old lady mistakes a patron for the ex-husband she once found in a compromising position with a kinky prostitute and a high-powered attorney discovers that her husband-to-be likes to dress in ladies' clothes, the manager's boyfriend claims that a recent ménage à trois is perfectly forgivable since it was conducted with a pair of identical twins. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Introduced in May 2004 as an episode of CSI: Miami, the CBS "procedural" cop drama CSI: NY launches its first full season with 22 hour-long episodes. The opener, "Blink," finds NYC Crime Lab head Mac Taylor (Gary Sinise) and his team of brilliant, iconoclastic forensic specialists hunting for a serial killer using clues provided by the perp's only surviving victim -- who has lost virtually all powers of communication. Later investigations involve a hungry rat who has swallowed vital evidence, a skeleton found by a tourist which may or may not be a hoax planted to throw the police off the trail of a real crime, and a grisly robbery-murder in Brooklyn in which the victims were systematically shot and smothered to death. Also, a police terrorist-response drill compromises the CSI's efforts to rescue a kidnap victim; a police horse may have to be put to sleep to retrieve an important clue as to the murder of the horse's rider; Mac's protégé Danny Messer (Carmine Giovinazzo) gets a bit too up-close and personal while hunting down a gang of young punks who kill for sport rather than profit; the team tries to determine if a somnambulist committed murder while asleep; three murders occurring simultaneously in three different boroughs might be connected; and the CSIers are forced to turn a mirror on their "own" when the chief investigator in a police-corruption case is murdered before making his findings public. The season ends with the episode "What You See Is What You See," in which Mac must choose to save the life of a shooting victim or immediately chase after the shooter -- a decision that triggers tortuous memories of the death of Mac's own wife during the 9/11 terrorist attack. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Based on the long-running British TV series of the same name, the NBC sitcom Coupling was clearly designed to fill the gap that was about to be opened by the departure of the network's popular ensemble piece Friends. The difference here was that the sexual shenanigans on Coupling had a lot more edge, and were heaps more complicated and controversial, with a group of basically selfish, unlovable Manhattan thirtysomethings perpetually seducing and/or betraying one another. Steve (Jay Harrington) fell in love with Susan (Rena Sofer, replacing the pilot episode's Melissa George), but was still attached to Jane (Lindsay Price). Susan was the ex-girlfriend of Steve's best friend, Jeff (Christopher Moynihan), and also of Patrick (Colin Ferguson). As for Patrick, he currently carried a torch for Susan's best friend, Sally (Sonya Walger, replacing the pilot's Emily Rutherfurd), and on and on and on it went. When it debuted on September 25, 2003, Coupling became something of a cause célèbre, with a number of special-interest groups complaining about the frankness of the series' sexual scenes and situations; critics were not as bothered by the series' raciness as by the fact that it failed to live up to the standards of the British original. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Alan Rickman and Janeane Garofalo headline writer/director Mike Binder's comedy about an American businessman who is summoned to London under the auspice of overseeing an impending business merger, only to discover that he is actually being groomed to replace his British counterpart - who unfortunately has no intentions of giving up his job. Matthew Barnes (Binder) and his wife (Garofalo) thought they were going to London for a brief business trip, little did they realize Matthew's employer had something a bit more permanent in mind. It seems that the powers that be would like to see Matthew's British counterpart John Gissing (Rickman) fired, and would love for Matthew to step in as his official replacement. But John is no dummy, and he's seen this storm brewing on the horizon for quite some time. Now, instead of stepping down peacefully and allowing the situation to play out as his superiors have planned, John schemes to make the American couple's stay in London as unpleasant as humanly possible by sending them on a series of disastrous and humiliating misadventures. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A biographical drama about the life of great Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein), Eisenstein stars Simon McBurney as its eponymous protagonist. Beginning in 1922, when the young Eisenstein, a former Red Army engineer, became the protégé of avant-garde theatre director Meyerhold (Jonathan Hyde), the film covers Eisenstein's life, work, and political struggles through three decades, set in such disparate locales as the Ukraine and Mexico. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

The biblical story of Noah and the Great Flood gets a decidedly unusual retelling in this film, produced as a two-part TV movie and first aired on NBC in May 1999. Noah Jon Voight is an ordinary laborer who one day begins receiving messages from God. It seems the Lord has a special assignment for him: since God is planning on destroying the world with a massive flood, he wants Noah to build a giant ark and fill it with one male and one female of each animal on earth. So why Noah of all people? As God tells him, "You fit the bill. Good times, bad times, you believe in me." And why a 500-foot-long ark? "I think big! I made the world in seven days!" Joining Noah on the trip of a lifetime is his wife Naamah (Mary Steenburgen); those not invited along for the ride are F. Murray Abraham as Lot, Carol Kane as his wife Sarah, and James Coburn as a peddler. Some video versions run 140 minutes. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide