Marshall Peck Movies
A woman learns a valuable lesson about her family as she and her aunt look back at her troubled past in this independent drama. As Virginia Wilder (Frances Fisher) visits her elderly Aunt Millie (Alice Drummond) for the Christmas holidays, she discovers a number of letters she received during the 1940s, and gains a new and clearer picture of Millie's life when she was younger. Teenaged Emily (Laurel Holloman) falls in love with a soldier who soon ships out to fight in World War II, but not before she discovers herself pregnant. When the soldier refuses to marry her, Emily is left to have the baby on her own, and soon she discovers herself an outcast in the small Southern town where she was born. While Emily's father (Gary Cole) turns his back on her, her mother (Tess Harper) remains supportive, and Emily soon becomes close friends with two other people who haven't been welcomed by the community, a strong-willed black woman named Wilma Watson (Elise Neal) and Will Bacon (Mark Webber), a well-meaning young man with a bad habit of bending the truth. As Emily's new friends stand by her, Emily in turn stands up for them as Wilma and other members of the town's African-American community begin standing up for their rights as citizens. The first feature film from writer and director Tom Rice, The Rising Place also features Jennifer Holliday and Frances Sternhagen. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Laurel Holloman, Elise Neal, (more)
The popular memoir by Pulitzer prize-winning author Willie Morris became this family comedy-drama about a boy and his dog. Young Willie Morris (Frankie Muniz) is a shy eight-year-old in 1942 Yazoo, MS, who is more comfortable reading than playing sports. A target for local bullies, Willie's only real pal is his older next-door neighbor Dink Jenkins (Luke Wilson), once the town's living sports legend and a big brother figure to Willie, an only child. When Dink is shipped overseas for service in World War II, Willie's mother Ellen (Diane Lane) finally forces his gruff father Jack (Kevin Bacon) to allow into the family a pet dog, a Jack Russell terrier named Skip. The smart and playful Skip gets his owner into a series of adventures on the baseball field and with a band of moonshiners, quickly turning Willie into a popular, accepted kid who even wins the affections of the school's prettiest girl, Rivers Applewhite (Caitlin Wachs). In the meantime, Dink returns from war branded a coward for an incident that occurred in combat but finds an unexpected ally in the normally taciturn Jack, a fellow veteran. Harry Connick Jr. narrated as the adult Willie; the role of Skip was played in later scenes by Moose, the pooch star of television's Frasier. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frankie Muniz, Diane Lane, (more)
