Brennan Elliott Movies
Although al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners on September 11, 2001, only three reached their intended targets. United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 that departed late from Newark to San Francisco, crash-landed near Pittsburgh instead of becoming a weapon against the White House or the United States Capitol. This speculative cable-TV docudrama imagines how the flight might have played out for the flight's passengers, who are believed to have risen up against their hijackers after being alerted to the other terrorist attacks via cell phone. Unfolding in more or less real time, Flight 93 depicts the hijacking from the viewpoints of those on the flight and those on the ground. Tom Burnett (Jeffrey Nordling), Mark Bingham (Ty Olsson), Todd Beamer (Brennan Elliott), and many of the flight's other, posthumously famous passengers are portrayed, as are their families, law-enforcement agents, air-traffic controllers, United employees, and cell-phone company personnel. Flight 93 originally aired in January 2006 on the A&E cable network, several months after the Discovery Channel debuted its documentary The Flight That Fought Back and several months before the feature film United 93 premiered. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeffrey Nordling, Brennan Elliott, (more)
- 2004
When his germophobia causes him to bungle a murder investigation and accidentally destroy valuable evidence, Monk's detective's license is revoked by Mr. Brooks (Saverio Guerra), San Francisco's ill-tempered new police commissioner. As Monk (Tony Shalhoub) scrambles around for a new job, Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) and Disher (Jason Gray-Stanford) attempt to pin the murder on a man named Paul Harley (Brennan Elliott)--while the irascible Commissioner is plagued by a mysterious assailant who repeatedly tries to steal his hat! Ultimately, Monk digs up a connection between the killer and the hat thief, just as his friends at the Police Force stumble upon a foolproof (and hilarious) method to get our hero's job back. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2004
31-year-old Elyce Snow (Myndy Crist) sleeps eighteen hours a day, and is impossible to get along with the other six hours. House (Hugh Laurie) thinks it might be depression, but it isn't, nor is it rabbit fever (his second choice). Finally, House diagnoses African Sleeping Sickness--and since neither Elyce nor her husband Ed (Dominic Purcell) has ever been to Africa, the only other possibility is that one of them has been unfaithful. But neither husband nor wife will fess up...not even if their silence results in her quick demise! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 2003
The fourth season of the feminist-oriented doctor series Strong Medicine begins with an immediate followup to the previous season's cliffhanger ending. As the firefighter boyfriend of the Rittenhouse Clinic's director Dr. Lu Delgado (Rose Blasi) hovers between life and death after being shot by one of Lu's patients, Delgado's partner Dr. Andy Campbell (Patricia Richardson) makes the painful decision to separate from her abusive husband Les (Brian Kerwin), enraging her daughters Jessie (Michelle Horn) and Lizzie (Morgan Flynn) in the process. In later episodes, Andy begins a relationship with a Dr. Morton (Richard Biggs), but hesitates to introduce him to her daughters; Lu finds herself in a delicate situation when the man who raped her in Season Two comes back into her life--as a patient in desperate need of emergency heart surgery; the clinic's handsome-hunk male nurse Peter (John Coxx) unexpectedly lodges a protest when a chimpanzee is slated to be used for an experimental transplant procedure. Guest stars this season include Diahann Caroll,Shelly Long and Laila Ali, not to mention Grant Show, who in the season's concluding story arc makes three appearances as Ben Sanderson, a wealthy benefactor to the clinic. Because he is not open and above-board in his dealings, Ben incurs the rath of the combustible Lu. The tension reaches the breaking point in the season finale "Quarantine", in which an epidemic forces Lu and Ben to share some extremely close quarters--with astonishing results. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosa Blasi, Patricia Richardson, (more)
- 2002
Season Three of "Strong Medicine" marks the departure of series regular Janine Turner as Dr. Dana Stone, who with her earthier counterpart Dr. Lu Delgado (Rose Blasi) has since the outset of the series been in charge of the Rittenhouse Women's Health Clinic in Philadelphia. Having resumed her romance with the clinic's arrongant resident Dr. Nick Biancavilla (Brennan Elliott), Dana suddenly hears the ticking of her biological clock, and wants to have a baby. The clinic's sensitive male nurse Peter (Josh Coxx) volunteers to be sperm donor, which of course causes friction between Dana and Nick. Although she loses her baby, Dana adopts two infant girls, one of whom is HIV-positive, then decides to give up the clinic and return to her home state of Virginia with her new family, which she does in the season's sixth episode "Discharged". Dana's exit does not rest well with Lu, who is already emotionally fragile as a result of being raped the previous season. But once Dana's decision is made, Lu sets about to find a replacement. At the same time, Rittenhouse chief of staff Dr. Jackson (Philip Casnoff) makes his own choice for Lu's new partner: Dr. Andrea "Andy" Campbell (Patricia Richardson), a former Marine sergeant who has returned to civilian life specifically to take command of Rittenhouse--and, not surprisingly, Andy's strict, rules-are-rules approach to medicine serves only to drive a wedge between herself and Lu. Meanwhile, Andy is saddled with domestic problems, specifically an abusive husband (Brian Kerwin) and a pair of troublesome daughters, Jessie (Michelle Horn) and Lizzie (Morgan Flynn). In various story develops, Lu puts aside her resentment toward Andy to forestall not one but two potentially deadly epidemics; the 9/11 tragedy is touched upon when Lu clashes with the Government over admitting a patient who may be a terrorist; briefly returning to active duty, Andy has her hands full dealing with a patient with post-polio syndrome; and Lu drops her attitude about Andy and offers moral support when her new partner is beaten by her volatile husband. In the season's cliffhanger finale, Lu's currently boyfriend, a firefighter named Mickey Arenas (Julian Acostas), has no sooner emerged unscathed from a particularly nasty fire than he is gunned down by one of Lu's more unbalanced patients! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosa Blasi, Jenifer Lewis, (more)
A good Samaritan discovers the stranger she's helped is an evil genius with strange and dangerous powers in this horror story. Lacey Cole (Catharina Conti) is a pretty young woman who has recently lost her husband. Lacey is living in a small town in the logging country of the Northwest, where she has few visitors and little contact with the larger world. One day, Lacey encounters a man named Michael Bodine (Brennan Elliott), and she offers to help the friendly stranger who seems to have been lost in the woods. However, Michael turns out not to be as friendly as Lacey imagined -- Michael is a mass murderer who has escaped from prison, and he also possesses a keen but twisted intellect and psychic powers that allow him to tap into the minds of the recently deceased. Michael taps into the mind of Lacey's late husband and wins her trust before she realizes she's welcomed a violent lunatic into her home. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- 2001
The second season of Lifetime's feminist medical series Strong Medicine begins with the episode "Donors", which includes a characteristic ethical clash between Rittenhouse Women's Health Clinic directors Dr. Lu Delgado (Rose Blasi) and Dr. Dana Stone (Janine Turner) over treatement of a girl who tries to pay for her eduction by selling her eggs to a fertility clinic, and a tense confrontation with a husband who'll stop at nothing to find a heart donor for his ailing wife. Elsewhere, the romantic relationship between Dana and egocentric resident Dr. Nick Biancavilla (Brennan Elliott) hits the first of several snags, culminating with a "big chill when Nick balks at the notion of marriage, just as Dana suspects that she's pregnant. Meanwhile, Lu has a fling with Harry (Don Michael Paul), who says he's divorced but isn't. In other developments, Lu's son Marc is booted out of school after he is caught cheating; Rittenhouse chief of staff Dr. Jackson (Philip Casnoff) begs Dana to give his wife preferential treatment when a new, experimental anti-MS drug is made available; Dana discovers that her ex-fiance has terminal cancer; Lu has a violent run-in with radio shock jock over medical ethics, and later faces the loss of her license when she inadvertently makes public the plight of a staunch pro-life advocate who is faced with the choice of saving her own life or that of her unborn child; and long-hidden hostilities are yanked kicking and screaming into the forefront when Rittenhouse's nurses go on strike. The last three episodes of the season comprise a tense story arc in which Lu is raped by a trusted colleague, surgeon Rand Kilner (Gregory Harrison), who claims that he'd merely indulged in consensual sex. The residue of this incident culminates in Lu's son Marc swearing vengeance, Dana being forced to deal with the devil when she needs Kilner for a particularly delicate operation, and an emotional tailspin for Lu that very well may cost her her job. Guest stars during Season Two include real-life MS victim Teri Garr as a good-humored woman who is diagnosed with the disease in the episode "Control Group"; and singer Mary J. Blige as "herself" in "History", wherein Lu flashes back to the establishment of her own storefront clinic with her colleagues, receptionist Lana (Jenifer Lewis) and male nurse/midwife Peter (Josh Coxx). ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosa Blasi, Janine Turner, (more)
The female-centric medical series Strong Medicine launches its first season as Dr. Lydia Emerson, played by series cocreator Whoopi Goldberg) somewhat forcibly negotiates a merger between the financially strapped South Philadelphia storefront clinic run by the feisty and outspoken Dr. Lu Delgado (Rose Blasi) and the upscale Rittenhouse Women's Health Clinic, directed by the prim, Harvard-educated Dr. Dana Stowe (Janine Turner). The instinct-driven Lu and the rule-bound Dana don't get along at first--nor, for that matter, do they get along at second, at third, or at home--forever clashing over procedural matters and bedside manners. Despite this, the ladies develop a grudging respect for one another, and by season's end they could almost be called close friends. In the course of Season One's 22 episodes, Dana develops a romantic relationship with the clinic's egotistical resident Dr. Nick Biancavilla (Brennan Elliott); Lu has issues with her fatherless son Marc (played in the pilot by Paul Robert Santiago, and in the series proper by Chris Marquette, who attends a tough inner-city school; the clinic's dazzlingly handsome but overly sensitive male nurse Peter (Josh Coxx) gets into a variety of pickles with his more eccentric patients, and at one point decides to supplement his income by working as a male model (the producers of this series certainly understand their target audience!); Rittenhouse's chief of staff Dr. Jackson (Philip Casnoff) is suspected of abusing his wife, only to be cleared when it turns out that Mrs. Jackson's many bruises are a result of the early stages of MS; and the clinic's snide, abrasive receptionist Lana (Jenifer Lewis) is given a new perspective on her prickly relationship with her clients when she ends up hospitalized herself. Highlight episodes include the two-parter "BRCA", built around the clinic's Breast Cancer Awareness Weekend; the Christmas-season "Blessed Events", wherein Dr. Jackson fires a kitchen employee for drunkenness, only to find out that woman actually suffers from MLS; and the season finale, "Mortality", in which Dana endures a crisis of faith over a "meltdown" in the OR and Lu tends to a woman who has gone on a hunger strike to save her son from execution. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rosa Blasi, Janine Turner, (more)
- 1999
- R
Michael Dudikoff, Gabrielle Miller, and Brennan Elliott star in this thriller about a federal agent who is assigned to get the inside scoop on a dangerous terrorist group. In order to blend into their ranks, he's forced to fake his own death and make friends with the group's deadly but charismatic leader. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Dudikoff, Brennan Elliott, (more)
