Holter Graham Movies
- 2008
Award-winning comic book artist Alex Maleev collaborates with accomplished comic book colorist José Villarrubia to bring Stephen King's short story N to life in a series of twenty-five graphic video episodes. A respected scientist has fallen victim to the same deadly obsession as his troubled patient, but could their shared obsession actually save the world? ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jeff Perry, Ben Shenkman, (more)
- 2000
In latter-day Manhattan, mere mortals co-exist with classical entities. One such entity is Allissandra (Teri Lamm), a Muse who is consumed with despair over the decision of Fate (Ryan Dunn) to off her lover, the young composer Ralph. Numbering among the deceased composer's friends are John (Ed Vassallo) and Zoe (Sarah Winkler), novelists who have been married for seven years; John's friend Jonas (Charles Tuthill), a musician and conductor; Cedric (Gordon Elliott), a British museum curator; and Cedric's very young girlfriend Karen (Kat Gang), a painter. Also in the picture are Fame (Bridget Moynahan) and Fortune (Vivienne Benesch), who promise to give Ralph's work the recognition it deserves. Eventually, the depressed Allissandra realizes that she's had enough of Fate, and rallies Fame, Fortune, Cause & Effect (Robin Dorian), and the male Muse David (Holter Graham) around her to make a provocative wager with the entity. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Bridget Moynahan
- 1999
- NR
Jamie Yerkes' debut film Spin the Bottle takes its title from a game played by a group of friends in their mid-twenties. It seems none of them have seen each other since late childhood, and when the five spend a weekend together, it's a time for catching up on everything they've missed, including everyone's favorite adolescent party game. However, by the time Sunday evening rolls around, the five have learned more than they planned to know about each other's lives, secrets, follies, and disappointments. Spin The Bottle received positive notices in its engagement at the 1999 Santa Barbara Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mitchell Riggs, Kim Winter, (more)
Writer, director, and producer Adam Bernstein followed up the disastrous comedy It's Pat: The Movie (1994) with this black comedy that mixes elements of Psycho (1960) and Goodfellas (1990). Former male model Norman Reedus stars as Harry Odum, a henpecked, 18-year-old momma's boy in Youngstown, Ohio, who -- with his violent temper -- impresses a local boss of the Jewish Mafia. Soon he's found his calling as a hit man alongside his crack addict partner Arnie Finklestein (Adrien Brody), and he discovers that his rage and complicated psychosis fuel his murderous abilities. Harry also falls for the organization's limping, Hungarian-born maid Iris (Elina Lowensohn), a romance complicated by Harry's Oedipal, sexual relationship with his domineering mother Kate (Deborah Harry).Six Ways to Sunday (1997) was based on the Charles Perry novel Portrait of a Young Man Drowning. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Norman Reedus, Deborah Harry, (more)
- 1995
The detectives discover that a young junkie found dead in the yard of a day-care center was the daughter of a wealthy family. Further investigation reveals that the woman was taken to her final "resting place" as she was dying. The question: Is it possible that someone very close to the victim would have allowed her to perish in so ignominious a fashion? ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Two well-known directors each adapt stories by Edgar Allen Poe in this horror drama. George Romero's "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" tells how the wife of an elderly, wealthy man and her lover--who also happens to be the husband's private physician--scheme to control his assets. Dying before they can carry out their plans, his soul is caught between life and death while they freeze the body to finish their work. In the Dario Argento-directed "The Black Cat" a crime photographer, known for his photos' gruesome content, kills his girlfriend's titular pet and then his girlfriend. Soon he gets a good look at what he's done. ~ Kristie Hassen, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Adrienne Barbeau, E.G. Marshall, (more)
John Waters does a quirky spin on '50s nostalgia in Cry-Baby, his musical homage to Rebel Without a Cause and Romeo and Juliet. Set in Baltimore in 1954 at the birth of rock & roll, the film features Johnny Depp as Wade "Cry-Baby" Walker. Depp is pure charisma as a juvenile delinquent with a permanent tear slithering down his cheek, a reminder of his state-executed parents. In the depths of his despair appears goody-goody girl Allison (Amy Locane), who has a sexual crush on Cry-Baby. But Allison's Pat Boone-like boyfriend, Baldwin (Stephen E. Miller), the leader of the squares, is dead set against Cry-Baby and the rest of the juvenile delinquents and leads a revolt against them. In the resultant riot, the juvenile delinquents are blamed for the chaos, and Cry-Baby finds himself dispatched to reform school. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Johnny Depp, Amy Locane, (more)
Forever interested in the kitsch built into past eras, director John Waters chooses the TV dance show craze of the early '60s for his playful focus in Hairspray. Ricki Lake plays Tracy Turnblad, just one of several alliteratively named characters coming of age in 1962 Baltimore, where "The Corny Collins Show" is the most popular American Bandstand-type program, watched by hundreds of young dreamers each day after school. Being chosen to dance on it is the ultimate status symbol and every young girl's dream, and Tracy improbably wins a featured spot when she infiltrates a dance contest and makes a better impression than her favored rival, the catty Amber von Tussle (Colleen Fitzpatrick). Always able to have fun, even when she's being mocked by the jealous popular girls, Tracy wins the affections of Amber's boyfriend and soon begins leading a movement to integrate the dance show, which has previously featured blacks only in a once-weekly theme night. She is arrested following a demonstration at a local theme park owned by Amber's father (Sonny Bono), who subscribes to the same theory of race relations as "The Corny Collins Show." Tracy's adventures are also filtered through her loving but eccentric parents (Divine and Jerry Stiller) and involve a humorous cultural clash with pot-smoking beatniks (Ric Ocasek and Pia Zadora). ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ricki Lake, Michael St. Gerard, (more)
Writer-director Stephen King falls short in his debut at the helm with Maximum Overdrive, an absurd tale about a radiation storm that somehow animates machines across the world, causing them to turn on their makers. The film focuses on a group of survivors held captive at the Dixie Boy Diner by a group of bad-tempered semis. Led by Emilio Estevez, the diner-goers do their impression of Ten Little Indians, waiting their turn until each gets bumped off one by one. There are holes in the plot big enough for the semis to drive through; for example, why don't the trucks run over the diner at the start of the film rather than wait for ninety minutes? Maximum Overdrive's only distinction is that it is, without question, one of the worst films released in the '80s. ~ Jeremy Beday, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Emilio Estevez, Pat Hingle, (more)
