Michael Pitt

Channing Tatum, Michael Peña, and Woody Harrelson star in director Oliver Stone's war drama concerning the investigation of the 1968 My Lai Massacre. Bruce Willis portrays Army General William R. Peers, the man sent to investigate when U.S. soldiers were accused of slaughtering 500 unarmed My Lai villagers -- including numerous women, children, and senior citizens. Tatum co-stars as helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who witnessed the atrocity taking place on the ground below and nobly attempted to end it by hovering between the gunmen and the villagers while rescuing as many survivors as possible. The film's title is taken from the description of My Lai on a Vietnam-era military map of the region. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Francois Girard's adaptation of Alessandro Baricco's novel Silk stars Michael Pitt as a young Frenchman who travels to Japan at the request of a wealthy silkworm magnate who asks him to smuggle back some new worms. The mission succeeds, and this allows the man to live in great comfort with his wife (Keira Knightley). After a few years, they are unable to conceive a child, a situation that leads to the man taking on a lover during his subsequent visits to Japan. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

A man channels his feelings through an obsession with wild birds in this independent drama based on a novel by Harry Crews. Fortysomething George Gattling (Paul Giamatti) is an emotionally stunted man who makes his living doing auto upholstery and lives with his sister, Precious (Rusty Schwimmer), and her autistic son, Fred (Michael Pitt). Though George has an on-and-off relationship with Betty (Michelle Williams), a constantly stoned young woman just edging out of her teens, one of the few ways in which his deeper feelings come to the surface is his interest in falcons. George loves to capture and train the birds, even if he isn't especially good at it and has lost nearly all the falcons he's tried to keep. When Fred dies in a drowning accident, his family is devastated, but George is incapable of expressing his grief. One day, George finds a striking red-tailed hawk, and he immediately becomes obsessed with the bird. As George struggles to keep the magnificent hawk in captivity and keep it safe while training it to obey his commands, he's finally able to connect with the sense of loss that has haunted him since Fred's passing. The Hawk Is Dying received its premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Acclaimed playwright Brett C. Leonard makes his feature-film debut as the writer and director of the prison drama, Jailbait, which was inspired, in part, by Leonard's feelings about mandatory sentencing laws. Randy (Michael Pitt of The Dreamers) is a young prisoner, recently sentenced to 25 years. His new cellmate is Jake (Stephen Adly-Guirgis, also a respected New York playwright, and the star of Todd Solondz's Palindromes), a hardened lifer. Randy seems despondent, and is reluctant to speak to Jake at all, but the older con gives him a book to read and is generous with advice. Gradually, Randy opens up. He's been convicted of vandalizing an expensive car. The sentence was severe because it was his third offense. His other two convictions were for possession of large quantities of marijuana. But Jake refuses to feel sorry for Randy, telling him that he was stupid for committing another crime when he knew his situation. Eventually, Jake's friendly cajoling turns to bullying. By the time Randy's mother (Laila Robins) comes to visit him, he has to hide the visible signs of Jake's abuse. When Randy's efforts to regain control of his prison life are thwarted, he considers taking more drastic action. Jailbait had its world premiere at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

Actress and filmmaker Asia Argento directed this faithful screen adaptation of the fictional J.T. Leroy's fictional memoir, which documents a boy's truly harrowing road to adulthood. Jeremiah (Jimmy Bennett) is the seven-year-old son of Sarah (Asia Argento), an unstable and unwed mother who abandoned her son and left him to be raised by foster parents. Jeremiah has come to love his guardians, and is devastated when Sarah arrives at their doorstep, demanding her child back. Threatening Jeremiah with torture if he tries to run away, Sarah introduces her young son to drugs and encourages her one-night-stand paramours to help "discipline" her son when she feels his behavior is inappropriate. Sarah marries a man named Emerson (Jeremy Renner), but abandons him shortly afterward; Emerson responds by molesting Jeremiah, and soon the child is left in the care of his grandparents (Peter Fonda and Ornella Muti), members of a fundamentalist Christian sect which emphasizes child discipline that's strict to the point of abuse. After three years, Sarah returns with a new husband, Kenny (Matt Schulze), and takes Jeremiah (now played by Dylan Sprouse and Cole Sprouse) with her; Kenny spends most of his time on the road as a trucker, and Sarah supports the family at home as a stripper and a prostitute. Sarah also begins dressing her son is girl's clothing, which excites the perverse appetites of Sarah's latest boyfriend, Jackson (Marilyn Manson); she soon leaves Jackson and pairs off with Chester (Jeremy Sisto), a biker with a dangerous way of making a living. The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things premiered at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival, where it was screened as part of the "Directors Fortnight" series. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

James Cox directs the sleazy Hollywood murder tale Wonderland, starring Val Kilmer as legendary porn star John Holmes. Using a non-linear plot structure, the film explores different perspectives of the quadruple homicide that occurred on July 1, 1981, in the Hollywood Hills. At the lowest point of his career and the height of his drug addiction, Holmes was implicated in the murders of the Wonderland gang: Ron Launius (Josh Lucas), Billy Deverell (Tim Blake Nelson), Barbara Richardson (Natasha Gregson Wagner), and Joy Miller (Janeane Garofalo). Launius' wife, Susan (Christina Applegate), was the only survivor. Led by Detective Sam Nico (Ted Levine), the police investigation reveals a dark criminal underworld surrounding Holmes, his disapproving wife, Sharon (Lisa Kudrow), and his innocent teenage girlfriend, Dawn Schiller (Kate Bosworth). Eric Bogosian stars as notorious Hollywood nightclub owner Eddie Nash. Wonderland premiered at the 2003 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Veteran Italian filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci directs the erotic drama The Dreamers, adapted from the novel The Holy Innocents: A Romance by Gilbert Adair. American student Matthew (Michael Pitt) is studying in Paris during the politically turbulent late '60s. The story begins in 1968 with the firing of Henri Langlois, the founder of the French Cinémathèque. At a protest demonstration, Matthew meets cinema-obsessed Isabelle (Eva Green) and her twin brother, Theo (Louis Garrel). When their Bohemian parents (Robin Renucci and Anna Chancellor) leave for the summer, the twins invite Matthew to live with them. While the revolution rages on outside, the three young people stay in the comfortable flat playing decadent sexual games. Bertolucci incorporates clips from classic films like Queen Christina, Band of Outsiders, and Breathless. After showing at several European film festivals, The Dreamers made its U.S. premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

When a pair of bright-but sociopathic teens conspires to commit the perfect murder, a troubled cop teams with her eager new partner to solve the case that left the community in fear and the police without a clue. High school ladies' man Richard Haywood (Ryan Gosling) and outcast Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt) have no motive to commit murder, but they soon conspire to choose a random victim and pin the crime on local pot dealer Ray (Chris Penn), under the guise that the police will never suspect them of such a brutal act. Determined Det. Cassie Merriweather (Sandra Bullock) is assigned to the case, and quickly becomes suspicious of the elusive teens despite the doubts expressed by her superiors and her lack of solid evidence. Soon entering into a dangerous test of wills with the increasingly desperate and dangerous teens, her investigation leads her down a disturbing path that will test her skills as a detective and her will to survive. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Photographer and filmmaker Larry Clark, who made a controversial feature debut with the disturbing drama Kids, returns with another disquieting look at amoral and sexually precocious youth. Bobby (Nick Stahl) is a high school student growing up in southern Florida in the early '90s. Bobby is also a borderline psychotic; he frequently lashes out with brutal violence against those around him and especially enjoys humiliating his best friend Marty (Brad Renfro). While Bobby professes to hate and fear homosexuals, he goads Marty into performing phone sex with men, makes Marty and his friends watch hardcore gay porn films with him, and may have sexually abused Marty. But Marty is hardly the only victim of Bobby's abuse; Bobby has sexually assaulted Marty's girlfriend Lisa (Rachel Miner) and more than once has barged in on the couple while they were making love. Lisa's best friend Ali (Bijou Phillips) has also been raped by Bobby, and he has mistreated nearly everyone in their circle of friends. One night, Marty, Lisa, Ali, and several others decide Bobby's cycle of abuse must stop. But their solution is as ugly as the problem -- the teens stab Bobby, slit his throat, crush his head with a baseball bat, and throw his body into the bay, where the remains will be eaten by alligators. Bully is based on a book by journalist Jim Schutze, which recounted the facts of the 1993 murder of Bobby Kent, who after years of abusing his friends and classmates, was killed by seven of his acquaintances in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. As with Kids, Larry Clark's startlingly graphic depiction of sex, violence, and drug use among teenagers crossed the boundaries of what the MPAA could permit in an R-rated film, and the picture's distributors chose to release the film without a rating. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide