Kip Konwiser Movies

Four friends face down a mace-spraying mother, an '80s arcade champ, and Casper Van Dien in their quest to take the top prize at the Cyberbowl Video Game Championship in L.A., and prove that all of those hours playing Xbox weren't spent in vain. When Cody lost his job, he turned to video games for comfort. Meanwhile, things go from bad to worse when Cody's gorgeous wife grows weary of being married to a gamer, and walks out on him. But when Cody's pal Andy (Jason Mewes) rallies their old gang the Reign Clan to compete in the Cyberbowl Video Game Championship, it looks like the perfect opportunity to put their gaming skills to use, and win a big cash prize in the process. With the old pals Oliver (Matt Shively) and "Hollywood" (Moises Arias) in tow, Cody and Andy set their sights on L.A. Unfortunately for the Reign Clan, the forces of the universe seem to be working against them. Now, as the contest draws near and Andy finally gets some quality face time with gamer goddess Rickie (Zelda Williams), the Reign Clan find that their enemies on the virtual battlefield are no match for the real-life foes who are determined to see them fail. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A young man struggles to overcome a physical handicap in this drama based on a true story. Matt Hamill (Theodore Conley) was born to a single mother (Susan Gibney), who was told her young son was bright, talented, and entirely deaf. Without a father to rely on, young Matt turns to his grandfather Stanley (Raymond J. Barry) as his male role model; Stanley encourages the boy not to allow his deafness to hold him back, and urges him to take up wrestling. Matt shows tremendous promise as a wrestler, but while the sport helps him build confidence and muscle, he isn't sure how to deal with others, particularly girls. After graduating from high school, Matt (now played by Russell Harvard) attends Purdue on a wrestling scholarship, but he's forced to leave school due to poor grades. However, he has an opportunity to redeem himself when his wrestling skills earn him an invite to the Rochester Institute of Technology, a school with a special program for deaf and hard-of-hearing students. For the first time, Matt has peers who are also deaf, and he befriends his roommate Jay (Michael Anthony Spady) and falls for pretty coed Kristi (Shoshannah Stern). But it's a challenge for the lifelong loner to open up to other people and admit his weaknesses, and he also has to learn a new way of communicating by using American Sign Language after spending his life as a lip-reader. The Hammer (aka Hamill) was based on the life of Matt Hamill, a three-time NCAA wrestling champion who has gone on to become a successful mixed-martial-arts competitor. Due to its subject matter and large hearing-impaired audience, the film was exhibited as Open Caption (with onscreen readable text) in theaters. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A struggling Los Angeles actor who has never fully grasped his Chinese roots takes an eye-opening journey to Shanghai after inheriting his grandmother's home in this romantic comedy starring X-Men: The Last Stand's Ken Leung and Heroes's cheerleader Hayden Panettiere. Liam (Leung) is an aspiring Hollywood star who spends the majority of time picking up bar girls with his best friend Joe -- a starving writer who has yet to pen a proper screenplay. While Liam does share an innocent relationship with precocious 16-year-old Adelaide (Panettiere), she often comes off as more mature than he and the age difference between the pair is far too glaring to ignore. Upon receiving notice that he has inherited his grandmother's home in Shanghai, Liam throws caution to the wind and purchases an airplane ticket. Shortly after landing in China, Liam becomes smitten with beautiful local Micky (Kelly Hu) and gradually learns to embrace his Eastern roots. But it's difficult to exist comfortably between two cultures -- much less two women -- and before long Liam finds that in connecting with the past, he is simultaneously laying the groundwork for his future. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Via stunning on-slope footage and incisive interviews, Matt Goodman's documentary For Right or Wrong investigates the common threads that unite all professional snowboarders: an overwhelming fear, and the sensation of rushing headlong into the great unknown. Although such trepidation can easily exhilarate, it can also just as readily pull a participant over the precipice and into death's jaws. Goodman provides a firsthand on-camera glimpse of this sport as it evolves from a dangerous underground phenomena into a mainstream activity, with all of the assets and liabilities that accompany this shift. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Two girls born at the same time on different sides of the world are brought together by an act of mercy in this drama. Katie (Mika Boorem) is a high-school student who has grown up in a wealthy suburb of Los Angeles. While Katie has never had to want for material things, she feels a certain dissatisfaction in her life, and between dealing with her combative parents (Beau Bridges and Linda Hamilton), her sexually aggressive boyfriend (Erik von Detten), and a mysterious boy who has caught her eye (Jonathan Trent), Katie is ready for a change in her life. One of Katie's teachers, Mr. Matthews (Sean Astin) persuades Katie to investigate Doctor's Gift, an international medical outreach program, as a rewarding volunteer opportunity that would look good on her college admission forms. Katie end up traveling to China with the Doctor's Gift team, where she discovers a world far different than the one she has known. Katie encounters Lin (Yi Ding), a girl who was born the same day she was but has led a very different life; facially disfigured, Lin was abandoned by her parents as an infant, and when she was taken in by Daniel (Luoyong Wang), it caused a rift that ended his marriage. The Doctor's Gift organization has offered to provide plastic surgery for Lin through their affiliated program Project Smile, but after previous surgery failed to correct her defects, Lin isn't so sure she wants to risk another disappointment. Writer and director Jeff Kramer based Smile on his daughter's experiences as a volunteer with Doctor's Gift, and the producers have pledged to donate a portion of the film's profits to the organization ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A pair of impulsive young men take different paths on the road to maturity in this drama, the first feature film from actor-turned-filmmaker Scott Caan. Rusty (Shawn Hatosy) and Dallas (Caan) are two buddies in their early twenties who live on the rundown underside of Los Angeles; they both have an appetite for alcohol and trouble, and would probably be in jail if it weren't for Rusty's understanding mother, Mary (Kelly Lynch). Mary is worried about her son, and when she begins dating an analyst, Bob (Jeff Goldblum), she persuades him to take Rusty on as a patient. As Rusty begins to work through the demons that have raged within him since the death of his father when he was a child, he begins putting his life on a more positive path. Dallas, however, is drawn deeper into a life of crime, and he wants Rusty to join him for a potentially risky job. Dallas 362 also features supporting performances from Marley Shelton, Selma Blair, Freddy Rodriguez, and Heavy D. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The high-school football documentary The Last Game depicts one season of one of the best teams in Pennsylvania, Central Bucks West. Led by star running back Dustin Picciotti and coach Mike Pettine Sr., the team attempts to continue a winning streak that has been maintained through the previous two seasons. The biggest threat they face on their run to yet another state championship is a team coached by Mike Pettine Jr. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Produced for the HBO cable network, this docudrama explores the social and ethical issues at the heart of the infamous Tuskegee Study of Untreated Blacks With Syphilis. From 1932 through 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service studied 600 poor African-American sharecroppers in Macon County, AL -- 399 chronic syphilitics and a 201-man healthy control group. Doctors treated the men with placebos, hid the true nature of their research, and withheld penicillin even after it became the standard and highly effective treatment for the disease in the mid-'40s. Although the experiment was hardly a secret, it was not until the early '70s that a public outcry developed; by then, all but 127 of the original study group had died. A class-action lawsuit obtained modest financial reparations for the participants and their descendants, but it was not until 1997 that President Bill Clinton offered an official government apology for the study. Framed as a series of flashbacks during the 1971 congressional hearings about the experiment, the film employs the viewpoint of Eunice Evers (Alfre Woodard), a local nurse who knew of the study's true nature, but devoted her life to caring for the men as they suffered horrifying physical and mental debilities and eventually died. The film charts her warm personal relationships with many of the participants -- the title refers to a singing and dancing troupe named in her honor -- and her failed romance with Caleb Humphries (Laurence Fishburne), an experimental subject who obtained penicillin from a military doctor and left the study to fight in World War II. Miss Evers' Boys was adapted from the play by David Feldshuh, which was itself based on the book Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment by James H. Jones. Although fictionalized, the title character is based on the real-life Eunice Rivers. The film won three Emmy Awards, including top acting honors for Woodard. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

In this heart-warming, youth-oriented drama, a girl raises an orphaned bear cub. When the cuddly fur ball turns into a full-grown bear, she must make a difficult decision about whether or not she should return it to the wilderness. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi