Tim Guinee Movies

American Blue Note concentrates on a Manhattan jazz quintet. Peter MacNichol, Carl Capotorto, Tim Guinee, Bill Christopher-Myers and Jonathan Walker play the five musicians, each with individual crosses to bear. Allotting themselves one year to get booked into a major jazz club or else they'll split, the quintet performs a lot of nickel-and-dime gigs in the meantime. But only one of the five makes it to the band's "Valhalla." Louis Guss, Zohra Lampert and Trini Alvarado appear in peripheral roles. Filmed in 1989, the independently produced American Blue Note didn't get a distributor until 1991. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Tough, world-weary wanderer Rinda travels throughout the Southwest working occasionally as a truck-stop cook. She is in one lonely town when she hooks up with sexy Bo Schrag. They have a brief affair, and she doesn't realize Bo is married until his plain wife shows up during one of their sessions with a shotgun in her hand. Rinda and Hallie Schrag end up becoming friends and taking off for Phoenix. This taut little thriller chronicles their many exploits along the way. The tenuous friendship between two is nearly destroyed when they pick up handsome cowboy hitcher Dodge after he helps them fix their car. Together the three go to a deserted hot springs, and en route a quiet, tense rivalry between the women, both of whom want the enigmatic Dodge, builds. Meanwhile, back in the town they just left, police begin investigating a robbery-homicide that just may involve Dodge. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Aldous Huxley's 1932 science fiction novel was previously adapted to film (a 1980 TV movie starring Bud Cort) and radio (a 1956 CBS Radio Workshop two-parter with an opening intro by Huxley) and again to TV in this 1998 production. In a high-tech city of a future time, humans are genetically engineered, monogamy is frowned on, and the drug Soma is consumed to eliminate stress in a society where the citizens are niched into rigid classes (Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma). Scornful looks are directed at high-level Alphas Bernard Marx (Peter Gallagher) and Lenina Crowne (Rya Kihlstedt), a couple who have become interested in each other over and beyond the commonly accepted one-night stands. Bernard has climbed to the upper echelons at the Neo-Pavlovian Conditioning Center, while Lenina is employed in the educational conditioning field. When Bernard and Lenina visit an outlying Reservation, their copter crashes, and they are under attack by the locals when Shakespeare-quoting "savage" John Cooper (Tim Guinee) intervenes. When John takes Bernard and Lenina to the house where he lives with his alcoholic mother Linda (Sally Kirkland), Bernard is fascinated by John's retro way of life and his collection of literature. With automatic satellite tracking in play, a craft arrives in short order to return Bernard and Lenina to the city. For research purposes, Bernard takes the two back to civilization -- where John (aka "The Savage") becomes a media celeb, and Linda gets hooked on Soma. The Director of Hatcheries and Conditioning (Miguel Ferrer) considers Cooper a threat to society, but his superior, the Controller (Leonard Nimoy), who thinks the social order is secure, holds a progressive, thoughtful attitude regarding past, present, and future. Meanwhile, Lenina has a sexual attraction for John, who rejects her passionate advances because it "isn't love," and he soon becomes disenchanted with the unspiritual, hedonistic way of life he sees in this "brave new world." Premiered April 19, 1998 on NBC. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

A single thirtysomething whose friends all seem to be romantically involved, happily married, or with child meets an eccentric Frenchman who shows her just what an amazing place the world can truly be in director Zoe Cassavetes' entry into the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. As if it wasn't depressing enough to be 35 and still single, Nora (Parker Posey) is constantly reminded by her loving but tactless mother (Gena Rowlands) just how unlucky she has been in love. Though Nora longs to enter into a blissful union like the one of her best friend, Audrey (Drea de Matteo), she finds that the dating pool just isn't what it used to be. Things soon begin to look up, however, when Nora makes the acquaintance of handsome Frenchman Julian (Melvil Poupaud). While the two share an instant chemistry that is undeniable, Nora is saddened to learn that Julian will soon be departing for his native soil. When Julian does depart, Nora laments the fact that she wasn't able to express her feelings more effectively. If only Nora could organize her scattered thoughts long enough to remember her love object's last name, she might not have to go searching out every "Julian" in Paris to locate the man of her dreams. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The two-part British miniseries Comics was written by Lynda La Plante, of Prime Suspect fame. In one of his first major TV roles, Tim Guinee stars as Johnny Lazar, a second-rate standup comedian. Having witnessed a gangland "hit," Johnny himself is targeted for extermination, whereupon he embarks upon a noir odyssey reminiscent of the Warren Beatty cult film Mickey One (1966). Comics was originally broadcast in England in 1993 over the London Weekend Television service. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Sheryl Lee stars in this fact-based story of a colonial woman taken prisoner by a tribe of Shawnee Indians during the French and Indian War. After being abducted to the tribe's settlement in the wilds of Virginia, Mary Ingles (Lee) befriends a Dutch woman who is also being held captive, and the two manage to escape and work their way back home through the dangerous Virginia wilderness. Based upon the novel by James Alexander Thorn. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide

With Heaven and Earth -- cobbled together from two autobiographical reminiscences (When Heaven and Earth Changed Places and Child of War, Woman of Peace by Le Ly Hayslip -- Oliver Stone completes his self-declared "Vietnam Trilogy" (the other films being Platoon and Born On the Fourth of July) of films examining the Vietnam War from different perspectives. Heaven and Earth begins in the central Vietnamese village of Ky La during the 1950s. Phung Le Ly (Hiep Thi Le) is an innocent peasant girl, helping her mother (Joan Chen) to tend the rice paddies while being lectured in the ways of life by her father (Haing Ngor). The idyllic peace of the village is disrupted when a jet bomber crosses the skies. Soon the village is decimated as the American-backed South Vietnamese government troops and the Viet Cong engage in brutal warfare in which the victims are the innocent villagers. Le Ly is both tortured and raped. She leaves Ky La for Danang for a life as a prostitute. There she meets the tall and craggy American soldier Steve Butler (Tommy Lee Jones), a kind but lonely man who isn't looking for sex but for someone to settle down with -- as he says, "I want an Oriental wife." They marry, and Steve takes her back to the United States, where her in-laws look at her not as a wife but as a pet. In the harsh glare of 1970s U.S. culture, Le Ly has trouble adjusting to the American way of life. But not as hard a time as her husband, who, after twenty years in Vietnam, discovers he cannot adapt to civilian life. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

This long-delayed science fiction thriller from director Gary Fleder was actually filmed prior to his box-office hit Don't Say a Word (2001), which preceded it in theaters by several months. Based on a 1953 short story by Philip K. Dick, the film shares that schizophrenic author's long-running obsessions with concealed identity and humanity's potential inferiority to alternative life forms. Gary Sinise stars as Spencer John Olham, a respected government scientist in the year 2079 trying to devise a secret weapon that will help his fellow humans win a decade-long war with invading aliens that are cloning human subjects and using the replicas as walking time bombs. Suddenly, Olham is accused of being an alien spy and a nationwide manhunt to capture him ensues. With even his doctor wife (Madeleine Stowe) unsure that she can trust him, Olham must uncover the truth on his own, even as he's relentlessly pursued by Hathaway (Vincent D'Onofrio), a federal agent charged with destroying the clones. Imposter has a complicated history, originally produced in early 2000 as a 30-minute short to be included in an anthology entitled "The Light Years Trilogy," a project that never got off the ground. So impressed was Dimension Films with the completed piece, however, that the footage was incorporated into a new feature version. That film was then shuffled around the release schedule for more than a year as effects were completed, reshoots were ordered, and the film was recut for a PG-13 rating instead of its original R. The R-rated "director's cut" was later released on DVD. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Four people are cold-bloodedly killed in a jewelry store. The suspect, a most charming and persuasive young man, insists upon representing himself in course. Thanks to his emotional display of regret and contrition, the accused murderer may well be able to sway the jury -- or at least one of the jurors, a woman who cannot take her eyes off the man. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Seemingly content living the life of a derelict, former mercenary Nick (Dolph Lundgren) agrees -- reluctantly and only after he is offered a large fortune from two mining company executives -- to gather up a unit of fellow soldiers of fortune and fly to the island of Jakarta in order to convince local peasants to give up their land. Once he arrives, Nick sees soldiers burn a peasant village. When he learns that the bloodshed is not for the control of such riches as uranium or jade, but for an ancient deposit of bat guano, he changes his alliance and begins fighting for the natives. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Swedish director Lasse Hallstrom made his American movie debut with this romantic comedy, starring Holly Hunter as Renata Bella, an aimless Bostonian thirtysomething who attends a seminar for aspiring condo salespersons. Here she meets hotshot salesman Sam Sharpe (Richard Dreyfuss), who immediately falls in love with her. After the marriage, Sam's well-meaning but obnoxious insistence on insinuating himself into every aspect of Renata's life rubs the rest of her family the wrong way. Though the script occasionally veers into both cliché and sentimentality, Once Around ends up a thoroughly charming experience, thanks to Hallstrom's knowing direction and the marvelous chemistry between Hunter and Dreyfuss. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

The irrepressible Stargate team faces their biggest challenge yet as they set out in search of the ancient artifact with the power to defeat the villainous Ori before they launch a devastating attack on planet Earth. The Ori are determined to exterminate all traces of mankind, but not if Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks), Teals (Christopher Judge), Vala (Claudia Black), Sam (Amanda Tapping), and Cam (Ben Browder) have anything to say about it. With a scheming I.O. operative aboard the Odyssey, the final fight for humanity begins to unfold in the deepest reaches of outer space. Beau Bridges co-stars. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide