Norm Waitt Movies

Kevin Costner stars as a father that moves his pair of kids to an isolated farm only to find his daughter's changed behavior might have something to do with a burial ground near his property in Luis A. Berdejo's The New Daughter. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Renée Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr. headline this romantic comedy about an ambitious Miami executive who meets the man of her dreams and begins reassessing her big-city values after accepting a temporary transfer to the middle of nowhere. When it comes to climbing the corporate latter, Lucy Hill (Zellweger) is a good few rungs above her closest competitor; she's got ambition to spare, and she cares more about driving the latest model car and filling her closet with shoes than making friends around the office. Offered a temporary assignment restructuring a manufacturing plant in the snowbound town of New Ulm, Lucy accepts, knowing that a big promotion is just around the corner. But New Ulm and Miami couldn't be more different if they were each located on separate continents, and as Lucy warms to the locals she discovers that there's more to life than making top dollar and wearing the latest fashions. When handsome local Ted Mitchell (Harry Connick Jr.) takes an interest in Lucy, it isn't long before the whole town is abuzz with rumors of romance, and the girl from the city discovers that a bit of rural magic could work wonders for her outlook on life. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Eva Longoria Parker, Paul Rudd, and Lake Bell star in first-time feature filmmaker Jeff Lowell's heavenly romantic comedy concerning a female psychic and a doubtful skeptic who find their fledgling love affair thwarted by the latter's recently deceased fiancée. Henry (Rudd) and Kate (Longoria Parker) were all prepared to live out their "happily ever after" when tragedy struck from out of nowhere and Kate was killed on their wedding day. In the aftermath of the accident, a devastated Paul reluctantly takes his sister's advice and pays a visit to local psychic Ashley (Bell). Now, despite the fact that he openly questions her ability to communicate with the dearly departed, Paul can't help but fall head over heels in love with Ashley. Despite the fact that the feelings are most certainly mutual, however, their growing relationship is threatened when Kate makes it her supernatural mission to sabotage the happy couple's fledgling relationship before it starts to get serious. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

An ex-con looking to start life anew with his loving fiancée resorts to extreme measures as a means of funding his lifelong dream in director Stewart Hendler's dark supernatural thriller. Max Truemont (Josh Holloway) has served his debt to society, and now he is ready to make a fresh start alongside his faithful fiancée, Roxanne (Sarah Wayne Callies). When the bank takes umbrage to Max's manslaughter conviction and refuses to approve his loan application, the desperate recidivist soon joins forces with a pair of shady associates to carry out what promises to be a lucrative kidnapping. Upon abducting the eight-year-old son of the richest woman in the state, Max, Roxanne, and their criminal collaborators travel to a secluded and abandoned summer camp to await further instruction. Now, as loyalties begin to shift, suspicions arise, and the deteriorating situation appears to go into a menacing downward spiral, Max gradually begins to suspect that their young hostage may not be quite as innocent as outward appearances suggest. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Diane Keaton stars as a unconditionally loving, but meddling, mother whose vain attempt to prevent her insecure youngest daughter from repeating the same mistakes that she made leads to a series of comic misunderstandings in director Michael Lehmann's affectionate family comedy. When it comes to the topic of motherhood, Daphne Wilder (Keaton) has seen it all. Her eldest daughter, Maggie (Lauren Graham), is a highly respected psychologist and her middle daughter, Mae (Piper Perabo), is both sexy and smart, but youngest Milly (Mandy Moore) just can't seem to get things right no matter how hard she tries. Recognizing that the romantic exploits of her charming-but-struggling youngest always seem to end in tears, concerned mother Daphne vows to find Millie the perfect man. Though she always means well, Daphne's misguided attempt to set her daughter up by placing a carefully worded personal ad proves once and for all that even the most well-intending of mothers can sometimes overstep their boundaries. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Divorced architect Jonathan Rivers (Michael Keaton) seems to lead a pretty good life with partial custody of his young son and a happy second marriage to Anna (Chandra West), a best-selling author. Things take an ugly turn when Anna disappears during a thunderstorm, apparently the victim of a freak accident. Eventually, her body is found, and Jonathan sinks into despair. Then he meets Raymond (Ian McNeice), who claims that Anna has contacted him through EVP, or electronic voice phenomena. Raymond explains that the dead can communicate from beyond via static on common electronic equipment like radios and televisions. Jonathan is skeptical until he starts getting phone calls from Anna's inactive cell phone. He visits Raymond, whose home is filled with audio and video monitors and high-tech recording equipment. There he meets Sarah (Deborah Kara Unger), who has recently received a farewell message from her late fiancé. Jonathan eventually receives what appears to be a communication from Anna, but soon afterward, Raymond turns up dead. Obsessed with maintaining contact with his late wife, Jonathan visits a psychic (Connor Tracy) who warns him that he's going down a dangerous path, "meddling" in the affairs of the dead. Undaunted, Jonathan continues to study EVP and eventually finds that he's getting messages from people who haven't died...yet. White Noise was directed by Geoffrey Sax from an original script by Niall Johnson. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide

An advertising executive at risk of losing his job finds that inspiration can sometimes come from the least likely of places in a brotherly comedy about getting laid and getting the job done from director Pat Holden. Adman Ed Waxman (Brendan Fehr) has just been informed by the higher-ups that if he doesn't come up with a killer campaign in the next 48 hours, he can kiss his high-paying job goodbye. Though work is all Ed can think about as the weekend approaches and inspiration seems to take a vacation, the arrival of Ed's womanizing brother, Cooper (Chris Klein), finds the pair setting out on an altogether different mission: to find the overworked and undersexed Ed some fitting female companionship. Just as a series of disastrous encounters with everyone from single mothers to sultry strippers begins to convince Ed that his love life is in as much trouble as his professional life, the appearance of a woman who could quite possibly be Ed's soul mate provides a glimmer of hope that the situation may not be as dire as he previously thought. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The director of such off-beat independent films as In the Soup, director Alexandre Rockwell once again teams with that film's star to deliver this Los Angeles-based comedy concerning superstition and intersecting lives. Things aren't looking so good for television clown Banana's (Steve Buscemi) career, and the fact that his estranged wife, Suzi (Jennifer Beals), has just been arrested for assaulting his girlfriend, Lily (Karyn Parsons), just serves to compound Banana's despair. Teaming with sidekick Binky (Peter Dinklage) to enlist the aid of bail-bondsman Mo (David Proval), Banana and Binky discover that Mo is currently negotiating the release of hip-hop mogul Lenny's (Daryl Mitchell) wife, Sandra (Rose Rollins). The hapless group soon teams to help Mo by finding a suitable kidney donor for the bail-bondsman's ailing son, and though they quickly happen across a drunk (Peter Stormare) who fits the bill, the trouble comes in keeping the prospect in the hospital. Doing their best to help Mo's son under increasingly chaotic circumstances, personal tensions flare as each character desperately tries to simultaneously battle their own inner demons. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

One woman's rocky road to the altar gets played for laughs in this comedy, adapted from the one-woman off-Broadway show written by and starring Nia Vardalos. Toula (Vardalos) is a Greek-American woman who is in her early thirties and single, with no immediate prospects of changing that status any time soon. This bothers Toula a bit, but not half as much as it distresses her mother (Lainie Kazan) and father (Michael Constantine), who want to send her to Greece in hopes of finding a husband in the old country. Toula isn't interested in leaving the country to find a man, but since she works in the family business -- a Greek restaurant in Chicago called Dancing Zorba's -- she has to hear about it whether she likes it or not. One day, after seeing a handsome stranger in the restaurant and not having the courage to talk to him, Toula decides she needs a bit of self-improvement. Despite her dad's misgivings, Toula signs up for a night-school class studying computers, trades in her glasses for contact lenses, gets a different job at a travel agency, and spruces herself up with a new look and a new attitude. To her very pleasant surprise, she once again encounters the handsome stranger, who soon asks her out on a date. Schoolteacher Ian Miller (John Corbett) is seemingly perfect -- he's tall, handsome, smart, good-natured, and soon in love with Toula -- except for two little things: he's not Greek, and he's a vegetarian, both of which horrify Toula's family. When Ian pops the question (and Toula says yes), the bride-to-be has to negotiate a reasonably peaceful meeting between Ian's upper-class parents and her own working-class extended family. There's also the matter of the wedding, which Toula's mother is planning around the notion that quantity IS quality. My Big Fat Greek Wedding also features Ian Gomez (Vardalos' real-life husband), Louis Mandylor, Andrea Martin, and Joey Fatone (from the pop group *NSYNC). Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson helped produce the film through the auspices of their production company, Playtone. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Film superstar Nicolas Cage's directing debut, Sonny follows a very unconventional family as they struggle to overcome personal and financial adversity. Young Sonny (James Franco) returns home to New Orleans from Army service to find his mother Jewel (Brenda Blethyn), a prostitute, in dire financial straits due to her marketability decreasing exponentially as her age increases. Jewel takes heart at her son's return, however, as she had raised him to be a male prostitute and his mid-'20s vitality should be able to provide a much-needed boost to her family's income -- which until now has primarily been based on Jewel's boyfriend Henry's (Harry Dean Stanton) small-time thievery, as well as the income generated by Jewel's new recruit, Carol (Mena Suvari). Sonny initially scoffs at the thought, having been offered a chance for a legitimate job from his Army buddy (Scott Caan), but when that possibility falls through, Sonny finds he has no choice but to work for his mother. ~ Ryan Shriver, All Movie Guide

A pair of mismatched, down-and-out L.A. misfits find that their luck is about to change -- thanks to a charismatic, oblivious young buck from the Lone Star state -- in this psychological drama. Robert Forster plays Jack Waters, a con man whose best days are behind him when Henry (Kip Pardue) steps off a bus and stumbles into his life. Young, naïve, and attractive, Henry's everything Jack once was, and the old man plans to be a defacto agent of sorts, farming Henry out to appear on game shows and whatever else Tinseltown has to offer. But when Jack's unstable, erstwhile stripper girlfriend, Moira (Rose McGowan), sets her sights on Henry, she's determined to get a piece of the action -- both literally and figuratively. Meanwhile, Henry's career takes off, and the two hangers-on struggle desperately to take control of their "sure thing." ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide