Dylan Baker Movies

The acclaimed graphic novel from crime writer Max Allan Collins becomes this big budget Dreamworks drama from director Sam Mendes and screenwriter David Self. Tom Hanks stars as Michael Sullivan, a morally conflicted Depression-era hit man committing murder in the name of his employer, John Rooney (Paul Newman). A kindly, aging Irish crime boss who raised Sullivan as his surrogate son, Rooney is affiliated with Al Capone in Chicago and thus wields great power in the "Tri-Cities" of Moline, IL; Rock Island, IL; and Davenport, IA. Curious about his father's mysterious profession, Sullivan's son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), stows away in his father's automobile one night and witnesses the execution of a man at the hands of Sullivan and Rooney's biological son, Connor (Daniel Craig). Although Michael keeps his promise to remain silent about what he's seen, the paranoid and unstable Connor tries to wipe out the entire Sullivan clan anyway, succeeding only in killing Sullivan's wife, Annie (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and youngest son, Peter (Liam Aiken). Enraged at this and another surprise betrayal by the Rooneys, Sullivan embarks on a path of bloody retribution, Michael in tow. Although he intends to leave his boy with relatives in the rural town of Perdition once the coast is clear, he ends up exposing Michael to the goriest aspects of his talents, slaughtering former associates as he dodges contract assassin Maguire (Jude Law) and cripples the cash flow of the Rooney and Capone organizations through a series of bank robberies, attempting to force either mob family to offer up the sequestered Connor as a sacrifice. Inspired by the popular Japanese comic book series Lone Wolf and Cub and based loosely on an episode from the life and career of notorious real-life crime figures John and Connor Looney, Road to Perdition co-stars Stanley Tucci as legendary Chicago mobster Frank Nitti. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

This PBS documentary demonstrates that there was more to Benjamin Franklin than most contemporary observers could imagine. The diversity of Franklin's achievements exceeded even what we know today, going far beyond the inventions, the Almanac, the statesmanship, the diplomacy...and the amorous conquests. Much of the teleplay is told in Franklin's own words, relayed in "talking head" fashion by two different actors: Dylan Baker as young Ben, and Richard Easton as the elderly Franklin. Other commentary is offered by a team of eminent historians and by narrator Colm Feore. Intended as a three-part miniseries, Benjamin Franklin ultimately aired in two segments, on November 19 and 20, 2002. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A boy learns more than he expects when he tries to improve his golf game in this drama. Timmy Price (Mason Gamble) is a 12-year-old boy who has begun to display a precocious talent for golf. Hoping to hone his son's interest in the game, Timmy's father, Mr. Price (Dylan Baker), arranges for his son to have a summer job as a caddy at a nearby country club. Timmy gets a crash course in the nature of class when he becomes aware of the sharp divide between the wealthy people who patronize the club and the working-class men and women who are there to quietly fulfill their desires. Charlie Logan (Philip Baker Hall) is one of the leading members of the club who is very much impressed when he sees Timmy practicing, and suggests to Mr. Price that Timmy would do well to study with an accomplished player. Mr. Price arranges for Timmy to train with Foster Pearse (Gary Sinise), a local golfer who once displayed tremendous promise, but dropped out of the professional circuit after winning his first tournament. As Timmy gets to know Foster, he learns a lot about golf, but even more about life, and discovers there's a secret behind Foster's decision to leave to pro tour. A Gentleman's Game was the first directorial credit for producer J. Mills Goodloe. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Grissom (William L. Petersen), Nick (George Eads), and Sara (Jorja Fox) would seem to have an open-and-shut case on their hands when a suspect is caught burying a body that has been shot three times. But, despite an overwhelming amount of evidence, Grissom doubts that the suspect is the guilty party. And in another development, Catherine (Marg Helgenberger) and Warrick (Gary Dourdan) must determine if a woman found dead in a health spa locker room was a victim of natural causes, murder -- or something else. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this science fiction thriller, child psychiatrist Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) has developed a technique that allows her to travel through the minds of her patients. When Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio), a multiple murderer who methodically drowns his victims and performs bizarre rituals with their bodies, falls into a coma, FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) asks Deane to enter the killer's psyche, in the hope of finding a missing girl whom Stargher has kidnapped; if she's not soon found, in all likelihood she'll die in his torture cell. However, once Deane enters the bizarre world of Stargher's mind, she finds getting out to be a very difficult matter. The Cell was the first feature from director Tarsem, who previously made award-winning commercials and music videos, including the video for R.E.M.'s "Losing My Religion." The supporting cast includes Catherine Sutherland, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Dylan Baker, and Pruitt Taylor Vince. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

An airy romance in the tradition of classic Hollywood comedies of the Depression Era, Simply Irresistible (1999) also presses into service the food-obsessed magical realism of Like Water for Chocolate (1992). Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as Amanda Shelton, the chef at Southern Cross, a trendy Tribeca restaurant she inherited from her legendary mother. Not the most inspired of culinary artists, Amanda is running the establishment into the ground, until a cab-driving, Cupid-like guardian angel (playwright Christopher Durang) intervenes with a magical crab that puts Amanda in the path of slick spin master Tom Bartlett (Sean Patrick Flanery). Tom is opening a restaurant for his boss Jonathan Bendel (Dylan Baker), who wants to assure the eatery is no less than a four-star affair, but the temperamental French chef is giving fits to Bartlett and his secretary Lois (Patricia Clarkson). Enter Amanda, who falls head over heels for Tom, love suddenly bestowing upon her the gift of infusing her dishes with powerful amorous emotions that overwhelm diners with a rapturous ecstasy. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Two people who've known the pain of loss and the sting of betrayal are brought together under trying circumstances in this romantic drama. Dutch van den Broeck (Harrison Ford) is a police detective based in Washington D.C. whose wife works for an upscale department store; flying to Miami on business, she dies shortly after takeoff in one of the worst aviation disasters in the city's history. However, Dutch finds out that his wife wasn't actually traveling on business: Kay Chandler (Kristin Scott Thomas) is a prominent political figure whose husband was also killed in the crash, and Dutch and Kay discover that their spouses were on the plane together because they were having an affair. Random Hearts was directed by Sydney Pollack, who also worked with Harrison Ford on his previous film, Sabrina. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A youngster dies of a virus at a day-care center. As detectives Briscoe (Jerry Orbach) and Curtis (Benjamin Bratt) trace the source of the illness, evidence is unearthed of embezzlement and an extramarital affair. Somehow these diverse elements are all bundled together when A.D.A.'s McCoy (Sam Waterston) and Carmichael (Angie Harmon) target a drug manufacturer for prosecution. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

At the time this made-for-TV historical drama first aired on ABC, critics praised the fact that it was more accurate than the 1939 Spencer Tracy vehicle Stanley and Livingstone; while this is generally true (unlike the earlier film, this one was lensed on location in England and Kenya), the pop-psychology sensibilities depicted in the TV movie smack more of the late 20th than the late 19th century. In 1871, young American reporter Henry Morton Stanley (Aidan Quinn) sets out to prove that Scottish-born missionary David Livingstone (Nigel Hawthorne), who years earlier had disappeared somewhere in Central Africa, was still alive, and not "cooked in a stew" as was generally believed. The film is divided into three parts: the search for Livingstone, Stanley's spiritual odyssey after finding his quarry, and Stanley's seemingly futile efforts to prove that he actually found Livingstone to the skeptical and downright hostile members of the Royal Geographic Society in London. Forbidden Territory: Stanley's Search for Livingstone debuted December 7, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

During its first year on the air, the weekly, hour-long ABC series Murder One was unique among legal dramas, in that it dealt with only a single murder case per season. Debuting September 19, 1995, the series spent all of season one focusing on the murder of a young substance-abusing woman, with her lover, obnoxious movie star Neil Avedon (Jason Gedrick), as prime suspect. Handling Avedon's defense were Chris Docknovich (Michael Hayden), Arnold Spivak (J.C. MacKenzie), Justine Appleton (Mary McCormick), and Lisa Gillespie (Grace Phillips), all ambitious young attorneys working for celebrated, controversial, and not entirely ethical criminal lawyer Theodore Hoffman (Daniel Benzali). Appearing for the prosecution were ruthless Assistant DA Miriam Grasso (Barbara Bosson), who worked for the even more ruthless DA Roger Garfield (Gregory Itzin). The Grasso-Garfield team included police detective Arthur Poulson (Dylan Baker) and investigator David Blalock (Kevin Tighe). Among the other first-season regulars were Patricia Clarkson as Theodore Hoffman's long-suffering wife, Ann; John Fleck as Hoffman's office manager, Louis; and Grace Phillips as his receptionist, Lila. While the "one case per year" gimmick attracted a lot of publicity, and -- for a while, anyway -- a lot of viewers, the ratings for Murder One fell precipitously as season one wore on. Thus, when the series returned for its second season, several changes had been imposed, the first being that three cases would be dramatized, rather than merely one. On the docket for season two were a political assassination in which DA Garfield was implicated, an O.J.-like celebrity murder case involving an arrogant basketball star, and a case involving a serial killer who preyed only on professional criminals. Series co-star Daniel Benzali was gone, replaced by younger but no less crafty and cunning defense attorney James "Jimmy" Wyler (Anthony LaPaglia). Also missing was Grace Phillips as Lisa Gillespie, whose replacement, hotheaded junior attorney Aaron Mosely, was played by David Bryan Woodside. Concluding its weekly run on January 23, 1997, Murder One briefly returned five months later in a miniseries format, remaining on the air from May 25 to 29, 1997. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A blend of screwball farce and whodunit murder mystery, this madcap period piece was the brainchild of executive producer George Lucas. In 1939, Penny Henderson (Mary Stuart Masterson) is the harried general secretary and de facto manager of a new fourth radio network, WBN. On the night that the Chicago station goes live on the air, a mysterious voice interrupts, and a series of murders soon follows, each one described by the same sonorous phantom. While Penny and her staff desperately try to keep WBN's roster of shows afloat during the unfolding crisis, her estranged husband Roger (Brian Benben), a staff writer, becomes the chief suspect. Roger is forced to dodge a detective, Lieutenant Cross (Michael Lerner), find the real killer, win Penny back, and perform last-minute script rewrites for an unhappy sponsor. As the backstage hysteria reaches a fever pitch, the show goes on with real-life radio-era pros such as George Burns and Rosemary Clooney. Although never explicitly pointed out in the film, Radioland Murders (1994) was a pseudo-prequel to an earlier Lucas feature -- Roger and Penny are the future parents of Curt Henderson (Richard Dreyfuss) from American Graffiti (1973). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Made for television, the two-part, four-hour Love, Honor and Obey: The Last Mafia Marriage is the true story of "mob wife" Rosalie Profaci Bonanno, here played by Nancy McKeon. Inasmuch as the teleplay is based on Ms. Bonanno's memoirs, it is perhaps understandable that she casts herself as an innocent bystander in the ongoing saga of Mafia activity in the United States, totally ignorant (at least at first) as to how her father Joe Profaci (Tomas Milian) and his chief mob rival Joseph Bonanno (Ben Gazzara) support themselves and their families. It is further suggested that Rosalie is completely in the dark concerning the mob connections of her husband Bill (Eric Roberts), Joe Bonanno's son; after all, how could anything be amiss when the Pope Himself calls to congratulate the bride and groom? Ultimately Rosalie sees the light when her husband enters a war against opposing mob families, and is subsequently thrown in prison. The rest of the story chronicles how Rosalie struggles to escape the onus of "Mafia princess", seeking out honest, mainstream work to take care of herself and her children. Love, Honor and Obey: The Last Mafia Marriage originally aired Mary 23 and 25, 1993 on CBS. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

When it comes to love, Paul Matthews and Diane Farrow, two highly educated and talented scientists don't know a thing. Looking at their geeky demeanor's it's easy to see why. Despite the fact that both are neighbors, share the same interests and both are psychobiologists who study primates, neither is really aware of the other romantically until Paul, who is terribly shy around women, goes to gypsy Madame Ruth in desperation and asks for help. She reads his palm and tells him that he needs a woman; she then hands him Love Potion No. 8 which will attract women like flies to honey. This romantic comedy chronicles what happens to him (and Diane) when, after experimenting on animals, they decide to try it on themselves. Though the changes only last four hours per dose, they are truly remarkable and the two agree to separate for three weeks and then come back together to compare results. The time passes quickly and wonderfully for them and when they finally reunite both have changed for the better. Just for fun, they decide to go out with each other. They do not drink the potion, but still have a wonderful and passionate night. This leads Paul to propose to Diane. Unfortunately, she thinks she loves another, a man who is really more interested in exploiting the potion for money than he is in her. He ends up buying up all of Madame Ruth's latest batch. Paul goes back to her and explains his problem and that is when Ruth hands him the potent Love Potion No. 9, which can manifest true love. Quickly, he takes it and sets off to find Diane before she makes a terrible mistake. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide