Darren Hynes Movies
Lars (Ryan Gosling) and Gus (Paul Schneider) are the grown children of a father who died recently and a mother who died giving birth to Lars. But as brothers, they couldn't be more different. While Gus lives in the family home and has a loving wife (Emily Mortimer) and a child on the way, Lars leads a more reclusive existence in the family's garage, hiding in plain sight of his small, wintry hometown. Painfully shy and eccentric, Lars fails to recognize that his co-worker Margo (Kelli Garner) has a major crush on him, and he picks up on a casual reference made by his cubicle mate, who mentions a website where you can order life-sized, anatomically correct sex dolls. But instead of seeing a sex object, Lars sees in this doll a potential life partner and the only kind of social "peer" he can relate to. So Lars orders a doll, whom he names Bianca, and begins treating her with utmost gentlemanly respect -- and as though she's his real-life, flesh-and-blood girlfriend. As he begins bringing Bianca with him everywhere he goes, the townspeople have to find just the right balance between supporting Lars' unusual romance and trying to introduce him to a more conventional partner. Lars and the Real Girl was written by Six Feet Under scribe Nancy Oliver and directed by Mr. Woodcock's Craig Gillespie. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ryan Gosling, Emily Mortimer, (more)
Evidently inspired by the 1958 theatrical feature It! The Terror From Beyond Space (which, of course, was also the basis for the 1979 thriller Alien), this made-for-cable melodrama begins as the crew of the space shuttle Oklahoma returns to earth after a routine mission. Unbeknownst to them, they have also brought back an alien "guest" in the form of seeds which blossom into insectoid life-forms, infiltrating human bodies to complete their evolution. At first, the victims of these aliens think they've merely broken out in blisters, but they soon learn differently -- to their unutterable horror. Racing against the clock, the Oklahoma's chief medical officer "Geronimo" Horne (Nicholas Lea) works in concert with his colleague Thaddeus Owens (Anthony Sherwood) and entimologist Savannah Bailey (Jamie Luner) to stem the alien invasion before the rapidly proliferating creatures reach the "threshold" amount -- at which point they will be impossible to control. Threshold debuted April 19, 2003, on the Sci-Fi Channel. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Nicholas Lea, Jamie Luner, (more)
