Mike Rad Movies
- 1999
In the fourth season opener, Buffy (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Willow (Alyson Hannigan) have entered college in Sunnydale and set about choosing courses. Despite a roommate who snores, Willow is confident in the new intellectual environment, but Buffy feels unsure of herself and completely out of place. Soon, she meets Eddie (Pedro Balmaceda), another insecure freshman clutching his favorite book, Of Human Bondage. After they part ways, Eddie is attacked by a group of vampires led by Sunday (Katherine Towne), a punkish vampire on campus. Later, Buffy realizes that Eddie was not in class and goes to his dorm room only to find his things missing, except for the book. While on slayer patrol, a newly vamped Eddie lures Buffy into a confrontation with Sunday. In other plot developments, Xander (Nicholas Brendon) has not entered college, but gone on a trip across America, ending in Oxnard and a stint in a male strip club -- as a dishwasher. Buffy also meets Riley (Marc Blucas), a psychology grad student who will factor more prominently in her life in the future. ~ All Movie Guide
- 1999
In this Emmy-winning concluding episode of a two-part story, Ross (George Clooney) suffers the consequences for his part in the death of ALD patient Ricky Abbott. Also detrimentally affected are Carol (Julianna Margulies) , who assisted Ross in treating Ricky, and his superiors Greene (Anthony Edwards) and Weaver (Laura Innes). Weighed down by controversy and not wishing to cause any more trouble for his colleagues, Ross bids farewell to County General. In other developments, Greene treats injuries stemming from a school bus accident; tragedy strikes in the home of troubled Nigerian janitor Mobalage (Djimon Hounsou); and Carol makes a painful personal sacrifice to save her free clinic. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Clive Owen stars in this gritty, over the top action thriller as Mr. Smith, a gun-toting badass with a hair trigger and an unknown past. He's far from a doctor and farther from a parent, but when he unwittingly discovers an innocent woman delivering a baby right in the middle of a gunfight, Smith enters the fray to save her and though the woman expires, he is the one left in care of the orphaned child. He thinks that the killers were after the woman, but soon he realizes that they had a far more unlikely target: the baby. Smith's regular company is a seedy underworld full of unsavory characters, so he takes the child to the closest thing he knows to a mother: a sultry prostitute played by Monica Bellucci, who specializes in clientele with a mommy fetish. Teamed with his hot but unlikely partner, Smith unloads barrel after barrel to protect the mysterious baby from Mr. Hertz, a ruthless criminal mastermind played by Paul Giamatti. Smith plans to figure out why Hertz and his thugs are after the baby, but if he can't uncover the truth, he'll settle for leaving them all dead in the process. ~ Cammila Albertson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, (more)
- 2007
Despite his lifelong phobia regarding naked people, Monk (Tony Shalhoub) agrees to investigate a murder at a nudist beach. His discomfort amongst the "au naturel" crowd almost leads Monk to align himself with the chief suspect, software billionaire Peter Magneri (Alfred Molina), who has been trying to rezone the beach and kick the nudists out. As the story rolls on, Monk ends up hotly pursuing the wrong suspect, Chance Singer (Diedrich Bader), a mistake which may prove fatal unless the detective can get back on the right track by tracing the root cause of his "nude-o-phobia." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
