Charles Carroll

Salton Sea director D.J. Caruso travels from the shore to the suburbs for this suspenseful tale of a high-school senior who suspects that his neighbor is a notorious serial killer. Kale (Shia LaBeouf) is a high-school senior who has yet to come to terms with the fact that his father is gone, the tragic victim of a fatal accident. As Kale's mother (Carrie-Anne Moss) struggles to pay the bills by picking up extra shifts at work, her son's behavior grows increasingly erratic. When an altercation at school finds Kale placed under court-ordered house arrest, the homebound student teams with newly arrived girl-next-door Ashley (Sarah Roemer) to investigate the suspicious neighbor (David Morse) whom Kale believes to be an elusive and wanted serial killer. Their attentions focused intensely on the man they believe to be a murderous maniac hiding in broad daylight, Kale and Ashley trespass down a dangerous path while attempting to discern whether his suspicions are grounded in fact or just a combination of deep depression and suffocating cabin fever. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this tough contemporary noir drama, Frankie (Dennis Hopper) is a low-level "mechanic" working for second-rate mobster Sal (Michael Madsen). Frankie dreams of rising into the upper echelons of organized crime and commiting a series of bloody reprisals against those who have wronged him. He also has ambitions of starting a new career as a screenwriter, but he realizes that he's a nobody and likely to stay that way. Through Sal's connections with the porn industry, Frankie meets Joey (Kiefer Sutherland), a former film student who now cranks out by-the-numbers sex films, and becomes infatuated with Joey's leading lady, Margaret (Daryl Hannah), a drug-addicted "actress" who has seen better days. Joey, addicted to gambling, is deep in debt with Sal and is forbidden to visit the racetrack; Frankie is eager to get on Joey's good side and offers to place his bets for him while he searches for a way to rescue Margaret from the hell she's created for herself. Screenwriter Dayton Callie appears as Vic, one of Sal's strong-arm men. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Olivia D'Abo's sister Maryam and Mariel Hemingway's sister Margaux star in Double Obsession. Heather Dwyer (Margaux) falls in love with her roommate Claire Durka (Maryam), but "happily ever after" is not in the cards. Claire, you see, loves someone else, and Heather, you see, can't live with that. The sadistic one-upsmanship and domination games played throughout the film make Single White Female look like The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew. The suspense lies not in who will survive, but how long it will be before the neighbors complain. Frederic Forrest carries a what-am-I-doing-here? expression all during his brief scenes. As psycho-roommate films go, Double Obsession certainly delivers what its target audience craves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Paul Verhoeven's American breakthrough film, Robocop, is an exceedingly violent blend of black comedy, science fiction, and crime thriller. Set in Detroit sometime in the near future, the film is about a policeman (Peter Weller) killed in the line of duty whom the department decides to resurrect as a half-human, half-robot supercop. The RoboCop is indestructible, and within a matter of weeks he has removed crime from the streets of Detroit. However, his human side is tortured by his past, and he wants revenge on the thugs who killed him. The film was later followed by two feature-length sequels and a live-action television series, neither of which were as successful as the original film. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Movie Guide