Matthew MacCaull Movies
- 2005
The new girl in town is 16-year-old Jacey Jeffries (Danielle Panabaker), who lives with her divorced mother, Terry (Mercedes Ruehl), and her two siblings. A popular and highly intelligent student, not to mention a talented athlete, Jacey nonetheless seems to be harboring a private, profound sadness -- or at least that's the perception of her high-school guidance counselor, Donna Cooper (Jane Krakowski). Ultimately Donna figures out the truth behind Jacey's melancholia: her baby "brother" Charlie is actually her own son, born out of wedlock and raised by Jacey's overbearing mother in a misguided effort to shield her daughter from disgrace. Upon discovering Jacey's secret, Donna takes a special interest in the girl's welfare -- an interest undoubtedly fueled by the fact that Donna herself is unable to have children. The scenes taking place in the sex-education class have an air of reality often lacking in made-for-TV films, due to the fact that the young actors playing the students were encouraged to improvise their dialogue. Produced for the Lifetime cable network, Mom at Sixteen first aired on March 21, 2005. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Mercedes Ruehl, Jane Krakowski, (more)
Cashing in on the real-life influx of pesky "snake-head" fish in Midwestern lakes, this inexpensive sci-fi epic is set in a small Maryland fishing community called Cultus Lake. A dangerous strain of mutated snakeheads has decimated the lake's fish population, whereupon Doc Jenkins (played by X-Files' William B. Davis, aka "Cigarette-Smoking Man"), the shady owner of a nearby chemical plant, fills the water with pollutants to kill off the invaders. At the same time, the local leaders, desperate to pull Cultus Lake out of a severe financial slump, has dumped human growth hormones in the lake to improve the stock. You guessed it: Both the chemicals and hormones succeed only in making the snakeheads even larger and more ferocious--and worse still, they are now leaving the lake and crawling around on dry land, in search of human blood! Caught in the middle of the crisis is Sheriff Patrick James (Bruce Boxleitner) and the standard-issue beautiful female biologist Lori Dale (Carol Alt). An amalgam of every cheesy CGI effect ever seen on the many Jaws ripoffs that have proliferated as made-for-cable and direct-to-video thrillers, Snakehead Terror received its biggest audience when it was telecast by the Sci-Fi network on March 13, 2004. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
