David Morrissey Movies

Peter Greenaway wrote and directed this typically surreal and iconoclastic black comedy. Three generations of women who share the same name -- 63-year-old Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright), her daughter Cissie Colpitts II (Juliet Stevenson), and granddaughter Cissie Colpitts III (Joely Richardson) -- have all discovered the same way of dealing with their marital problems. The senior Cissie has drowned her husband Jake (Bryan Pringle) in the bathtub, her daughter sent her spouse Hardy (Trevor Cooper) to a watery grave in the ocean, and the youngest Cissie sent her husband Bellamy (David Morrissey) down in a swimming pool. Needless to say, local coroner Henry Madgett (Barnard Hill) has some questions about this sudden rash of drownings among the Colpitts husbands, and again all three women respond in the same way: they promise to sleep with Henry in exchange for recording the deaths as accidental (though none of the Cissies make good on this promise). When the local gossip mill begins working overtime about this sudden rash of water-related deaths, Henry's teenage son Smut (Jason Edwards) comes to the aid of the Cissies and organizes a tug-of-war, with he and the Colpitts women on one side and the doubting townspeople on the other (and, of course, a river in the middle). Along the way, Greenaway often stops to contemplate his obsessions with literature, astronomy, and numbers. Drowning by Numbers was released in Europe in 1988, but didn't find its way to American screens until 1991, following the success of Greenaway's The Cook, the Thief, His Wife and Her Lover. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Based on the novel by Graham Swift, this drama follows the past and present crises of schoolteacher Tom Crick (Jeremy Irons), who attempts to resolve the problems in his own life and the apathy of his students by relating stories of his troubled childhood in the English Fens (a marshy region in Britain). ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide

In this detective drama a British gumshoe encounters an art dealer who turns out to be a supposedly dead criminal. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

This British drama tells the story of a soldier who escaped captivity after a mission gone-awry. Paul McGann plays Corporal Chris Ryan, one soldier in a crew sent on a mission to destroy SCUD missiles after Saddam Hussein threatened Israel. Ryan's team was attacked, leaving several dead and the rest in captivity. Ryan was the only one to escape -- and recount the tale. ~ Bernadette McCallion, All Movie Guide

George Sluizer (The Vanishing) directed this German-British-Belgian thriller about politico James Morton (John Hurt) who relocates in Brussels as the British commissioner to the Euro parliament, leaving his wife Isabelle (Alice Krige) behind. As British and German chemical outfits are about to merge, Metro Chemical researcher Hans Konig (Armin Mueller-Stahl) tips him that his company is creating weapons and is run by a former Nazi. Morton stops the merger, but information leaks trigger Konig's arrest for industrial espionage and the bombing of Morton's apartment, followed by more corporate intrigue. Shown at the 1998 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

British TV screenwriter Kay Mellor debuts with this quirky screwball comedy. The film opens with romance novelist Kate (Kerry Fox) crashing her VW bug into the gleaming Jaguar of car salesman Dave (Ray Winstone), resulting in an insult-barbed screamfest. They both enter the same pub, where they learn that Kate's husband is leaving her for Dave's young buxom wife (his third). The distraught Kate seeks solace and cheer from Andrew (Ben Daniels), her gay actor friend and housemate. When Dave's wife changes the locks, he cuts a deal with Kate, who still intensely dislikes the man: if he can stay in her spare room, she can forget about the outlandishly high bill to repair his damaged Jag. Soon, of course, love blooms when Kate realizes that Dave is no mere car salesman: he is a loving father to his six kids from previous marriages and an avid reader of the classics. Things seem peachy until Dave mysteriously disappears. Fanny and Elvis was screened at the 1999 Dinard Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Louis de Bernières' best-selling novel of love during wartime is brought to the screen in this story that blends comedy, action, and romance. In 1940, war rages throughout Europe, but the fighting has yet to arrive on the Greek island of Cephallonia, where life continues to follow its own slow, deliberate path until word arrives that Italian troops have invaded neighboring Albania. A wave of anti-Axis patriotism sweeps the island, and Mandras (Christian Bale), a local fisherman, is one of a handful of men who volunteer for the army, leaving behind his aging mother (Irene Papas) and the woman he loves, Pelagia (Penélope Cruz), the daughter of the island's physician, Dr. Iannis (John Hurt). The timing of Mandras and his compatriots proves less than fortuitous, as Italian troops invade Greece in their absence, but the remaining leaders of the island issue an ultimatum -- the people of Cephallonia will surrender, but only to a ranking German officer. Since none of the available German officers can speak a word of Greek, an Italian soldier fluent in the language, Capt. Antonio Corelli (Nicholas Cage), is sent in to serve as translator. Corelli stays on with the Greek occupation forces, and he soon finds himself falling in love with beautiful Pelagia, who believes that Mandras was killed in the fighting in Albania. But as romance slowly blooms between the Italian soldier and the Greek girl, Mandras and a handful of surviving soldiers have joined a guerilla resistance faction, and they join up with Allied forces in a bid to retake Greece; soon, Pelagia must choose between the two men she loves, as the Greeks battle both the Italian occupation troops and German soldiers who have been sent in to replace them. Captain Corelli's Mandolin was directed by John Madden; the project originally began shooting with Roger Michell, but Michell was forced to resign from the film after he suffered a heart attack. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The final days of one of the truly legendary figures of British rock & roll are explored in this biographical drama, which marks the directorial debut of veteran producer Stephen Woolley. Brian Jones (played by Leo Gregory) was one of the founding members of the Rolling Stones, and his incisive blues guitar style, broad range of musical influences, and striking blond good looks helped establish him as part of the true royalty of the British music scene. But by 1969, Jones' life had begun to spiral out of control; his appetite for drugs made him wildly unreliable, his arrests for possession of marijuana prevented the Stones from touring the United States, his bandmates Mick Jagger (Luke de Woolfson) and Keith Richards (Ben Whishaw) had grown tired of working with him (and envious of the attention he received in the press), and his longtime paramour Anita Pallenberg (Monet Mazur) had become involved with fellow Stone Richards. Worried about Jones' drug abuse, the band's tour manager, Tom Keylock (David Morrissey), hires middle-aged carpenter Frank Thorogood (Paddy Considine) to do some repairs at Jones' estate, but also asks him to look after the musician and try to keep him away from dope. Keylock underestimates the power of Brian's personality, and before long, the straight-arrow Thorogood is Jones' household manservant and partner in hedonism, through Thorogood begins to chafe at the emotional games Jones enjoys playing with his new companion. Stoned was adapted in part from three different books on Brian Jones and the Rolling Stones as well as recently uncovered interviews with people who claim to have been involved in Brian Jones' death. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When the mysterious death of a major athlete prompts Scotland Yard detective Roy Washburn (David Thewlis) to order the investigation of best-selling crime novelist Catherine Tramell (Sharon Stone), criminal psychiatrist Dr. Michael Glass (David Morrissey) is slowly drawn into Tramell's seductive world of lies and sexual intrigue in director Michael Caton-Jones belated sequel to Paul Verhoeven's 1992 erotic thriller. Upon relocating from San Francisco to London, alluring crime novelist Tramell once again finds herself pursued by authorities when all clues point to her being somehow involved in the death of a popular sports superstar. Intellectually intrigued by his new subject and undeniably drawn to her physically, Dr. Glass finds it increasingly difficult to resist the cunning black widow's devious web of deception and physical temptation. When the professional boundaries between Glass and Trammel come shattering down in a shower of unbridled lust, Dr. Glass is forced to make a difficult decision that could mean the end of both his professional career, and his life. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A lonely young boy vows to protect the rapidly growing hatchling that emerges from a mysterious egg found on the shores of a Scottish loch in My Dog Skip and Tuck Everlasting director Jay Russell's screen adaptation of writer Dick King-Smith's popular children's novel. Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel) has made a most unusual discovery, and he's about to find out just how one innocent boy's greatest fantasy can also be a frightened adult population's greatest threat. Unable to identify the egg that he found while walking the sandy shores, Angus is even more perplexed about the discovery and the creature that emerges resembles what comes to be known as a Water Horse, which Angus names Crusoe. As the bizarre new life form begins to grow at an alarming rate, it soon becomes obvious that Angus will not be able to keep it a secret for very long, and the young boy will have to do some seriously quick thinking if he is to keep his new friend safe. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide