Dermot Mulroney Movies

Jack Nicholson plays retiring insurance actuary Warren Schmidt in Alexander Payne's About Schmidt. Schmidt has settled into a dormant life. He has an unfulfilling marriage to Helen (June Squibb), and conspires to spend as much time away from her as possible. Schmidt's daughter Jeannie (Hope Davis) is engaged to Randall Hertzel (Dermot Mulroney), a man Schmidt believes is entirely unworthy of his daughter. When Helen unexpectedly dies, Warren is adrift until he discovers old love letters sent to his wife from his best friend. This inspires Warren to make a valiant effort to stop his daughter's wedding. His plans start to go awry when he meets Randall's extroverted mother, Roberta (Kathy Bates). About Schmidt was screened at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival where many were surprised that Nicholson did not take home the Best Actor award. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Madeleine Stowe, Mary Stuart Masterson, Andie MacDowell, and Drew Barrymore are the stars of this Western whose main gimmick is making heroes into heroines. They all start out as prostitutes, as Cody (Stowe) shoots a drunken colonel who attempts to molest Anita (Masterson). She is about to be lynched for defending her friend when the other "bad girls" ride in and rescue her, pursued by detectives. The rest of the film follows their adventures as they get caught up in hostage situations, bank robberies, shootouts, and romantic interludes with handsome young cowboys with never a hair out of place or an unsightly smudge of Western dust. Amazingly, all four former prostitutes are able to ride, shoot, rope, and fight as well. Bad Girls is not likely to be thought of as a realistic view of how women lived in the Old West. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

In this whimsically absurd comedy, Al Fountain (John Turturro) is an rigidly self-controlled electrical engineer who has discovered his first gray hair and has begun seeing things (bicycles running backwards, coffee pouring from the cup into the pot). To Al's shock, he's fired without notice from his job and told to go home. Instead, he rents a car and heads out in search of Splatchee Lake, a vacation spot he remembers visiting as a child (and one of the few places where he ever felt truly content). Al discovers that the lake is too polluted to swim in, but he finds The Kid (Sam Rockwell), a genial eccentric who wears a coonskin cap and lives in the woods with a large collection of junk scavenged from trash heaps. The Kid encourages Al to be spontaneous and take some chances in his life; an opportunity to do so presents itself when Dupree sisters Floatie (Catherine Keener) and Purlene (Lisa Blount) appear, and love (or a reasonable facsimile) is in the air. Writer/director Tom DiCillo had originally intended this project to follow his debut feature, the hipster comedy Johnny Suede, but problems with financing and production delays led him to make the indie film satire Living in Oblivion first. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Joel and Ethan Coen's jet-black comedy Burn After Reading begins with CIA agent Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) losing his job. This prompts his long-suffering, unfaithful wife (Tilda Swinton) to consult a lawyer about divorcing him. Osborne decides to write a book about his exploits, but an early draft of his work ends up lost at a gym where it's found by the dim-witted Chad (Brad Pitt, and the plastic-surgery obsessed Linda (Frances McDormand). They decide to blackmail Osborne in order to help Linda pay for the numerous procedures she wants to undergo. Things grow even more complicated when Linda starts an affair with Harry (George Clooney), who also happens to be sleeping with Cox's wife. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

A serial killer stalks the streets of San Francisco; unlike his many predecessors does not choose a distinctive, identifying pattern. No, this killer prides himself on his unoriginality: he is a copycat, recreating the violent murders of some of the country's most notorious serial killers, his heroes. On the case, is criminal psychologist Helen Hudson who is the reigning expert on serial killers; she has also become agoraphobic after having too close of a brush with killer, Daryll Lee Cullum. Though he has finally been locked up, she is unable to function outside her apartment. It is homicide detective M.J. Monahan and her partner Ruben who involve Hudson after they begin suspecting that the recent rash of bizarre murders they investigate is the work of a new mass murderer. Using her career and her vast knowledge, she figures out the killer's game. She knows he is well-versed in history and that the killings are tributes to the old masters. Unfortunately, she cannot predict his next style of killing, who he will kill, or when. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Director Sean Meredith's animated entry into the 2007 Newport Beach Film Festival details one man's curious voyage into the deepest depths of the underworld. Upon awakening in an unfamiliar part of the city after an especially rough night, Dante asks the first person he spots for a little help in gathering his bearings. When the man responds that he penned an ancient poem called The Aeneid, the perplexed Dante recalls that particular piece of prose being penned two thousand years ago. But with no one left to turn to, Dante has little choice but to follow his enigmatic guide. When the man reveals that it is his duty to lead Dante on an extensive journey through a dreadful world of "horror and torment," the weary traveler becomes convinced that his only hope for survival is to follow his host into the scorching heart of Satan's vast inferno. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Greg Kinnear stars in director Marc Abraham's man-against-the-system docudrama Flash of Genius as inventor Robert Kearns, the visionary who developed the modern intermittent windshield wiper. Kearns submitted the invention to each of the big three auto companies, each of which promptly rejected it; the companies then turned around and put the device to use. The enraged inventor spent several decades attempting to collect on his patent, and mounting lawsuits that traveled all the way to the Supreme Court; he eventually collected over 30 million dollars for his obsession. Abraham co-authored the script with Scott Frank and Phillip Railsback, adapting an article by John Seabrook that originally appeared in The New Yorker. Dermot Mulroney plays Kinnear's best friend, with Lauren Graham rounding out the supporting cast. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

In the first of three Friends appearances, Dermot Mulroney guest stars as Gavin, the Ralph Lauren employee who's been covering for Rachel (Jennifer Aniston) during her maternity leave. Showing up at the office with baby Emma in tow, Rachel immediately gets the impression that Gavin is jockeying for her job on a permanent basis -- which may explain why, a few days later, she's back at work, watching her back all the while. Meanwhile, Joey (Matt LeBlanc) wishes he'd never invited Phoebe (Lisa Kudrow) to appear as an extra on Days of Our Lives. ~ All Movie Guide

Jane Fonda, Felicity Huffman, and Lindsay Lohan star in director Garry Marshall's tale of a rebellious young woman who is sent to spend the summer with her grandmother when her frustrated mother fails to find a means of curbing her unruly behavior. Rachel (Lohan) is an out-of-control teen whose reckless drinking, foul mouth, and hysterical fits have become a constant source of embarrassment for her long-suffering mother, Lily (Huffman). When Rachel crashes her car, Lily determines that the only way to tame her savage daughter is to take her as far away from San Francisco as possible. Though Lily had once sworn never to return to the Idaho farm presided over by her demanding mother, Georgia (Jane Fonda), desperation has a funny way of dulling the pains of the past, and it's not long before Lily is packing Rachel in the car and setting out for potato country. Contrary to the common image of the sweet and doting grandmother, Georgia is a stern matriarch whose beliefs in the power of God and a hard day's work stand in stark contrast to the carefree lifestyle of the tempestuous Rachel. An interesting thing happens as the summer wears on, though; despite her initial efforts to disrupt the quiet Mormon community, Rachel's rage is gradually tempered as she learns the value of structure and responsibility. Later, as Rachel's protective walls begin to crumble and she begins to embrace compassion and kindness, the doors are opened for three generations of family to confront the long-buried secrets of their past and finally move forward in the healing process. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A darkly comic whodunit about greed, deceit, and romantic deception, Goodbye Lover stars Patricia Arquette as Sandra, a seemingly moral and obsessively cheerful woman who sells real estate and is fascinated by the movie The Sound Of Music. But Sandra has a secret; while she's married to Jake (Dermot Mulroney), an ad executive who is having problems with both his career and his drinking, she's having an affair with his brother, Ben (Don Johnson), a successful public relations man. Ben, on the other hand, is already dallying with Peggy (Mary-Louise Parker), a woman on his staff who is beautiful but insecure, though she has a darker side few people know about. When Ben decides to break it off with Sandra so he can pursue his relationship with Peggy, Sandra is furious, and, knowing Jake would be just as angry, tells him about their affair. A vengeful Jake confronts Ben, which leads to a knock-down, drag-out fight -- and Ben's death, as he falls from a window. Ben leaves behind a hefty insurance settlement, and soon the surviving characters are scrambling over the money. Enter Police Detective Rita Pompano (Ellen DeGeneres), who has seen too much in her time on the force to not develop a deep cynicism about the people she protects -- or to not be tempted to get in on the payday herself. Goodbye Lover was directed by Roland Joffé, in something of a departure from his best-known work in high-minded dramas such as The Killing Fields and The Mission. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Ed Stone's bittersweet drama Griffin & Phoenix concerns Griffin (Dermot Mulroney), a divorcee suffering from cancerous lesions in his chest that give him a life expectancy of less than two years. He falls in love with academic advisor Phoenix (Amanda Peet), and the pair decide to 'live life to the fullest' by fulfilling all of Griffin's childhood fantasies, from painting water towers to sneaking into movies to hopping freight trains. But a secret of Phoenix's threatens to damper the joy of their time together. Sarah Paulson, Blair Brown, Alison Elliott and Lois Smith co-star; John Hill authored the script. ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide

Catherine Keener stars in this made-for-TV drama as Magda, an artist who has strong ideas about the notion of retribution and personal justice against those who have hurt other people emotionally. After Magda is unceremoniously dumped by her boyfriend for another woman, she takes off in his car and heads North, going nowhere in particular. After seeing a man die in a fiery car accident, Magda begins using images of the fiery pits of Hades in her paintings, as she struggles to find answers to her emotional turmoil in art. However, the longer Magda is obsessed with seeing her ex suffer as she has, the more she feels the need to express herself in more than just paint and canvas. Heroine of Hell also features Dermot Mulroney, Wendy Phillips, and Karen Gordon. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A group of bohemian intellectuals struggle to have an intelligent discussion of perhaps the world's most emotional subject in this comedy-drama from director Alan Rudolph. Edgar (Dermot Mulroney) is an artist living in Paris during the 1920s who believes that sex is a subject of vital importance, but almost no one discusses it with the gravity it deserves. With this in mind, Edgar gathers together a panel of fellow creative types at the home of a wealthy tycoon (Nick Nolte) and his oddly accented spouse (Tuesday Weld) for an evening in which they will discuss their erotic lives without self-serving wit or exaggeration. Joining Edgar for this experiment is an artist from Germany (Til Schweiger), an arrogant film director (Jeremy Davies), a self-obsessed painter (Alan Cumming) whose fey personality may cross the boundaries of Edgar's prohibition of homosexuality as a topic of conversation, and a student from England (Terrence Dashon Howard) who has attracted the eye of a lovely French girl (Julie Delpy) with whom Edgar has fallen in love. Certain that a number of profound thoughts will be shared with the group, Edgar hires a pair of stenographers to record the proceedings, but the presence of the two young and beautiful secretaries -- innocent Alice (Neve Campbell) and provocative Zoe (Robin Tunney) -- has an unexpectedly strong effect on the group. Investigating Sex had its U.S. premiere as the closing night attraction of the 2001 Seattle Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide