Ross Partridge Movies

Narrated by actor Kevin Spacey, this PBS documentary -- billed as an "intimate diary" -- chronicles the long and painstaking recovery, demolition, and stabilization activities on the site where the twin towers of the World Trade Center once stood. In the nine months following the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001, 2,300 workers labored night and day to clean and clear the area in the safest and most efficient manner possible. At the end of it all, the personnel pondered aloud what the next steps would be in restoring normalcy to the area. With more and greater access to Ground Zero than any other filmmakers, the producers of the special were able to come up with a story that was at once compelling, honest, utterly bereft of false sentiment, and chock full of basic, no-frills courage. America Rebuilds: A Year at Ground Zero was originally telecast during PBS's coverage of the first anniversary of 9/11. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Ross Partridge directed this unconventional American indie flick that starts as a mystery but soon unfolds into an existential tale of life and faith. Joe Weldon (Jon Littlefield) is a hard-drinking cop working the beat in a small town in upstate New York. His life is in utter shambles: his wife dumped him, his kids are afraid of him, and he regularly blacks out from drinking too much. Yet when he learns of an unknown dead man recently dragged out of the Hudson River, Joe tries to find redemption by finding out more about the case. Carrying only a Bible, a telephone number, and a toothbrush, the corpse possessed few clues as to his life. Later, the dead man's past is uncovered; his name was Hap (Joel Garland), a corpulent idiot savant who lived in the backwoods and had the mysterious habit of waiting on a bridge that spans Interstate 84. But for whom? The search leads to a pair of shady characters: Vinny (Kevin Dillon) is a feckless family man and a sleazy hustler who befriends the hulking giant and then coerces him into working for his low-rent wrestling outfit; Freddy (Harley Cross) is a young punk who harassed Hap. As the film unfolds, all three of these desperate souls are changed, and in some sense redeemed, by Hap's death. This film was screened in the new filmmakers' section of the 2000 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

The Puffy Chair filmmaking duo Jay and Mark Duplass return to the realm of cinema with this tale of a man, a bag, and the strangeness that occurs when the two independently inconsequential factors come together. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Just when you'd think that scientists would realize dinosaurs and humans don't mix, along comes The Lost World: Jurassic Park to prove you wrong. In this sequel, John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) summons chaos theorist and onetime colleague Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) to his home with some startling information -- while nearly everything at his Jurassic Park had been destroyed, engineers were also operating a second site, where other dinosaurs, resurrected through DNA cloning technology, had been kept in hiding. Hammond has learned the dinosaurs on the second island are alive and well and even breeding; Hammond wants Malcolm to observe and document the reptiles before Hammond's financiers can get to them. Malcolm declares he had enough of the dinosaurs the first time out, but decides to make the trip when he finds out that his girlfriend, paleontologist Sarah Harding (Julianne Moore), is already there. However, Ian and Sarah aren't the only visitors expected on the island; a camera crew led by ecological activist Nick Van Owen (Vince Vaughn) is on the way, as is Roland Tembo (Pete Postlethwaite), a world-class wild game hunter who is supposed to round up the dinosaurs and who hopes to bag a prehistoric trophy for himself in the process. This sequel to Jurassic Park boasted even more impressive special effects than the first film, though the acting and screenplay aren't always at the same level. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide