Joseph Pilato Movies

In this noir thriller, Silas Cooper stars as Patrick, a milquetoast, white-collar banker who has more than a few startling secrets. For years, Patrick has been embezzling funds from the bank where he's employed, then using the money to finance his hobby of collecting expensive vintage costumes from movies. Patrick's "dealer" is restaurant owner Gaz (Joseph Pilato), a fence who obtains most of the pieces illegally. In moments of solitude, Patrick enjoys wearing the original fashions, but his obsession backfires one night when he witnesses a murder from his window. Though he wants to report the perpetrator to the police, Patrick fears that he'll be exposed as a criminal. When the killer -- stick-up artist Zack (Rupert Green) -- and his sexy girlfriend Deena (Jennifer Starr) move into the neighborhood, Patrick is powerfully attracted to the manipulative Deena, and he becomes involved in the couple's criminal activities. Meanwhile, Gaz schemes to steal back Patrick's valuable secret wardrobe. Writer-director Norman Gerard teamed again with actress Jennifer Starr for another mystery, The Murder in China Basin (1999). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

Outrageously violent, time-twisting, and in love with language, Pulp Fiction was widely considered the most influential American movie of the 1990s. Director and co-screenwriter Quentin Tarantino synthesized such seemingly disparate traditions as the syncopated language of David Mamet; the serious violence of American gangster movies, crime movies, and films noirs mixed up with the wacky violence of cartoons, video games, and Japanese animation; and the fragmented story-telling structures of such experimental classics as Citizen Kane, Rashomon, and La jetée. The Oscar-winning script by Tarantino and Roger Avary intertwines three stories, featuring Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta, in the role that single-handedly reignited his career, as hit men who have philosophical interchanges on such topics as the French names for American fast food products; Bruce Willis as a boxer out of a 1940s B-movie; and such other stalwarts as Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Christopher Walken, Eric Stoltz, Ving Rhames, and Uma Thurman, whose dance sequence with Travolta proved an instant classic. ~ Leo Charney, All Movie Guide

Day of the Dead, the third and concluding chapter in George Romero's zombie trilogy is the most distinctly 1950s-style science fiction version of the lot. Set in Florida, as the film begins the dead have taken over the world, outnumbering humans 400,000 to one. The handful of surviving humans have taken refuge in an underground missile silo and argue and yell at each other like players in a Rod Serling Twilight Zone episode. Among the survivors are Sarah (Lori Cardille) -- a scientist who is trying to reverse the process whereby the dead turn into flesh-eating, irrational zombies -- and Dr. Logan (Richard Liberty) -- an out-of-his-mind psychologist who wants to capture the zombies and turn them into domestic help. Things heat up when the military tries to take over the scientific experiments. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide