Rebecca Rigg Movies
Naomi Watts produces and stars in Ellie Parker, a semi-autobiographical story of an Australian actress struggling to make it in Hollywood. Ellie is young enough to still schlep to auditions back and forth across L.A., changing wardrobes and slapping on makeup en route, but just old enough that the future feels "more like a threat than a promise." She lives with her vacant musician boyfriend (Mark Pellegrino), who leaves her just about as dissatisfied as any other part of her life, and has a loose definition of the word "fidelity." Helping make sense of their surreal and humiliating Hollywood existence is her best friend Sam (Rebecca Rigg), another out-of-work actress trying her hand at design, who attends acting classes with Ellie to stay sharp. When Ellie gets into a fender bender with a guy who claims he's a cinematographer (Scott Coffey), her perspective on her work and the dating world starts to change. Chevy Chase also makes an appearance in this series of Hollywood vignettes, playing Ellie's agent. Watts, Coffey, and Pellegrino all worked together on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, where Watts had her breakout performance, and Ellie Parker grew out of the friendship forged between Watts and director/screenwriter Coffey. It was shot on digital video over the course of five years, having begun its life as a series of shorts featuring Watts' character. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Naomi Watts, Rebecca Rigg, (more)
- 1998
This TV medical drama examines egos and ethics as a trio of doctors enter private practice. Doctors Roger Cattan (Ken Olin), Tim Lonner (Matt Craven), and Evan Newman (Rick Roberts) recruit Dr. Sarah Church (Sheryl Lee) to join their team, and they're in business -- occupying a posh office with dubious decor, and ready to display their bedside manners while building bank accounts. Will workaholic Sarah and sensitive, single-dad Newman become a twosome? Filmed in L.A., this series premiered September 21, 1998 on CBS. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ken Olin, Matt Craven, (more)
Combining drama, comedy, and romance, Jerry Maguire was a critical and commercial success built on an original script by writer/director Cameron Crowe and an Oscar-nominated performance by Tom Cruise. Jerry Maguire (Tom Cruise) is an agent with a major sports management firm. He's enthusiastic, successful, a great negotiator and people like him. But it begins to dawn on Jerry that there's something wrong with what he's doing, and not long after a troubling encounter with the son of an injured athlete he represents, Jerry has a serious crisis of conscience. In the midst of a sleepless night, Jerry writes a memo calling on himself and his colleagues to think more about the long-term welfare of the clients they represent and less about immediate profits. While everyone around him applauds the sentiment, Jerry's superiors think his ideas are bad for business; Jerry is fired, and, rather than standing in solidarity with him, his "friends" in the firm scramble like sharks to claim Jerry's clients. At the end of his last day, the only people willing to join Jerry as he strikes out on his own are staff accountant Dorothy (Renee Zellweger), a single mother secretly in love with him, and Rod Tidwell (Cuba Gooding Jr.), a football player whose pride and arrogance have gotten in the way of his reaching his potential. Jerry Maguire earned an Academy Award for Cuba Gooding Jr.'s performance as Tidwell and provided a breakthrough role for Renee Zellweger; it also made "Show me the money!" an unavoidable catchphrase for several months. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Tom Cruise, Cuba Gooding, Jr., (more)
- 1995
- R
A serial killer with a flair for art is on the loose and it is up to ace policewoman Kelly Wheatstone and her partner Frank Yankovitch to investigate in this Australian thriller. All of the serial killer's victims are women whose nude corpses he poses to look like the subjects of a well-known painter, Knowles. Naturally the artist is a prime suspect. Frank is quite distracted from the case by the possible philandering of his new wife Helena. He is correct and when her lover turns up dead, naturally, he is the prime suspect. It is up to the two cops to solve both murders and keep the innocent Frank out of jail. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- 1993
In this suspenseful drama, a medium sized plane en route from the U.S. to New Zealand gets hopelessly lost over the vast Pacific after his companion plane crashes. Now his only hope for salvation is the small commercial jet liner with whom the lost pilot is in radio contact. As his plane runs out of fuel, the larger plane must somehow find him before it is too late. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Robert Loggia, Scott Bakula, (more)
Also released as Spotswood, The Efficiency Expert stars Anthony Hopkins as Wallace, a cold-blooded management consultant, infamous for radically "downsizing" every firm he comes in contact with. Wallace's latest assignment is to streamline a small, family-owned shoe factory in Australia. As he gets to know the eccentric (and endearingly inefficient) factory workers, Wallace undergoes a slow-but-sure "humanizing" process. Eventually realizing that he can simultaneously cut costs and preserve the dignity of the workers, he finds a way to modernize the operation without a single firing. In traditional fashion, the main story shares screen time with a romantic subplot involving the factory-owner's son and a female employee. Characterized by many critics as "Capraesque," The Efficiency Expert also bears trace of all those Ealing comedies of the 1950s. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Anthony Hopkins, Ben Mendelsohn, (more)
- 1990
- R
A humble but beautiful secretary tires of her husband's eternal depression and embarks upon an affair with a dashing media magnate in this melodrama. The woman is at first dazzled by the man's wealth, charisma, and sexual prowess and pays no heed to the darker side appearing through the cracks of his charming exterior, but soon enough she comes to see that she is in love with a ruthless man when he has her husband killed, making it look like suicide. He is also blackmailing politicians and heartlessly buying up international businesses with no regard for anyone else but himself. Still the woman passionately loves him even though she refuses to become the traditionally submissive mistress. Unfortunately, for him, she refuses to be dumped and at one point crosses a line and insults him during a business dinner. He gets angry, throws her on the dinner table and rapes her in front of his clients. Finally the light dawns on the shattered woman--this entertainment mogul who piously appears the perfect philanthropist on screen is not a nice man. She then decides to get revenge and stop him for good. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Savage, Kerry Armstrong, (more)
- 1990
The roiling emotions and rivalries of three teenagers are explored in this Australian drama, which pitches three dissimilar young people together in a high-tension situation. David (Kelly Dingwall) has persuaded his gal-pal Michelle (Rebecca Rigg) to join him as he breaks into a posh home to grab some cash. He claims that he's done this before, and there won't be any problems. Trouble appears in the form of another of David's friends, Billy (John Polson), a boy with a bad attitude from the "wrong side of the tracks." He has been tailing the duo, and joins them at the scene of the crime. He wants to trash the house, since it represents an example of "the good life" to which he will never have access. Over the course of the evening these three very different personalities will come to share their innermost secrets and be drawn together in a way they could never have anticipated. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kelly Dingwall, Rebecca Rigg, (more)
- 1989
Debuting in May 1989, the Australian TV soap opera E Street was designed as a "hip," youth-oriented variation of the long-running continuing drama A Country Practice, featuring one of the stars of the earlier series, Penny Cook. Set in the inner-city community of Westside, the daily 50-minute series cast Cook as dedicated general practitioner Dr. Ellie Fielding. Other regulars included beat cop George Sullivan (Les Dayman); George's rebellious teenaged daughter Alice (Marianne Howard); feisty legal-aid lawyer Sarah McKillop (Katrina Sedgwick), who was abruptly killed off six months into the series; Sarah's rather sexier replacement, Jennifer St. James (Virginia Hey); social worker Martha O'Dare (Cecily Polson); pub keeper Ernie Patchett (Vic Rooney) and his hotheaded son Chris (Paul Kelman), who was forced via an unwanted pregnancy to wed snooty socialite Megan Bromley (Lisabeth Kennaly); and the series' most popular character, "cool" Reverend Bob Brown (Tony Martin), who like most of the adults on the program was saddled with a contentious offspring, namely his son Harley (Malcolm Kennard). Whenever the ratings flagged -- as they did when Ellie Fielding was written off the series -- the producers hauled in another Country Practice alumnus, notably Kate Raison as rich-bitch dowager Sheridan Sturges and Joan Sydney as Ernie Patchett's sister Mary. The series also indulged in the time-honored practice of sweeping the boards clean by having several characters killed off at once in a single tragedy (an explosion, an auto accident, etc.) so that a whole new flock of younger, prettier regulars could be introduced. By the time the series entered the home stretch, most of the stories focused on a crippled rock singer named Wheels (Marcus Graham) and his entourage. Created by Forrest Redlich, E Street chalked up 404 episodes before its cancellation in 1993. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- 1988
The two-part TV movie Emma: Queen of the South Seas stars the incredibly lovely Barbara Carrera. The film is based on the true story of Samoan princess Emma Coe. Part One takes place in the 1860s, as teenaged Emma (Rebekah Elmaloglou) dreams of an exotic life beyond the confines of her hated convent school. In part two, the grown-up Emma (Carrera), now ensconced in Samoa, valiantly defends her country against British colonization. Hal Holbrook and Thaao Penghlis play the most significant men in Emma's life. Syndicated to independent TV outlets, Emma: Queen of the South Seas was first telecast the week of April 23-29, 1988. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
In an Australian outback town so small that children of all ages share a single classroom, teacher Sally (Rachel Ward) suffers the typical frustrations of life in the provinces. She really finds something to fret about when a gang of gun-toting, mask-wearing criminals kidnaps her and the students and drives them to the remote wilderness. With the kids' safety, perhaps survival, in the balance, Sally must appease the lewdly suggestive bandits while scheming for a way to escape their clutches. After several abortive attempts result in multiple deaths, she and the oldest children manage to usher the young ones to at least provisional safety. Free but stranded in a mountain hideaway, the class must band together to survive and perhaps turn the tables on the men who continue to hunt them. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide
- 1982
Monkey Grip is a frank portrayal of a year in the life of a divorced mother (Noni Hazlehurst) living in Melbourne, trying to cope with her daughter and her own relationship with a drug addict while trying to get into the music business. ~ John Bush, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Colin Friels, Alice Garner, (more)
- 1981
This is the sort of comedy which the media tags with the label "high-concept." That means that the gimmick the movie hangs on is more important than the story, etc. In this case, the filmmakers are spoofing hospital soap operas, and the gimmick is that children are playing the authority figures (doctors and nurses), while adults are the helpless and victimized patients. Even high-concept notions sometimes succeed, but in this instance the concept is not treated with any particular integrity, and confusion about child/adult roles reigns supreme. Despite its flaws, reviewers found that this comedy contains a number of good and funny scenes spread (if rather too thinly) throughout. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Rebecca Rigg, Miguel Lopez, (more)
- 1980
Although it is sometimes billed as an animated feature, this children's story is an entirely live-action film, filled with wacky and silly-looking adults for the amusement of the youngsters. It is, however, based on Fatty Finn, a cartoon-strip character popular in 1930s Australia. Set in the earlier part of the century, the story concerns Fatty, a freckled youngster living in a pleasant suburb who feels the need to cut up a bit just to prove himself, and though he ruffles a lot of feathers, the fact that he is basically a good kid eventually settles them down again. The funny-looking paterfamilias, John Finn, is played by the beloved Australian national treasure Bert Newton. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Ben Oxenbould, Bert Newton, (more)
