Fisher Stevens Movies

A burnt out college professor finds his quest for vitality leading him into the arms of disaster in this seriocomic tale of love and desperation starring Julian Sands, John Savage, Katherine Towne, and Jim Belushi. Packard Schmidt (Sands) is having a mid-life crisis. Unfulfilled by his job as an English professor at an inconsequential college, and longing for a sense of unpredictability in his monotonous daily routine, Schmidt sets his sights on the bright lights of Las Vegas. When a series of impulsive romantic encounters lead him into the arms of his best friend Frank (Savage)'s daughter Sallu (Towne), his obsession with the younger girl send both his personal and professional lives careening towards disaster. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The cable-TV discussion show The Moth tried to revive the ancient and honorable art of storytelling. Initially hosted by actor Fisher Stevens, the series featured a weekly gathering of celebrities, who in an informal setting would swap tales about their life experiences. Topics included career breakthroughs, sexual relationships, and dealing with success. Invariably, one of the week's guests would turn out to be the best talespinner, and would be acknowledged as such. The Moth debuted November 18, 2002. ~ All Movie Guide

A moment of temptation leads to a high body count and untold regrets for a high-school swimming star in this thriller starring Bring It On's Jesse Bradford and Traffic's Erika Christensen. Despite a shady past involving drugs and the juvenile justice system, Ben Cronin (Bradford) seems to have it all: a loving mother, a devoted girlfriend (Shiri Appleby), and a shot at a college scholarship in California. But the same week that athletic scouts will be deciding his future, Ben finds himself embroiled in a flirtation with Madison Bell (Christensen), a bewitching transfer student who seduces him into supposedly strings-free sex during an impromptu swim lesson after hours in the school pool. When Ben takes Madison at her word and goes about his business as if nothing had happened, she insinuates herself into his life with sinister glee. Showing up at Ben's house, befriending his girlfriend, and sending him naked pictures -- none of her strategies wins his heart. So Madison turns to other, more devious forms of courtship. Soon, Ben finds himself kicked off the swim team for supposed steroid use, suspected of murdering a rival (Clayne Crawford), and rejected by his girlfriend for his sexual indiscretions. Eventually, though, he receives help in uncovering the genesis of Madison's uncanny fixation from an unexpected source. Originally titled "Swimfan85" (after Madison's Internet screen name), the retitled Swimfan hit the top spot at the back-to-school box office when it was released September 6, 2002. Dan Hedaya co-stars as Ben's stern but loving mentor, Coach Simkins. Actor-turned-director John Polson previously helmed Siam Sunset. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Miguel Pinero became a leading figure in New York's art scene during the 1970s as a poet, actor, and playwright whose vibrant, often pointed, work spoke directly to the lower classes and to disenfranchised minorities. As a founder of the influential Nuyorican Poets Cafe, his poetry soon became recognized as a forerunner to rap and hip-hop music. TV screenwriter turned director Leon Ichaso spins this impressionistic biographical look at this artist. Raised in an abusive family, Pinero (Benjamin Bratt) turns to streets for solace. Soon he is engaging in petty crime, drug dealing, and addiction. When he finds himself in Sing-Sing, he turns his experiences in prison into the play Short Eyes, which eventually garners him seven Tony awards in 1974. Uncomfortable with his new fame, he clings to his girlfriend, Sugar (Talisa Soto), and his childhood buddy, Miguel Algarin (Giancarlo Esposito), who is a literature professor and who co-founded the Nuyorican Cafe. Though Pinero makes cameos on such shows as Kojak, his art begins to suffer as he starts to succumb to his drug addictions. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

New York City may be the city that never sleeps, but that means some people have to stay awake all night to look after the folks whose days begin after the sun goes down; this made-for-premium-cable drama looks at a group of cabbies trying to get by while working the night shift. The Lady Luck Cab Company is a taxi service run by Box (Sarita Choudhury), who inherited the failing business from her late father and is struggling to keep it afloat against long economic odds as Lady Luck's drivers work long shifts in some of the Big Apple's less picturesque neighborhoods. Hershey (Danny Glover), one of Lady Luck's drivers, was once a professional boxer, but when his athletic career went south, so did his wife, and now he drives a hack while trying to romance George (Pam Grier), a good-looking waitress who likes Hershey, but is frustrated with his schedule, which rarely allows him a night off. This is bad news for Hershey, since Ralph (Paul Calderon), a regular at the diner where George works, has been making a play for her as well. Another driver, Salgado (Michelle Rodriguez), is a short-fused Latin American woman who is frequently the victim of sexual harassment from her customers, which makes her all the more difficult to be around. Jose (Bobby Cannavale) thinks he's hit the jackpot when he discovers a briefcase full of cash has been left in his cab, though he has reason to believe it's stolen. And Rasha (Sergej Trifunovic), a refugee from Bosnia, is still tormented by the violence that cost his family their lives, and has trouble concentrating on his driving, leading him into more than one auto accident. While the drivers deal with their individual dilemmas, all of them are suddenly wary of their customers, thanks to reports of a serial killer preying on New York's cab drivers. Produced for the Showtime premium cable network, 3 A.M. was screened at the Sundance Film Festival prior to its broadcast debut, where it earned an enthusiastic reception. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Actor-turned-filmmaker Griffin Dunne directs this mockumentary about the lives of struggling thespians. The film focuses on Lisa Picard (Laura Kirk), a fledgling actress about to burst on the scene thanks to a bit part in a made-for-TV movie. She is followed around by Dunne as she makes her publicity rounds with her friend Tate Kelley (Nat DeWolf), a writer/actor/militant gay activist. Famous is populated with several direct-to-camera interviews featuring the likes of Penelope Ann Miller, Charles Sheen, and Mira Sorvino. This film was screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Actress Polly Draper, best known for her role on the TV series thirtysomething, wrote and co-produced this family drama, as well as playing the female lead. Draper plays Laura, a single mother whose ten-year-old son Miles (Christopher Marquette) is already displaying a remarkable gift as a jazz pianist. However, Miles suffers from a mild case Tourette's Syndrome, a disorder that's not life threatening but causes victims to display a series of pronounced physical and facial tics, as well as occasional emotional outbursts. Miles makes friends with two bartenders at a jazz club, who let the kid sneak in to see shows and eventually introduce him to acclaimed jazz saxophonist Tyrone Pike (Gregory Hines). It seems Tyrone and Miles have something in common -- Tyrone also has Tourette's, but unlike Miles he's learned to disguise his condition with a variety of mannerisms, and prefers not to discuss the matter. Tension develops between the two when Tyrone and Laura develop a mutual attraction, which creates tension between the two musicians and forces Tyrone to confront some personal issues he's spent much of his life avoiding. The Tic Code was shown at the Vancouver Reel to Real Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Hamptons Film Festival and the Giffoni Film Festival in 1999 before its run on the Starz! premium cable service. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this police actioner, a brand-new lady cop's lack of enthusiasm at getting a job behind a criminal processing desk instead of on the streets proves unfounded. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

All poor Atsushi Hirata really wants is to leave the cold Japanese winter and take a week's vacation in warm Hawaii. Unfortunately, he ends up forced to honor tradition and travel to even more frigid Iceland to pay tribute to his late parents who died there seven years before. This internationally produced very funny road movie chronicles his many misadventures that begin when he disembarks from his plane in the midst of a blizzard and ends up boarding the wrong bus. The bus takes him to some popular hot springs and he must take a taxi back to Reykjavik. He doesn't make it back, because the driver needed to stop in his hometown and participate in a nativity pageant. This forces poor Hirata to bum a ride on a truck. During the journey, he meets a broad assortment of eccentric and bizarre characters ranging from a woman with a thing about photographing funerals, an aspiring Bonnie and Clyde, and a band of Icelandic cowboys. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

In this high-tech thriller, Dade Murphy (Jonny Lee Miller) has been fascinated with computers all his life; at the age of 11, he was able to break into the computer network of several top Wall Street investment and banking firms, and he nearly caused a major stock market crash in the process. As punishment, Dade was forbidden to use a computer until his 18th birthday, but now that he's of age, he's diving back into his PC head first. Dade meets up with a group of fellow hackers: tough-talking cyber gamer Kate, aka Acid Burn (Angelina Jolie), junior hacker Jesse Bradford, born prankster Cereal Killer (Matthew Lillard), Nikon (Lawrence Mason), named for his photographic memory, and telephone expert Phantom Phreak (Renoly Santiago). Dade and his pals aren't out to destroy systems or do cybercrime for profit; they simply want to know more about the systems they encounter, and they like raising some good-natured havoc. But in their travels through cyberspace, they discover The Plague (Fisher Stevens), a former hacker turned computer security expert with a huge multinational corporation. The Plague has not only done the unthinkable and gone into anti-hacker enforcement, he's secretly allied himself with a group of criminals and is using his expertise to drain funds from corporate bank accounts and transfer them to himself and his mistress, Margo (Lorraine Bracco). The Plague is also smart enough to leave clues that would lead investigators to someone else -- in this case, Dade and his friends -- and has a secret weapon at his disposal, a computer virus that could wipe out the entire world wide web in a matter of minutes. Several sequences for Hackers were shot at New York City's Stuyvesant High School, where coincidentally several months after filming, several students were arrested by F.B.I. agents for their involvement in computer hacking. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A woman throws caution to the wind in the pursuit of the man of her dreams -- whom she's never met -- in this romantic comedy. Eleven-year-old Faith (Tammy Minoff) and her cousin Kate (Jessica Hertel) are playing with a Ouiji Board when Faith asks who she will marry -- the magic oracle answers "DAMON BRADLEY," and Faith is convinced that she will one day meet this ideal love. Fifteen years later, Faith (Marisa Tomei) has yet to meet her perfect man and has settled for Dwayne (John Benjamin Hickey), a sweet but boring foot doctor whom she's engaged to marry, with Kate (Bonnie Hunt) helping her plan the festivities. The day before the ceremony, Faith gets a call from one of the groom's friends, who won't be able to attend because he's travelling to Italy instead -- and his name is Damon Bradley. Convinced that fate is trying to tell her something, Faith hops on the next flight to Venice, where she searches for the elusive Damon, and along the way meets the charming Peter Wright (Robert Downey, Jr.). This was Tomei and Downey's second romantic pairing, following their roles in the biopic Chaplin. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Nina (Laura San Giacomo), a young married woman, has an affair with a British photographer in this low-key comedy drama about adultery and romantic role-playing. Nina Takes a Lover, the debut film of writer-director Alan Jacobs, tells its story in flashback, as Nina is interviewed by a journalist who is writing an article on modern marriage -- or, more specifically, modern infidelity. The affair begins after Nina's husband has left for a long business trip, leaving Nina lonely, depressed, and seriously doubting his faithfulness. In this vulnerable state, she meets a stranger in the park. He's from Wales, he's a photographer, and he's quite handsome. Encouraged by the experience of her best friend, who has been unfaithful to her husband for some time now, Nina begins an affair with the photographer. She finds the experience a wonderful, revitalizing thrill and is soon considering leaving her husband to move in with her new lover. However, Nina's feelings become more complicated when she discovers some of her lover's hidden secrets. While on the surface the film is a rather uneventful, performance-driven character study, Nina's story in fact builds toward a surprising revelation, one that casts an entirely new light on the nature of her affair. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

The huge success of the video games featuring animated Italian plumbers the Mario Brothers led to this $42 million live action movie. The two brothers (Bob Hoskins and John Leguizamo) live in Manhattan and are chasing Princess Daisy (Samantha Mathis), who wears a necklace made from a meteor fragment. Its powers can free a race of reptilian creatures from the city's sewers. The villainous ruler of the creatures, who are descendants of dinosaurs, is King Koopa (Dennis Hopper). Koopa has kidnapped Daisy and taken her to the underworld of Dinohattan, which is rat-infested and strewn with garbage. The Mario Brothers must overcome many obstacles, just as they do in video games, to free the princess. The film spares no expense with its use of animatronic monsters and high-tech special effects. ~ Michael Betzold, All Movie Guide