Ingrid Veninger Movies

A filmmaker struggles with her personal life and her professional goals in this independent drama from Canadian writer and director Ingrid Veninger, who also plays the leading role, Ruby White. Ruby is struggling with an increasingly distant relationship with her husband and wants to reconnect with her daughter Sara (Halle Switzer, who is Veninger's daughter in real life), now eighteen years old and expecting her first child. Ruby is flying to Europe to present her latest film at several festivals, and she invites Sara to tag along as her assistant. Sara agrees, but when the film is rejected by critics and audiences after its premiere in England, Ruby goes into an emotional tailspin, and an exasperated Sara abandons her mother, taking the next flight to Paris instead of heading to the next festival stop in Berlin. Sara spends some time in the City of Lights as she ponders what to do with her future, while Ruby is left on her own as she tries to figure how her life and her art went so wrong. I Am A Good Person/I Am A Bad Person received its world premiere at the 2011 Toronto International Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Tween ennui serves as the emotional focal point of co-directors Simon Reynolds and Ingrid Veninger's lyrical study of youthful loneliness. His parents so consumed with running their North Ontario hotel that they have precious little time to share with their son, twelve year old Daniel (Jacob Switzer) spends most of his days attempting to avoid responsibilities that include changing the bedding in the rooms and cleaning up around the grounds. The kids from town are always trying to score booze from Daniel for their parties, but he'd rather pass the time breaking stuff and crashing in the rooms than doing favors for them. One day, while stealthily making his way to the pool, Daniel spies a girl just about his age floating face down. Startled, Daniel begins to talk with the girl and discovers that her name is Vera (Elena Hudgins Lyle). Vera's parents are currently in the midst of a bitter separation, and much like Daniel she's frequently left to her own devices. As Daniel and Vera wander the hotel grounds discussing their lives the things that are truly important to them, they eventually come to realize that the thing that binds them so tightly together is their mutual disappointment of not being closer with their parents. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Actress-turned-filmmaker Anais Granofsky (Degrassi Junior High) takes the helm for this surreal science fiction drama about a young Canadian doctor who attempts to help an industrialist's daughter regenerate her missing limbs. In the near future, planet Earth is frozen, and water is a highly valued commodity. As humans begin to mutate, science makes great strides. Thanks to technology, humans now have the ability to regenerate limbs. Clara (Ingrid Veninger) isn't whole. The adopted daughter of powerful industrialist Abe Fielder (Clark Johnson), she spends her days in her attic room. When Dr. Gabriel Goode (Peter Stebbings) arrives to treat her, he realizes that something is amiss. The closer he gets to Clara, however, the more ominous his interactions with her peculiar family become. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

This powerful, politically charged cable TV movie was based on the memoirs of Hungarian gynecologist and Holocaust survivor Gisella Perl. Having spent the WWII years in charge of the woman's infirmary at Auschwitz, Perl (played by Christine Lahti) hopes to leave her living nightmare behind when the Allies liberate Europe. But when she applies for American citizenship in 1946, she is hauled into military court to explain the extent to which she "collaborated" with the Nazis during the war. The U.S. officials are especially disturbed by the number of illegal abortions Perl performed at Auschwitz without her superiors' knowledge. But as Perl struggles to explain to her relentless interrogators (the explanation taking the form of extended flashbacks), she terminated the lives of the unborn to save thousands of pregnant women from the Nazi gas chambers. Filmed on location in Canada, the U.K., and Lithuania, Out of the Ashes made its Showtime network debut on April 13, 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The true story of one of the most contentious labor disputes of the 1970s is the basis for this made-for-cable drama. In 1973, many of the men of Harlan County, Kentucky, were employed by Brookside Mining, who operated a number of coal mines. Brookside paid its employees meager wages for dangerous, backbreaking work, and also controlled housing and retail sales in the area, boarding its workers in shacks without central heating or indoor plumbing, and selling them food and clothing at inflated prices. Warren Jakopovich (Stellan Skarsgard), an organizer for the United Mine Workers Association, encouraged Brookside's workers to join the union and go on strike for fair wages and better working conditions. Many of the miners simply couldn't afford the loss of income that a strike would mean, but when two workers died as a result of Brookside's willful ignorance of safety standards, most of Harlan County's mine workers finally went on strike. A judge formerly employed by Brookside handed down an order forbidding the workers to picket the mine sites, but Ruby Kincaid (Holly Hunter), whose husband Silas (Ted Levine) was fired for protesting dangerous conditions and whose father was attacked by scab laborers, organized the wives of striking miners to picket in their place. The Harlan County War was based on the same strike portrayed in the Academy Award-winning documentary Harlan County, USA. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Steal This Movie! is a dramatic account of the tumultuous life and times of Abbie Hoffman, one of the most visible and influential figures of America's 1960s counter-culture. (Its title was inspired by Hoffman's irreverent "survival guide," Steal This Book.) Hoffman's founding of the Youth International Party (better known as the "Yippies") and inventive acts of street theater -- including an "exorcism" of the Pentagon and the riotous protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago -- made him a household name and a star of the anti-war movement. They also earned him enemies, and he was eventually arrested for trying to sell cocaine to an undercover cop, a bust that he contended was a set-up meant to discredit him. Rather than face a long prison sentence, Hoffman went underground, leaving behind his wife and children and posing as "Barry Freed," who became a respected environmental activist. In time, Freed acknowledged that he was Hoffman, spent two months in jail, and returned to activism full-time until his 1989 death. Steal This Movie stars Vincent D'Onofrio as Hoffman, Janeane Garofalo as his wife Anita, Kevin Corrigan as Jerry Rubin, Troy Garity as Tom Hayden, and Jeanne Tripplehorn as Joanna Lawrenson, who became romantically involved with Barry Freed. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Nikita (Peta Wilson) poses as a recruit for Glass Curtain, a terrorist organization that picks its members from Internet chat rooms. Welcomed into the Glass Curtain fold, Nikita discovers that the group is holding former Section One operative Simone (Mung-Ling Tsui) captive. Complicating matters further is the fact that Simone happens to be the former wife of Nikita's Section One contact, Michael (Roy Dupuis). ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Diane Ladd stars in this psychological drama about Susan, a woman who was adopted as a child and has long wanted to meet her biological mother in hopes of resolving certain emotional issues After a long search, she finally meets Edie Diane Ladd, who is warmly welcomed into Susan's life, alongside her husband and children. However, once Susan has reunited with Edie, she notices Edie can be more than a bit possessive, and it soon becomes clear anyone who comes between Edie and her daughter winds up dead. Now Susan and her husband need to find out the truth about Edie before they become the next victims. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

During a boring, routine weekend, young Glen (Stephen Dorff) and his best buddy, Terry (Louis Tripp), decide to explore Glen's backyard. Before long, the boys come across a strange hole in the ground which yields all manner of sinister prizes. Consulting one of his heavy-metal record albums, Glen comes to the correct conclusion that the hole is actually the Gate to Hell. Offering a sacrifice in the form of a dead dog, Glen further opens the portals of Hades, through which pass some of the most hideous demons imaginable. A surprise box-office hit, The Gate yielded a sequel, predictably titled Gate II. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In this thriller, a teenage computer genius accidently hacks into the computer system controlling a nuclear reactor and suddenly finds that his own computer has become a nuclear weapon with its own agenda. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi