Tracey Walter Movies

A long-dormant Hollywood mystery returns with ferocious intensity when an avid movie fan wins a walk-on role in an upcoming horror film and finds himself thrust into the center of a blood-soaked, behind-the-scenes killing spree. Adam Waltz (Edward Furlong) was beginning to think his life was going nowhere until the day he won a role in the latest shocker from high-powered studio chief Connor Pritchett (Lance Henrikson). But just as Adam meets scream queen Cassie Blue (Tiffany Shepis) and all his wildest fantasies start coming true, a serial killer begins stalking the set and slaughtering all of the actors. Scheming to cash in on the publicity while the bodies are still warm, Pritchett attempts to turn the low-budget thriller into a Hollywood hit. The first step is to expand Adam's role - not a difficult goal considering the actors are dropping like flies - though the future of the film comes into question when Detective Shields (Tony Todd) takes up the case. Shields is determined to get his man, even if it means shutting down the production altogether. Now everyone is a suspect, including Adam, and the only hope for getting the film made is to wrap up production before the entire crew gets sent home in body bags. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A young man learns something about making his fantasies into reality from an older man who has already been there in this coming-of-age drama. Cameron (Michael Angarano) is a teenage film buff living in Los Angeles who dreams of making movies himself someday, an ambition that doesn't impress his parents very much. Cameron doesn't have many friends beyond fellow outcast Murphy (Joshua Boyd), and wealthy and popular classmate Brett (Taber Schroeder) takes great pleasure in making Cameron's life miserable. A major film school in L.A. has announced a competition for young filmmakers, but while Cameron has talent and ideas, Brett has the money to buy film stock and rent equipment, and Cameron wonders if he stands any chance at all. One evening, while attending a screening of Orson Welles' Touch of Evil at a revival theater, Cameron sees an elderly man who shouts at the screen about his old pal Orson. Cameron is thus introduced to Flash Madden (Christopher Plummer), who worked as a lighting man during the Golden Age of Hollywood and really did work with some of the most respected names in the business, including Welles. While cranky Flash doesn't much care for Cameron at first, in time he sees a kindred spirit in the movie-mad teenager, and offers his technical know-how and sources of equipment to the would-be director. Flash also introduces Cameron to Mickey Hopkins (M. Emmet Walsh), a former screenwriter who helped script a number of silver-screen classics but is now living in a shabby old folks' home, and in Hopkins, Cameron finds the inspiration for just the sort of movie he wants to make. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The made-for-cable The Family Plan will probably seem a breath of fresh air to anyone who hasn't seen such movies as Picture Perfect and Good Neighbor Sam, or who can't remember the mid-1960s TV sitcom Occasional Wife. A longtime employee at Sugar Dot Bakeries, Ms. Charlie McKenzie (Tori Spelling) faces dismissal when the company is taken over by a conglomerate. It seems that new CEO Walcott (Greg Germann) is a staunch advocate of Family Values, and prefers to employ people who are married and with children. Since Charlie cannot meet either one of these requirements, she hastily concocts a job-saving hoax, "borrowing" her best friend's daughter (Kali Rocha) to pose as her own child, then hiring unemployed actor Buck Maddox (Jordan Bridges) to impersonate Charlie's nonexistent dental-hygienist husband. The you-know-what threatens to hit the fan when Germann moves next door to Charlie and her "family". The Family Plan originally aired over the Hallmark channel on February 17, 2005. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

One man's life begins to crack under the weight of his compulsions in this drama. Michael (Patrick Cupo) works as a salesman for a garment firm in Los Angeles. Michael has a job, a wife named Gina (Anita Barone), and a baby on the way; however, he also has a gambling problem that is threatening to destroy him. As his debts mount, Michael is forced to lie to his boss (Charles Durning) in order to come up with money to pay his bookies, and as the pressures of his job and the coming responsibilities of fatherhood weigh on him, Michael sinks deeper and deeper into his addiction to gambling, always convinced the next bet will be the big win that pulls him out of the hole. One Last Ride was based on a play written by leading man Patrick Cupo. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In the conclusion of a two-part story, an evil alien spirit continues to wage war against mankind via the Black Heart, a powerful lunar gemstone. The stone has cast its sinister spell on virtually every member of the Justice League, transforming them from heroes to villains. Only The Flash has managed to escape the Black Heart's influence -- and it is up to him to set things right before the alien baddie can create a solar eclipse that will destroy both the sun and the Earth. ~ Rovi

Danny DeVito steps behind the camera for this darkly funny satire that combines elements of Barney and Friends with the real-life Pee-Wee Herman scandal while recalling the director's previously twisted black comedies Throw Momma From the Train (1987) and The War of the Roses (1989). Robin Williams stars as Randolph Smiley, a popular children's show host known professionally as "Rainbow Randolph." Dismissed from his beloved job when he's caught taking payola, Randolph becomes increasingly mentally unhinged and the target of his delusional revenge fantasies is Sheldon Mopes (Edward Norton), otherwise known as Smoochy, the fuchsia rhino character that has replaced him and soared to national popularity. Randolph soon learns that his ex-girlfriend and network executive Nora Wells (Catherine Keener) is sleeping with Sheldon, so he sets out to kill Smoochy, egged on by an unexpected ally: corporate president Marion Frank Stokes (Jon Stewart), who should be profiting from Smoochy's rise to fame, except for the fact that he and his cronies are unable to control the idealistic Sheldon's on-air agenda. Death to Smoochy (2002) co-stars Harvey Fierstein, Vincent Shiavelli, and Michael Rispoli. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Director Matthew Bright (Freeway) directs this tale of one of the most notorious serial killers in the annals of crime. Standing in stark contrast to the generally accepted view of serial killers, Ted Bundy (Michael Reilley Burke) was intelligent, quick-witted, and handsome. Engaged to a beautiful fiancée who never suspected his murderous tendencies, the feral Bundy develops a taste for murder that ultimately results in the deaths of at least 19 young women through the course of the 1970s. From posing as an injured driver and luring unsuspecting women to their deaths to an astonishing pair of jailbreaks and his ultimate death by capital punishment, viewers follow the murderous madman on a crime spree that shocked a nation and left the public's perception of what a serial killer is truly capable of forever changed. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Rage, jealousy, murder, and Eastern European automotive engineering combine in this offbeat black comedy. Verplanck, NY, is a small town north of Manhattan that has the dubious distinction of being the Yugo capital of America; the ill-fated import compact was first test-marketed in Verplanck, and nearly everyone in town drives one. So no one finds it unusual when a yellow Yugo is seen floating in the river, though seeing someone trapped inside is out of the ordinary. Verplanck's chief of police, Wyatt Rash (Danny De Vito), discovers that the deceased driver was a prominent local citizen, Mona Dearly (Bette Midler), and the evidence suggests that Mona's death was no accident. But the investigation into Mona's murder is hampered by one rather significant detail: nearly everyone in town hated Mona and wanted her dead. She alienated her son Jeff (Marcus Thomas) and his business partner Bobby (Casey Affleck). Bobby's girlfriend Ellen (Neve Campbell) (who is also Rash's daughter) is convinced that Mona would have tried to drive a wedge into their relationship. Mona's husband Phil (William Fichtner) couldn't stand her and fell into an affair with Rona (Jamie Lee Curtis), the waitress at the local diner. And even Rash's sidekick, Deputy Feege (Peter Dobson), spent too much time on the wrong end of Mona's temper to care that she's dead. Before long, the question is no longer who is a suspect, but who isn't? Drowning Mona was directed by Nick Gomez, who earned positive notices for his independent films New Jersey Drive and Illtown. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Based on the true saga of the Stouffer brothers, this movie is an unusual combination of comedy film and nature documentary. In the 1960s in rural Arkansas, Marty Stouffer (Jamey Sheridan) grooms his three sons to take over the family auto parts business. But the sons are more interested in animals, photography, racing cars and trucks, and impressing girls. Marty, Jr. (Scott Bairstow) and Mark (Devon Sawa) fight frequently with their stern father over his work demands and their yen for adventure. Finally, their mother Agnes (Frances Fisher) intercedes, and the patriarch agrees to let the two boys take a cross-country trip to film a nature documentary. The youngest son, Marshall (Jonathan Taylor Thomas), stows away in his brothers' van and joins them on their travels. They head west, encountering a variety of animals and surviving many dangerous scrapes. The brothers' wacky exploits contribute to a new kind of participatory nature cinematography. In real life, the Stouffer film was shown on national television in 1977, and all three brothers became documentarians and served as advisers on this film biography. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

Bill Murray teams up with his biggest co-star to date (with the exception of the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man) in this family-oriented comedy. Jack Corcoran (Bill Murray) is a motivational speaker who makes his living advising others how to tie up the loose ends of their lives, but he has plenty of his own left dangling. Jack is emotionally at the mercy of his mother (Anita Gillette) and his fiancée Celeste (Maureen Mueller), while his booking agent Walter (Jeremy Piven) keeps promising him bigger and better things that don't materialize. Jack has grown up believing that his father died before he was born while trying to rescue a drowning child, but he learns that was not the case at all -- Dad spent a long career working as a circus clown, and died only a few weeks ago. However, Dad was kind enough to bequeath Jack a large stack of debts and his only tangible asset, an Indian elephant named Vera (Tia). Jack is in no position to keep a pachyderm at home, and he has two options for getting rid of the animal -- sell Vera to Terry (Linda Fiorentino), a mean spirited animal trainer, or donate her to Mo (Janeane Garofalo), a zoologist who hopes to return her to the wilds. Either way, Jack has to get Vera from the East Coast to California, and in order to make an important speaking engagement, he and the elephant have five days to cross the country. Larger Than Life also features Matthew McConaughey as an excitable truck driver; Keith David, Harve Presnell, and Pat Hingle also highlight the supporting cast. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Based on the book Matilda, by British children's author Roald Dahl, this film moves the setting from the U.K. to the U.S.; otherwise it follows the original closely. Matilda Wormwood (Mara Wilson) is an extremely curious and intelligent little girl who is very different from her low-brow, mainstream parents (Danny DeVito and real-life wife Rhea Perlman), who quite cruelly ignore her. As she grows older, she begins to discover that she has telekinetic powers. Not until a teacher shows her kindness for the first time does she realize that she can use those powers to do something about her sufferings and help her friends as well. Villains from the awful Miss Trunchbull (Pam Ferris), headmistress of her miserable school Crunchem Hall, to her parents and older brother begin to feel her ire. Look for Paul Reubens (aka Pee Wee Herman) in a small part as an FBI agent investigating Matilda's shady father. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi

In this quirky drama, Julian Goddard is stranded in the desert and dying of thirst when suddenly Johnny Destiny drives up and gives him a ride to the ramshackle Marilyn Motel near Las Vegas. There they meet the owner, Harry Thoreau, with whom Julian attempted to rob a bank three years before. It is revealed that Julian is an escaped convict who has returned to get his share of the take and reclaim his former girlfriend Lucille, who is working as a lounge singer at her boyfriend's casino. While Julian endeavors to realize his goal, Destiny frequently appears to guide him and the others along their proper paths. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

A wife finds herself highly expendable as her husband and his lover continually bungle their attempts at murder in this black comedy. Mona, the wife, is a woman of substance who is forever trying to coerce her husband Eddie, a selfish, shallow creep, into making love to her. He refuses. She goes to the hospital for liposuction. While she is gone, Eddie saves the life of a woman attempting suicide. She is the beautiful Rachel. They become lovers. When Mona returns, Eddie lies and tells her that Rachel will be her nurse. Realizing that Mona will figure it out soon, the two lovers decide to murder her first. They try burying her in the sand, tossing her into the garbage, towing her out to sea, but nothing works. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi