Robert Elswit Movies

Set in New York and New England (but filmed in Newfoundland), Behind the Red Door stars Kyra Sedgwick as Manhattan-based photographer Natalie Haddad, who enjoys success with her strangely gloomy and foreboding camerawork. When her agent and best friend Julia (Stockard Channing) arranges for her to accept a lucrative contract with a Boston ad agency, Natalie discovers that she will be working for her own gay brother Roy (Kiefer Sutherland), whom she hasn't seen in a decade. Although Roy is insufferably snobbish and manipulative, he manages to exert a curious control over Natalie, forcing her to confront several disturbing, long-suppressed memories of her past (shown in black-and-white flashbacks). Before the film is over, Natalie is made to realize why Roy's behavior is so overbearing -- and also, the viewer learns just how intimately Julia is involved in the lives of both siblings. Underwritten by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation as part of an ongoing program to heighten HIV/AIDS awareness, Behind the Red Door made its Showtime cable-network bow on January 12, 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Matthew Lawrence plays an 11-year-old boy whose life is torn asunder by the divorce of his parents. John Ritter plays Lawrence's doctor father, who finds himself with only one day to make amends to his estranged son. Complicating matters are the divergent emotions of Lawrence's mother's new husband, and his father's new wife. Though the title would suggest that Ritter is forced to mature, it is in fact Lawrence who comes of age before the final fadeout. The Summer My Father Grew Up was first telecast March 3, 1991, where it lost the ratings war hands-down to a rerun of RoboCop. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

In this romance, a woman campaigns against a handsome actor in a mayoral race in their small seaside town. Trouble ensues when she falls in love with him. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

To escape from the boredom of her small-town life, Sunday School teacher Candy Morrison (Barbara Hershey) engages in an affair with a fellow churchgoer. When his wife Peggy learns about the relationship, she attacks Candy with an axe; after a struggle, Candy kills Peggy, hitting her 41 times with the axe. In the resulting trial, her plea of self-defense is examined. This TV-movie is based on a true story. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Movie Guide

When young Chuck Murdock (Joshua Zuehlke) visits a nuclear missile site, he learns that one bomb would destroy the earth in less time than it would take a piece of silverware to drop from his hand to the floor. This information sends the sensitive boy into existential angst. Wondering why anybody should do anything when the world can be destroyed so quickly, and hoping to raise consciousness about nuclear weapons, Chuck quits his Little League team. He gains a little bit of local press. One of those stories is read by NBA star "Amazing Grace" Smith (Alex English), who is so moved by the boy's story that he too quits playing his sport. This produces a great deal of national press, as well as a handful of stars from other sports that decide to join the ranks of Amazing Grace and Chuck. Some powers that be in the sports world, as well as the government, do not look kindly upon these "strikes" and set about to end the movement. Amazing Grace and Chuck came near the end of a cycle of nuclear anxiety films that included Testament, The Day After, and Threads. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

The Children of Times Square are alienated and disenfranchised kids from all over the country. With nowhere to go and no real purpose in life, they converge on the streets of New York, totally vulnerable despite their outward toughness. Howard Rollins plays a ruthless cocaine dealer who, in the tradition of Fagin, wins the confidence of many of these kids and organizes them into a criminal gang. The film traces the "recruitment" by Rollins of two teenagers, runaway Brandon Douglas and New Yorker Danny Nucci. Joanna Cassidy plays Douglas' mother, who desperately tries to free her son from Rollins' influence. Made for TV, Children of Times Square debuted on March 3, 1986. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Originally telecast October 9, 1983, Tiger Town was the first feature film made specifically for the Disney Channel cable service. Roy Scheider stars as a veteran Detroit Tigers right fielder, whose chances of getting into at least one World Series before retirement diminishes with each Tigers loss. Scheider's biggest fan is preteener Justin Henry, so devoted to baseball that his mother wakes him up each morning by playing "The Star Spangled Banner." Recalling the words of his late father--"If you really believe deep in your heart, there's always hope and you can make it happen"--Henry closes his eyes and "wills" Scheider to hit a winning home runs. Wham! It works! Thereafter, Henry shows up at every game, convinced that the Tigers will lose if he doesn't "will" a few homers from the bleachers (indeed, whenever Henry is absent, the Tigers tank). A crisis develops when it appears as though Henry will not be on hand for the deciding pennant game between the Tigers and the Orioles. Beautifully acted and directed for the most part (the scene in which Henry learns of his father's death is particularly well-handled), Tiger Town falls apart about ten minutes before the ending, when it degenerates into a standard "Disney movie," complete with a destructive slapstick chase. Otherwise, Tiger Town, the maiden directorial effort of Alan Shapiro, is a first-rate baseball picture, one of the best of the genre. Watch for cameo appearances by ex- "Supreme" Mary Wilson, Tigers manager Sparky Anderson, and sportscasters Ernie Harwell, Ray Lane and Al Ackerman. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Charlize Theron top-lines the romantic ensemble The Burning Plain, written and directed by Babel screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga. 2929 Production's film tells the tale of a web of interconnecting love stories, with Theron playing Sylvia, a woman with a troubled past who tries to reconcile with her parents. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, All Movie Guide

Writer-director Paul Thomas Anderson steps outside his contemporary world of dysfunctional Angelenos to explore a very different dysfunctional man -- an oil pioneer whose trailblazing spirit is equaled only by his murderous ambition. There Will Be Blood is Anderson's loose adaptation of the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair, and it focuses its attentions on Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis), a miner who happens upon black gold during a disastrous excavation that ends in a broken leg. Pulling himself up from the bowels of the earth, both literally and metaphorically, Plainview embarks on a systematic and steadfast approach to mastering the oil business. Using plain-spoken and straightforward language, Plainview launches a campaign to convince small-town property owners they should let him drill their land. Without him, they won't have the equipment to access the profit beneath their feet. He builds an empire this way -- and gradually becomes obsessed with the intrinsic value of power, growing increasingly irascible and paranoid in the process. Plainview meets his match in Eli Sunday (Paul Dano), a teenage preacher in the small California town of Little Boston, whose brother tipped Plainview off to the town's plentiful supply of untapped oil. To fully reap the benefits of the land, Plainview must suffer the opposing whims of this "prophet," whose legitimacy is questionable at best. And it's unclear if either man is prepared to pay the humiliating price the other wants to exact. There Will Be Blood features an anachronistic soundtrack by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, and it was shot in the same town where the James Dean epic Giant was filmed. ~ Derek Armstrong, All Movie Guide

Oil drives greed in Oscar-winning Traffic screenwriter Stephen Gaghan's labyrinthine sophomore directorial effort that traces the corruption of the global oil industry from the backrooms of Washington, D.C., to the petroleum-rich fields of the Middle East. Based in part on the writings of former CIA case officer Robert Baer, Syriana combines multiple storylines to explore the complexities that befall a proposed merger between two U.S. oil giants. Reform-minded Gulf country prince Nasir (Alexander Siddig) is in favor of making his nation more self-sufficient rather than U.S.-reliant, and his money-minded Western connections couldn't be less pleased. Before settling into a cushy desk job for the remainder of his career, CIA agent Bob Barnes (George Clooney) is sent on one last assignment -- to assassinate Prince Nasir and reinstate U.S. ties in the oil-rich region. Though his loyalty dictates that Barnes carry out his current mission despite lingering doubts of a previous blunder, his mission goes horribly awry when his field contact goes turncoat and Barnes becomes a CIA scapegoat. Meanwhile, up-and-coming Washington attorney Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright) attempts to walk a fine line in overseeing a tenuous merger between two oil giants that's plagued with shady business dealings. Hotshot energy analyst Bryan Woodman (Matt Damon) is in talks to form a lucrative partnership with Prince Nasir, though the death of his son during a party at the prince's estate makes him question his loyalty to business over family. Back in Washington, D.C., Bennet's boss Dean Whiting attempts to undermine Prince Nasir's attempts to make his country less reliant on the U.S. dollar by planting the seeds of dissonance between the progressive prince and his money-minded younger brother Prince Meshal (Akbar Kurtha). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Adam Sandler and Emily Watson star in Punch-Drunk Love, an odd romantic comedy from gifted young director Paul Thomas Anderson. Sandler plays Barry Egan, a shy sad-sack with a great deal of repressed anger that occasionally bursts forth in sudden violent outrages, who falls in love with Lena Leonard (Emily Watson), a co-worker of one of Barry's seven sisters. After calling a phone-sex line, Barry is extorted by bad-guy Dean Trumbell (Anderson regular Philip Seymour Hoffman), who eventually sends four goons to assault Barry and get the money. This film was screened in competition at the 2002 Cannes Film Festival, where Paul Thomas Anderson was named Best Director. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Tom Welles (Nicolas Cage) is a surveillance expert on the rise. He's living the American dream with a wife, Amy (Catherine Keener), infant daughter, and a house in the suburbs of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. After the completion of an assignment for a U.S. Senator, Welles is summoned to the house of a recently deceased captain of industry. His widow, in settling his estate, has discovered an 8MM film in her late husband's private safe. The silent short depicts the apparent murder of a young woman by a large, masked figure, what is known as a "snuff" film. Greatly disturbed by the film's contents, the widow hires Welles to find the identity of the woman and determine if she is still alive. Welles finds the girl's identity and follows her trail from the time she ran away from home to Hollywood. Once there, Welles meets adult bookstore clerk Max California (Joaquin Phoenix) to act as Virgil to Welles' Dante. As the two begin their descent into the world of underground pornography, the detective grows more and more distant from his family, as if he cannot shake the taint of the world in which he now walks. Tom and Max eventually meet pornographers Dino Velvet (Peter Stormare) and Eddie Poole (James Gandolfini). By this time the detective finds he can no longer walk out of the inferno. ~ Ron Wells, All Movie Guide

While set within the milieu of the Los Angeles adult film industry, Boogie Nights is less a film about pornography than the serio-comic story of a group of misfits, losers, and lost souls who are embraced by Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds), a director who makes "adult films, exotic motion pictures." In 1977, while hanging out at a disco, Jack spots Eddie (Mark Wahlberg), the new busboy at the club, and tells him he's convinced "there's something wonderful inside those jeans waiting to get out." Jack knows his business well and his expert eye has not betrayed him; Eddie is a pornographer's dream -- good looking, remarkably endowed, and willing and able to do as many takes as might be needed. The product of a woefully dysfunctional upbringing, Eddie is not terribly bright but is very ambitious and eager to prove he has a "special something" to share with the world. Eddie changes his name to Dirk Diggler and quickly becomes the biggest star in hardcore. Working alongside "Dirk" in Jack's films are Amber Waves (Julianne Moore), a porn actress who applies her misplaced maternal instincts to anyone who needs nurturing; Rollergirl (Heather Graham), a cheerful but blank-faced high school drop-out who never removes her roller skates; Reed Rothchild (John C. Reilly), a none-too-bright actor, aspiring magician, and failing songwriter; Buck (Don Cheadle), a black actor fascinated with cowboy iconography who wants to open a stereo shop; Scotty J (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a stocky and awkward soundman infatuated with Dirk; Little Bill (William H. Macy), Jack's assistant director, who has trouble dealing with his wife's brazen infidelity; and Colonel James (Robert Ridgely), Jack's backer, who has a weakness for young girls. In the brief, late-'70s moment when porn was chic and sex films seemed poised to break into the mainstream, Dirk becomes a star and Jack a respected name. But a few years later, drugs and pride have taken their toll on Dirk and many of his friends, while the advent of the VCR radically changes the adult movie business; Jack goes from being a "filmmaker" to manufacturing and wholesaling videocassettes, a wealthy but emotionally broken man. In his second film, wunderkind director Paul Thomas Anderson juggled a broad range of characters in a manner reminiscent of Robert Altman's ensemble films, making Boogie Nights a sad but funny story of a makeshift family of damaged people and what happens before and after their brief moment in the sun. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide