Peter C. Jensen Movies

Gina Gershon and Jennifer Tilly nearly set the screen on fire in this clever, female-powered twist on the standard Mob caper film. Gershon is Corky, an ex-con renovating the apartment next door to where Tilly's Violet lives. Violet is the moll of psychotic gangster Caesar (Joe Pantoliano), who uses the apartment as an occasional location for meetings and beatings, and also uses Violet as an occasional plaything for his Mob cronies. Violet is attracted to the super-sexy Corky, and the two begin an intense affair. Corky hatches a plot to escape with $2 million that Caesar is planning to give to a Mob boss, and the mayhem escalates from there. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

In this supernatural nostalgia piece, a young boy tracks down a murderer with help from the ghosts of a slain little girl and her mother. In a voice-over, grown-up writer Frankie Scarlatti describes the disturbing events that intruded on his idyllic small-town boyhood. Locked in the school cloakroom by some other boys on Halloween 1962, young Frankie (Lukas Haas) encounters the ghost of Melissa Anne Montgomery (Joelle Jacobi), who re-enacts her own death by strangulation just before an unseen adult enters the school and tries to do away with Frankie himself. While recuperating in the care of his widower father (Alex Rocco), Frankie conducts some detective work and learns that Melissa is one of ten children killed over the past decade. Further encounters with the girl's ghost -- and the mournful specter of her mother, the Lady in White (Karen Powell) -- do little to help the boy solve the mystery of who killed the kids. Meanwhile, an innocent black maintenance man becomes the scapegoat on which the police hang the killings. However, thanks to the damning but enigmatic evidence Frankie has discovered, the boy faces imminent danger from the actual killer, who ends up lurking terrifyingly close to home. The sophomore feature from writer/director Frank LaLoggia, who made his name with the low-budget horror film Fear No Evil, Lady in White starred the young Lukas Haas halfway between his appearances in Witness and Rambling Rose. ~ Brian J. Dillard, Rovi

Peter Rader directed this horror film about a teen-aged orphan named Lynn (Kim Valentine) who accompanies her young brother David (Eric Foster) to live on their grandparents' farm after their father dies. Before long, it becomes obvious that all is not right on the farm, and that the grandparents (Ida Lee and Len Lesser) are hiding a dark secret. Cult favorite Brinke Stevens stars as the kids' insane mother, whom the grandparents have drugged to control her homicidal impulses, and screenwriter Peter Jensen provides the atmospheric photography. Some chilling moments and a particularly creepy performance by Lesser make this average slasher film worthwhile. Producer Nico Mastorakis had co-written the story for the abominable The Greek Tycoon (1978) before turning to genre filmmaking. ~ Robert Firsching, Rovi

In this straight-to-video Las Vegas-set thriller, a choreographer's attempts to kick his drug habit and clean up his act are thwarted by Mafia-connected pushers, and dogged G-men. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

In this documentary on seafaring in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the weathered crews who sailed from New York to San Francisco come alive again. Focusing on the dangerous and often fatal voyage around Cape Horn in South America, the film goes back in time using previously unseen, 1920s footage. The story moves from the empty graves of sailors lost at sea to the hulks of shipwrecks in the Falkland Islands. As a graphic example of the hazards of this long journey, the ill-fated maiden voyage of the sunken "St. Mary" is recounted in detail. The theme of unflagging devotion to ships and sailing runs throughout and is echoed in the dedication of the craftsmen in New England who practice the forgotten art of shipbuilding -- no matter that the ships have died along with their era. The soundtrack, the interaction of historical and modern footage, and the restrained narration create an evocative context for this intriguing look at a particular page in nautical history. ~ Eleanor Mannikka, Rovi

In this actioner, the Westernized grandson of a shaman decides to return to the wilderness to learn more about his Native American heritage. He ends up meeting some very powerful evil spirits and to escape them he must enlist the aid of his lover and a local chief to stop the spirits from taking over. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

This anthology of student cinematography contains works of 21 aspiring filmmakers. Contained herein is the animated classic by Marvin Newland Bambi Meets Godzilla. ~ Dan Pavlides, Rovi