Kathleen Kennedy Movies

In this contemporary drama, Sigourney Weaver plays a woman out of her element and at the end of her rope. Alice Goodwin is a wife and mother who finds that the pressures of her life are starting to become more than she can bear. Alice works part-time as a school nurse while her husband Howard (David Strathairn) runs the family farm; they both look after their two daughters. Alice, who wasn't raised in farm country, still feels like an outsider, and she embraces a cynical, sarcastic humor as a defense mechanism. Alice's only real friends in town are Dan and Theresa Collins (Ron Lea and Julianne Moore), who live nearby and often babysit Alice's kids; Alice does the same for the Collins children as well. One day, while watching Theresa's two-year-old daughter Lizzie, Alice has to step away for a few minutes, and she returns to discover Lizzie has fallen into a pond near the house; the child falls into a coma and dies several days later. Lizzie's death puts a permanent wedge between Alice and Theresa, and most people in the community believe Alice is to blame for the girl's death. Any support she might have had is driven away when Robbie (Marc Donato), a boy who lives nearby, claims Alice molested him. Alice is sent to jail while awaiting trial, and Howard (who can't afford her $100,000 bail) must watch over their daughters and keep house by himself as he tries to keep the farm afloat. As Alice falls into a deep depression behind bars, Howard and Theresa begin edging into a romance. Based on the best-selling novel by Jane Hamilton, A Map of the World was adapted for the screen by Peter Hedges and Polly Platt and director Scott Elliott. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Nine years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a small town in the Pacific Northwest still struggles with the troubling legacy of U.S. policies against Asian-Americans. In December 1950, just off the shores of San Piedro Island in Washington, a Japanese-American man named Kazuo Miyamoto (Rick Yune) stands accused of murder after his close friend Carl Heine (Eric Thal) is found drowned in icy waters. As the trial gets under way, with Alvin Hooks (James Rebhorn) prosecuting Kazuo and Nels Gudmundsson (Max Von Sydow) defending him, reporter Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke) covers the proceedings for the local newspaper. It's difficult for Ishmael to view the trial objectively, as his first love was a Japanese-American girl named Hatsue (Youki Kudoh), who later married Kazuo. Now, Ishmael has discovered that, when the Japanese-American residents of San Piedro Island were sent to internment camps during World War II, Carl's mother used their incarceration to scuttle a land purchase by Kazuo's family. This could suggest a motive for murder, but Ishmael is reluctant to step forward with the story. Snow Falling on Cedars was based on the best-selling novel by David Guterson, adapted for the screen by Ron Bass and writer/director Scott Hicks. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Balto is an animated trifle, based loosely on a true story from the 1920s, that may offer some amusement for young children. A live-action intro and outro set the stage for the story of Balto (voiced by Kevin Bacon), a stray who's half dog and half wolf, who is shunned as a half-breed outcast by both humans and his own kind. Balto does have some friends, like the goose Boris (Bob Hoskins) and two polar bears named Muk and Luk (Phil Collins), but he is particularly resented by canine pack leader Steele (Jim Cummings), with whom he is competing for the affections of Jenna (Bridget Fonda). He eventually becomes a hero when he guides a medication-carrying sled to a townful of sick kids in the wilds of Alaska. The film features a number of positive messages (subtlety is not its strong point), but it may not feature enough humor or excitement to keep anyone but the very smallest viewers engrossed. ~ Don Kaye, Rovi

Good gorillas meet bad gorillas while human beings search for treasure in this jungle advnture saga. R.B. Travis (Joe Don Baker) is the ruthless head of Travi-Com, a telecommunications firm on the cusp of a major breakthrough in laser communications technology. However, Travis needs diamonds to finish the project, so he sends a group of men to Zaire, where he's told that a large supply of the gems can be easily found. When the men go missing, Travis sends his trusted assistant Karen Ross (Laura Linney), a one-time CIA associate, into the jungle to find both his staff and the jewels. Hoping to keep her mission a secret, Karen travels to Zaire in the company of Peter (Dylan Walsh), a researcher on primate development who is hoping to return Amy, a gorilla who has been taught sign language and can "speak" English with the help of a glove-controlled computer device. Also travelling with them is Herkermer (Tim Curry), a Romanian with a secret agenda: he's convinced that Amy can guide him to the Lost City of Zinj, where he believes that King Solomon's Mines are located. Upon arrival, the group is met by Monroe Kelly (Ernie Hudson), a self-described "great white hunter who happens to be black," and they discover that the jungle holds a menace that they weren't counting on: a tribe of bloodthirsty gray gorillas. Congo was based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Michael Crichton. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

The brief, illicit love affair between an Iowa housewife and a post-middle-age free-lance photographer is chronicled in this powerful romance based on the best-selling novella by Robert James Waller. The story begins as globetrotting National Geographic photographer Robert Kincaid journeys to Madison County in 1965 to film its lovely covered bridges. Upon his arrival, he stops by an old farmhouse to ask directions. There he encounters housewife, Francesca Johnson, whose spouse and two children are out of town. Thus begins their four-day affair, a liaison that fundamentally changes them both. Later Francesca chronicles the affair in a diary which her flabbergasted grown children read; never would they have expected their mother to be capable of the passion she experienced with Kincaid. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

After befriending a kind-hearted prostitute, a 12-year-old boy attempts to set her up with his widowed father in this family comedy. Young Frank Wheeler (Michael Patrick Carter) first meets working girl V (Melanie Griffith) when he and two friends pool their money to buy a glimpse of a naked woman. V does the job and agrees to drive Frank home; along the way, he becomes convinced that this nice call girl would be the perfect new wife for his dad (Ed Harris). V happens to be on the run from a group of evil gangsters, so when he invites her to stay at their house in the suburbs, she readily agrees. Masquerading as a math tutor, she strikes a chord with Mr. Wheeler, but this budding romance is soon threatened by the return of V's past. Despite the potentially off-color premise, Milk Money aims to be innocuous family fare, with juvenile jokes mixing with unthreatening romance. ~ Judd Blaise, Rovi

Based on a true story, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils, using flattery and bribes to win military contracts, and brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory. By staffing his plant with Jews who've been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops, Schindler has a dependable unpaid labor force. For Stern, a job in a war-related plant could mean survival for himself and the other Jews working for Schindler. However, in 1942, all of Krakow's Jews are assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, overseen by Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), an embittered alcoholic who occasionally shoots prisoners from his balcony. Schindler arranges to continue using Polish Jews in his plant, but, as he sees what is happening to his employees, he begins to develop a conscience. He realizes that his factory (now refitted to manufacture ammunition) is the only thing preventing his staff from being shipped to the death camps. Soon Schindler demands more workers and starts bribing Nazi leaders to keep Jews on his employee lists and out of the camps. By the time Germany falls to the allies, Schindler has lost his entire fortune -- and saved 1,100 people from likely death. Schindler's List was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture and a long-coveted Best Director for Spielberg, and it quickly gained praise as one of the finest American movies about the Holocaust. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Steven Spielberg's phenomenally successful sci-fi adventure thriller is graced by state-of-the-art special effects from the team of Stan Winston, Phil Tippett and Michael Lantieri from George Lucas's Industrial Light & Magic. The film follows two dinosaur experts -- Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler Laura Dern) -- as they are invited by eccentric millionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) to preview his new amusement park on an island off Costa Rica. By cloning DNA harvested from pre-historic insects, Hammond has been able to create living dinosaurs for his new Jurassic Park, an immense animal preserve housing real brachiosaurs, dilophosaurs, triceratops, velociraptors, and a Tyrannosaur Rex. Accompanied by cynical scientist Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum), who is obsessed with chaos theory, and Hammond's two grandchildren (Ariana Richards and Joseph Mazzello), they are sent on a tour through Hammond's new resort in computer controlled touring cars. But as a tropical storm hits the island, knocking out the power supply, and an unscrupulous employee (Wayne Knight) sabotages the system so that he can smuggle dinosaur embryos out of the park, the dinosaurs start to rage out of control. Grant then has to bring Hammond's grandchildren back to safety as the group is pursued by the gigantic man-eating beasts. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

This is the first mainstream film to deal with the harrowing true story of a Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains in October of 1972 and who were forced to resort to cannibalism to survive more than two months of isolation. (The only other film to tackle the subject, Rene Cardona's Survive! was a seedy little mess that delighted in exploiting the cannibalism aspect.) The events depicted are primarily based on the novel of the same name by Piers Paul Read. The interview-style prologue features an uncredited John Malkovich as one of the survivors, whose spiritual ruminations on the disaster kick off the film's main action. We are briefly introduced to the characters before disaster strikes, in the film's most horrifying set-piece -- the depiction of the crash in grueling detail. The handful of survivors who manage to extricate themselves from the twisted wreckage seem incapable of working through their panic as they hope against all odds that a rescue party will locate them. One of the survivors, Nando (Ethan Hawke), awakens from a coma and makes a remarkable recovery -- enough to demonstrate level-headed leadership after team captain Antonio (Vincent Spano) begins to lose his nerve. As the weeks wear on and rations are depleted, the survivors are forced into a moral dilemma: the only remaining source of food seems to be the bodies of the dead. Those who choose for religious reasons not to consume their former companions must face the realization that they will soon starve or freeze to death. In the end, three men who choose survival above all else find the strength to set out on a treacherous mission to a ridge, where hopefully one of them will make it to civilization. Director Frank Marshall infuses the proceedings with sufficient intensity to keep the story moving, but the film fails to fully explore the often-recounted spiritual aspects of the ordeal as established in the opening monologue. Ironically, the writers' apparent attempts to remain true to Read's account of events -- resulting in some rather odd stretches of dialogue -- impede the drama even more than the Hollywood glamorization of the story's nominal "heroes," who remain rugged and handsome despite months of malnutrition and severe frostbite. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Michael Frayn's frantic West End and Broadway farce makes a literal transformation to the screen in Peter Bogdanoch's faithful adaptation, which is transplanted from the London suburbs to Des Moines, Iowa to accommodate the (mostly) American cast. Michael Caine stars as director Lloyd Fellowes, assigned to bring the successful British sex farce "Nothing On" to the boards in America. In an intricate technical rehearsal, Lloyd puts his cast through their paces -- Garry Lejuene (John Ritter), an obliging feature actor; Dotty Otley (Carol Burnett), a fading theatrical star; Frederick Dallas (Christopher Reeve), a handsome leading man who demands to know the motivation behind every scene; Brooke Ashton (Nicollette Sheridan), the sexy leading lady; Belinda Blair (Marilu Henner), the seen-it-all second female lead; and Seldson Mawbray (Denholm Elliot), the inebriated character actor. The technical rehearsal goes off without a hitch, but as the play travels the country in pre-Broadway performances, the eccentricities of the cast come to the fore and the performances in Des Moines and Cleveland are complete disasters. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

In this animated sequel to An American Tale, Fievel Mousekewitz strikes out from not-so-enthralling New York City in a wagon train headed West. Helping propel the departure is a crafty cat named Cat R. Waul who tells our Fievel that out West the cats and mice get along just fine. Once on the trail, Fievel finds that the cat's real plan is mice meat pie out of the little rodents, and Fievel tries his darndest to warn everyone, but to no avail. On his side, however, are a couple of friendly cats, including one named Tiger (voice: Dom Deluise) whose scattered one-liners will keep most audiences chuckling. Another wonderful character is the has-been sheriff Wylie Burp (voice: James Stewart). Although this film may be rightfully criticized as being a little too tame, even for toddlers, the endearing and humorous character side-play will likely appeal to most little ones, and very possibly some big people, too. ~ Rovi

Steven Spielberg filters J. M. Barrie's Peter Pan through a distinctly 1990s sensibility in Hook. Peter Pan has become Peter Banning (Robin Williams), a 40-year-old mergers and acquisitions lawyer with a permanent scowl on his face and a cellular phone in his belt. Banning has lost any memory of being Peter Pan, and he is also in danger of losing his wife Moira (Caroline Goodall) and two children, Jack (Charlie Korsmo) and Maggie (Amber Scott). Peter and his family travel to London to visit Granny Wendy (Maggie Smith) who recalls Peter's lost youth and asks him, "Peter, dear, don't you know who you are?" With Peter's children asleep in the same bedroom where the original Peter Pan story began, there is a blinding flash. Peter comes into the room to discover a note from Captain Hook (Dustin Hoffman), informing Peter that he has kidnapped his children. Granny Wendy now tells him who he really is and encourages him to re-discover his happy thoughts, transform himself into the Peter Pan of the past, and go rescue his children. With the encouragement of Tinkerbell (Julia Roberts), Peter recalls the birth of his son and once again takes wing. Then it's off to Never Land to rescue his kids. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi