Kris Kristofferson

DMX and Kris Kristofferson star as two men who share a similar goal despite operating on opposite sides of the law in this action thriller set in post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans and centering on the search for a dangerous Mexican drug lord. New Orleans is in the cold grip of chaos, providing the perfect cover for Mexican drug lord Santiago Rodriguez to stage a daring escape from a local jail. Aiding Rodriguez in his escape is his powerful uncle, the notorious head of the Catalina Cartel. But in return for getting him out of jail, Rodriguez must pay his uncle the $15 million that his girlfriend stashed away after he was arrested. But getting his cash back will be no simple task for the crafty escaped convict, because standing in the way is a veteran cop (Kristofferson) determined to put Rodriguez back behind bars, and a notorious hit-man (DMX) seeking to settle the score for the death of his niece. With death closing in from one side and justice fast gaining ground on the other, the only hope for this dangerous drug lord is to escape in a hail or gunfire, or die trying. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

The Best of the Johnny Cash Show captures a number of memorable performances from the variety show hosted by the country music legend. This collection includes performances by Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, Neil Young, Ray Charles, Pete Seeger, and Creedence Clearwater Revival. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

Inspired by author Eric Schlosser's New York Times best-seller of the same name, director Richard Linklater's ensemble drama examines the health issues and social consequences of America's love affair with fast food and features an all-star cast that includes Greg Kinnear, Ethan Hawke, Kris Kristofferson, Patricia Arquette, and Luis Guzman. Mickey's is the most popular fast-food chain in America, and The Big One is the top-selling burger that put them on the map. When the higher-ups at Mickey's corporate offices learn that the frozen meat patties used to make the wildly popular burger have somehow been tainted with contaminated meat, they send marketing executive Don Henderson (Kinnear) on an urgent mission to ensure quality control and find out precisely how their product became compromised. It's a long way from the Southern California boardroom to the immigrant slaughterhouses, though, and the further Henderson works his way through the bustling feedlots and toward the ubiquitous restaurant sites that have become a staple of modern culture, the more he begins to realize just how dangerous convenience can become when it leads to blissfully ignorant complacency. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Longtime actor/songwriter Kris Kristofferson stars as a whiskey-smuggling schemer desperate to preserve his endangered cattle herd in director Jay Craven's adaptation of Howard Frank Mosher's best-selling novel. The year is 1932; Prohibition is still in place, and smuggling whiskey has long been a profitable tradition in the Bonhomme family. When the coming winter threatens to decimate Quebec Bill Bonhomme's (Kristofferson) cattle heard and render his family destitute, the desperate dreamer and reluctant whiskey runner finally decides to carry on the family tradition. With his 14-year-old son, Wild Bill (Charlie McDermott), in tow, Quebec Bill sets out on a wild ride through Vermont's sprawling Northeast Kingdom that will expose the age-old mysteries of the Bonhomme family to the cold light of winter, and serve as an unforgettable rite of passage for the young adolescent currently teetering on the cusp of manhood. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Country music greats Kris Kristofferson, Merle Haggard, Ronnie Hawkins, and Donnie Fritts all gather to remember the bumbling semi-legend who put a small dent in the charts before suffering an untimely death in this musical mockumentary from director Michael Mabbott. He was the would-be outlaw of the 1970s country music scene, but somewhere along the line it all fell apart for Guy Terrifico (The Flashing Lights and The Superfriends front-man Matt Murphy). Perhaps it was his self-destructive impulses that did him in, or maybe just his inability to remain upright while ascending a simple flight of stairs. Though Terrifico may have never made it into the Grand Ole Opry, he still had a healthy fanbase that remains staunchly loyal three decades after his alleged death. Now, for the first time ever, the remarkable story of Terrifico's rise and fall comes to the screen in a tell-all film that doesn't flinch when it comes to the ugly truth. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this documentary centered on legendary filmmaker John Ford's cinematic contributions to Allied morale during World War II, actor/musician Kris Kristofferson narrates as the How Green Was My Valley director turns his back on Tinseltown in order to fulfill his patriotic duty. By the time the United States became involved in World War II, John Ford was already a film legend, but when Uncle Sam came calling the veteran filmmaker eagerly packed his bags and set his sites on the frontlines. Though Ford did sustain battlefield injuries during the production of the Oscar-winning documentary The Battle of Midway, the remarkable film endeared him to patriotic American audiences across the country and his next wartime effort, 1943's December 7th, proceeded to earn the filmmaker yet another Oscar. In addition to featuring footage from these and other, lesser-known wartime films from Ford, this documentary also offers an intimate look at the complex filmmaker and explores his remarkable legacy through both archive footage and interviews with such notable directors as Oliver Stone and Peter Bogdanovich. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Novelist Pat Conroy, whose father was a career officer in the Marine Corps, once wrote "Military brats, my lost tribe, spent their entire youth in service to this country, and no one even knew we were there." Children raised by parents who were longtime members of America's armed services, "military brats," often led a life very different from that of most kids their age -- they moved frequently, sometimes lived and were schooled on military bases, grew up in the distant shadow of war or history-making events, were subjected to an authoritarian discipline that was the antithesis of a carefree childhood, and often felt as if they were raised in a single-parent family while either father or mother was away on assignment. The emotional trials of growing up as a military brat and the little-explored bonds of those who shared this upbringing are examined in the documentary Brats: Our Journey Home, written and directed by Donna Musil, herself an Army brat whose father was a military judge. Brats includes interviews with General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, Mary Edwards Wertsch, Dr. George H. Junne, Michelle Green, and Marc Curtis; the film is narrated by and features songs from Kris Kristofferson, who like the aforementioned interview subjects was the child of a parent in the service. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A young boy's innocence is shattered when his mother enters into an elicit affair with a mysterious blue-eyed stranger in a two-part, four hour miniseries directed by Jerry Ciccoritti and starring Academy Award-winner Sophia Loren. Vittorio Innocente is a typical young boy from the tiny Italian village of Valle del Sole. When Vittorio's youthful innocence is shattered by his mother's enigmatic boyfriend, the youngster is compelled to shed light on the mystery of his mother's past by piecing together her remarkable story one chapter at a time. As he does so, Vittorio gradually learns of the centuries-old superstitions that continue to influence the actions of the naïve villagers, and gains greater insight than ever into the true nature of humanity. Though the hypocrisy, fears, and maliciousness he discovers in the centuries-old village soon leads Vittorio to discover the truth about his mother, those very same discoveries also threaten to unravel the very foundation of his safely sheltered world. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In 1979, Michael Cimino went from being a director with one obscure Clint Eastwood action film and a handful of television commercials to his credit to one of the hottest talents in Hollywood, all on the strength of one film, The Deer Hunter. A multiple Oscar winner, a box-office success, and a controversial critical favorite, The Deer Hunter made Cimino a director to watch, and United Artists, a studio in need of both critical prestige and a box-office blockbuster following the departure of their longtime management team, signed up Cimino for his next project, a historical Western drama called The Johnson County War. However, by the time the film reached theaters in 1981, Cimino had exceeded his shooting schedule by nearly a year, the budget had swelled to a then-scandalous 40 million dollars, and the movie had a new title, Heaven's Gate. Originally premiered in a version running nearly four hours, Heaven's Gate was savaged by American critics, and had developed a reputation as a nearly total disaster before it went into wide release in a 160-minute edit. As one might expect, the film was a box-office flop, and the bad publicity and financial debacle led Transamerica, United Artists' parent company, to sell the studio later that year, essentially putting them out of business. Steven Bach, one of the United Artists executives who oversaw the project, wrote a book about the making of the movie, and Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate is a documentary adaptation that looks at where Cimino's ambitions and United Artists' management style went wrong, as well as asking if the meticulously crafted film is the unmitigated disaster it's chalked up to be. Final Cut: The Making and Unmaking of Heaven's Gate was screened at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival, where it was shown in tandem with a restored print of the 220-minute cut of Heaven's Gate. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this documentary companion to Oh Boy Records' reissues of actor/singer/songwriter Kris Kristofferson's albums Third World Warrior and Repossessed, the musical stalwart focuses his attentions on human rights issues. Featuring clips of Kristofferson's band The Borderlords inter-cut with interview footage in which the artist speaks candidly about his commitment to social justice, this release draws a visible parallel between Kristofferson's personal beliefs and his storytelling skills as a singer/songwriter. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Celebrated writer and director John Sayles turns his eye to politics in America in this drama. The son of respected Colorado politician Senator Jud Pilager (Michael Murphy), Dicky Pilager (Chris Cooper) is a charming but half-bright man with a bad habit of mangling the English language and a decided lack of political correctness. Dicky is also in the midst of a hard-fought campaign to become governor of Colorado. Dicky's campaign manager, Chuck Raven (Richard Dreyfuss), is a ruthless sort who will leave no stone unturned to see that his candidate wins, so when Dicky snags a dead body while fishing during the shooting of a campaign commercial, Raven is determined to find out if his man has been set up. Raven hires Danny O'Brien (Danny Huston), a former journalist turned private investigator, to find out who the dead man is and if he might be connected to Pilager's enemies. But the deeper O'Brien digs into the matter, the more he finds out about the candidate and his family -- and very little of it is flattering. John Sayles assembled a typically impressive cast for Silver City, with the supporting cast highlighted by Tim Roth, Kris Kristofferson, Maria Bello, Thora Birch, Daryl Hannah, Billy Zane, and Mary Kay Place. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Based upon Peter Biskind's book of the same name, this BBC-produced documentary traces the rise of a generation of Hollywood filmmakers who briefly changed the face of movies with a more personal approach that pushed the boundaries of what was acceptable onscreen. Influenced by such European directors as Jean-Luc Godard, François Truffaut, and Federico Fellini, the movement kicked off in the mid-'60s with two films directed by Arthur Penn: Mickey One and Bonnie and Clyde. (The latter had been offered to both Godard and Truffaut before it wound up with producer/star Warren Beatty and Penn.) What really kicked it into gear was the unexpected success of Easy Rider, a biker-road movie that became that rare film phenomenon: acclaimed at the Cannes Film Festival and a huge commercial success. Film school graduates, the first generation brought up with movies as their main cultural reference, flooded the studios (whose own regimes were changing) with production chieftains such as Robert Evans of Paramount and David Picker at United Artists; they approved risky-looking projects and allowed relatively untested filmmakers like Francis Ford Coppola to take on heavyweight movies such as The Godfather or Hollywood newcomers like Britain's John Schlesinger to make quirky stories like Midnight Cowboy. Enriched by success with their TV show The Monkees, producer Bert Schneider and director Bob Rafelson formed a company that produced not only Easy Rider but seminal '70s films such as Five Easy Pieces and the Oscar-winning Vietnam War documentary Hearts and Minds. Another godfather to the new movement was producer Roger Corman, who gave early career opportunities to Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Peter Bogdanovich, and Jonathan Demme on low-budget projects that allowed them to learn their craft.

Two things brought this movement to an end: Some individual filmmakers' personal excesses (such disastrous flops as Dennis Hopper's follow-up to Easy Rider, appropriately titled The Last Movie, and Scorsese's New York, New York), and the studios growing fascination with special effects-driven B-movies. An outgrowth of two box-office and marketing juggernauts -- Jaws and Star Wars -- the resulting films became entertainments rather than personal statements of the directors. Narrated by William H. Macy, Easy Riders, Raging Bulls features vintage clips of Coppola, Scorsese, Beatty, George Lucas, Sam Peckinpah, Roman Polanski, Robert Altman, and Pauline Kael. It also includes original interview material with Penn; Corman; Bogdanovich; Hopper; Picker; writer/directors John Milius and Paul Schrader; actresses Karen Black, Cybill Shepherd, Margot Kidder, and Jennifer Salt (the latter two shared a house in Malibu, a social center for young filmmakers); actors Peter Fonda, Kris Kristofferson, and Richard Dreyfuss; producers Jerome Hellman, Michael Phillips, and Jonathan Taplin; editor Dede Allen; production designer Polly Platt; writers David Newman, Joan Tewksbury, Gloria Katz, and Willard Huyck; cinematographers Laszlo Kovacs and Vilmos Zsigmond; agent Mike Medavoy; and former production executive Peter Bart. Among the films discussed are Rosemary's Baby, The Wild Bunch, Mean Streets, American Graffiti, The Rain People, Midnight Cowboy, M*A*S*H, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, The Last Picture Show, Shampoo, Taxi Driver, and Raging Bull. (Three interviewees -- cinematographer Gordon Willis, critic Andrew Sarris, and writer-director Monte Hellman -- listed in the Variety review of this film, were not included in this version from a screening on Bravo.) ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide