John Lurie

Actor-turned-director Steve Buscemi follows up on his restrained 1996 directorial debut Trees Lounge (1996) with this gritty, understated prison drama. Twenty-one-year-old suburban kid Ron (Edward Furlong) got busted for dealing drugs and slapped with an especially severe jail sentence. Though he tries to keep a low profile at prison, he soon attracts unsavory attention of various sex-starved goons. Fearing rape, he appeals directly to Earl (Willem Dafoe), a fellow prisoner who runs the place like it was his own fiefdom. Though Ron's request is strictly against this rarified culture's baroque rules, Earl takes him under his wing, and soon he is a part of Earl's inner circle. Slowly Ron learns the breadth of Earl's power, ranging from the easy procurement of drugs to the violent dispatching of a prisoner who gets out of line. As Ron grows increasingly indebted to Earl, he wonders how he is expected to repay him. Yet Earl, who shows his fondness for the lad with fatherly tenderness counterbalanced with repressed yearning, never pushes his advantage. Other members of the cast include Tom Arnold as a salivating hill-billy and an almost unrecognizable Mickey Rourke as a cross-dressing prison queen. This film was highly praised at the 2000 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Director Wayne Wang and screenwriter Paul Auster had enough storylines and characters left over from their charming comedy Smoke to make another film, so they shot Blue In The Face immediately after Smoke was completed. The film once again centers on the Brooklyn Cigar Store and manager Auggie (Harvey Keitel), although most of the other characters are different. The store owner's frustrated wife Dot (Roseanne) is one of them, and one of the plotlines follows her attempts to seduce Auggie. Madonna, Michael J. Fox, Lily Tomlin, and Lou Reed (as himself) also put in appearances. Blue In The Face was shot without a complete script and presents a unique combination of distinctive performances, oddball characters, improvisations, and raffish scenes. ~ Don Kaye, All Movie Guide

A petite New Jersey housewife finds self-fulfillment through amnesia in this new wave comedy of errors set in New York's hip '80s downtown scene. Rosanna Arquette stars as Roberta, who turns to the personals for vicarious thrills after her four-year marriage to staid hot tub salesman Gary (Mark Blum) grows stale. Her favorite classified ads trace the romance of Jim (Robert Joy), a struggling musician, and Susan (Madonna), a SoHo vamp who's just narrowly escaped being murdered alongside one of her other boyfriends -- a gangster who recently stole some Egyptian jewelry. Through a series of complicated missteps, Roberta ends up losing her memory and convincing both herself and a broodingly handsome young man named Dez (Aiden Quinn) that she's the elusive, adventurous Susan. Soon, Roberta finds herself being romanced by Dez and pursued separately by her husband, Jim, Susan, and by a murderous mobster who's looking for the stolen jewels. For her second feature outing, which was partially inspired by Jacques Rivette's Celine and Julie Go Boating, director Susan Seidelman filled her cast with hipster extras, downtown personalities, and New York thespians. Notable faces include comedian Steven Wright; future indie mainstay John Turturro; future TV stars Michael Badalucco and Laurie Metcalf; punk singer Richard Hell, who also starred in Seidelman's Smithereens; and performance artist Ann Magnunson, who would star in the director's Making Mr. Right. The big dance-club sequence was filmed at Danceteria, the disco that helped launch Madonna's career. The scene, and the film, helped propel "Into the Groove," one of the singer's all-time club classics, into the charts even though it was actually a b-side to the single "Angel." ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Originally shot in 1980-81, this film, directed by Edo Bertoglio, is a rare real-life snapshot of ultra-hip subculture of post-punk era Manhattan. Starring renowned artist Jean Michel Basquiat (who died in 1988 at age 27) and featuring such early Village hipsters as Melle Mel, John Lurie, and Lydia Lunch, the film is a bizarre elliptical urban fairytale. The film opens with Jean (Basquiat) in the hospital with an undisclosed ailment. After checking out, he happens upon an enigmatic woman, Beatrice (Anna Schroeder), who drives around in a convertible. He arrives at his apartment only to discover that his landlord is evicting him. Later, while trying to sell his art work, he meets up with musician Arto Lindsay and his band DNA. Jean eventually does manage to sell some of his art work to a rich middle-aged woman who is interested in more than just his art, but she pays with a check. As the film progresses, he wanders the streets of New York, looking for Beatrice. He happens upon a bag lady (Debbie Harry) who turns into a princess when he kisses her. As a reward, she gives him a stack of cash. Abandoned in the mid-'80s due to financial problems, producer Maripol Fauque rediscovered the film and cleaned it up in 1999. It was screened at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Fishing will never quite be the same after this series, in which some pretty famous anglers share their luck with an eccentric fisherman named John. Traveling to exotic locations, they take on the local flora and fauna in an adventurous and humor-filled series, narrated by Robb Webb. In this episode, Jim Jarmusch gets some wild ideas about fishing with a handgun in the beautiful waters of Montauk. ~ Rose of Sharon Winter, All Movie Guide

Desmond Denton (Joe Gibbons) is a whacko psychiatrist who has invented a machine that enables him to practice giving himself "personality transplants" using his patients for the source material. When he adopts the personality of a terrorist client, the rest of the world had better watch out: he's getting addicted to this one. ~ Clarke Fountain, All Movie Guide

Father Maurice (Walter Matthau) is called on to perform an exorcism of a demon from a fat lady in this offbeat comedy. What emerges is Giuditta (Roberto Benigni) a narcissistic, fun-loving devil with a penchant for nonsensical sayings, and the devil attaches himself to Father Maurice for a series of comedy gags. Giuditta falls for the gambler Nina (Nicoletta Braschi) and impedes the priest's romantic progress with the beautiful Patrizia (Stefania Sandrelli). Maurice discovers that Nina and the expressionless Cusatelli (John Lurie) are two demons sent to retrieve the wayward Giuditta. Matthau and Benigni provide the majority of the laughs with Benigni doubling as director and devil. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

The debut feature from writer/director Lisa Krueger stars Scarlett Johansson and Aleksa Palladino as the titular Manny and Lo, orphaned teenaged sisters who avoid foster homes by living on the run, stealing food, and sleeping in random model homes. Older sister Lo is the rude, bossy, incompetent leader, and younger sister Manny is her thoughtful, realistic, logical underling. It quickly becomes apparent that Lo is pregnant and they won't be able to continue their wandering lifestyle of "keep moving and you won't get nailed." After a significant stage of denial, Lo goes to a hospital for an abortion and is denied. Quickly running out of options, Lo comes up with plan that seems ridiculous to the observant narrator Manny. Since they don't know anything about birthing babies, they kidnap Elaine (Mary Kay Place), a middle-aged woman dressed as a nurse who works in a maternity store. Together, the three women squat in an abandoned house in the woods so the disgruntled Lo can have her baby. Eventually, the owner of the house comes home and the captive Elaine resorts to a strange solution to the problem. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

This Slovak black-comedy, featuring a soundtrack from John Lurie & the Lounge Lizards, chronicles the mis-adventures of three anti-heroes who would be art thieves. Their leader is Maros, a womanizer. The other two are Juraj, and Ady, the nerd. Together they create an elaborate plane to steal an Andy Warhol painting. While they await their payment, they embark upon a search for the Russian Mafioso behind the deal. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

Travis (Harry Dean Stanton) is wandering through the Texas desert, a bit shaky and in desperate need of water, when he stumbles into a bar and collapses. A German doctor of dubious credentials finds a phone number in Travis' wallet, which belongs to his brother, Walt (Dean Stockwell). Walt is shocked to hear about his brother's condition, since no one in the family has seen or heard from Travis in four years; Walt flies to Texas to bring him home, only to find Travis wandering by the side of the road, and they begin the long drive back to Los Angeles, where Walt lives with his wife, Anne (Aurore Clement), and Hunter (Hunter Carson), Travis' seven-year-old son. At first, Travis refuses to speak and is oddly distant, but in time he begins to talk again, and when he arrives in California, he begins the painful process of reacquainting himself with his son and trying to reconcile with his wife, Jane (Nastassia Kinski). ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Not really a TV movie, Monster Manor was a two-hour installment of the brief 1988 revival of the old Police Story anthology series. The titular manor is an allegedly haunted mansion in the center of a large city. It is inhabited by a group of police officers who use the mansion as a "rave" site, where they can drink, smoke and party in their off-hours. Since the presence of these revelling cops is an open secret to the Underworld, a team of vice squad officers decide that Monster Manor would be an excellent "cover". Posing as another bunch of fun-loving cops, the vice operatives use the Manor as their headquarters while attempting to break up a thriving call-girl ring. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A Brooklyn cigar shop is the setting for this drama from director Wayne Wang that interweaves the stories of several characters that have fractured family relationships in common. Harvey Keitel is Auggie Wren, poetic owner of the Brooklyn Cigar Company, a store that he considers the center of the world -- a place where all of humanity eventually parades through. One of his regular customers is Paul Benjamin (William Hurt), a writer and a broken shell of a man whose pregnant wife was shot and killed near the store. When Paul's life is saved one day by a young black man named Rashid (Harold Perrineau, Jr., the writer and his rescuer strike up a friendship and begin searching for Rashid's long-lost father (Forest Whitaker). At the store, Auggie is surprised by the appearance of Ruby (Stockard Channing), an ex-girlfriend who informs him that her pregnant, drug-addicted daughter Felicity (Ashley Judd) may also be his -- and is in dire need of help. Screenwriter Paul Auster based the script for Smoke on a 1990 short story he wrote for "The New York Times." He also wrote and directed the film's sequel (of sorts), Blue in the Face (1995). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide