Karen Allen Movies

A Rhode Island community comes together to create special Halloween and Christmas moments several weeks early for an 8-year-old girl (Emily Alyn Lind) with a life-threatening illness. ~ Tim Holland, Rovi

Directed by James Toback, the erotic drama When Will I Be Loved? revolves around Vera, the debutante girlfriend (Neve Campbell) of a fast-talking hustler (Frederick Weller) who is on the verge of making millions through a big-money gambling venture. Feeling undervalued, Vera explores her sexuality through whatever means she can think of, including explicit discussions with a potential employer, picking up random men, and videotaping steamy trysts with her female lover. When Ford (Weller) proposes that Vera spend the night with Italian media mogul Count Tommaso (Dominic Chianese), who is willing to put up 100,000 dollars for the occasion, Vera concocts a scheme to show both men what her true worth really is. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

Zev Berman's thriller Killing Edgar stars Dominique Swain as Inez Macbeth, a woman married to the volatile criminal Edgar (Henry Thomas). She has grown tired of their marriage and strays outside of her vows. Edgar finds out and proceeds to hold her prisoner in her own house with the help of his associate, Flowers (Arie Verveen). Inez figures out a dangerous escape plan, but will she be able to get away before it is too late? ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Following up on his acclaimed debut The Myth of Fingerprints, Bart Freundlich spins this drama that poses the question "what would it be like to run away from your life?" The film centers on a restless thirtysomething New Yorker named Cal (Billy Crudup) who one day drives off into the open road, leaving his wife and infant son behind. A series of flashbacks describe Cal's domestic malaise and disillusionment with his life. On the road, Cal encounters a number of unusual characters who are similarly tethered and drifting. One is named Dulcie (Julianne Moore), an emotionally fragile woman looking for her lost son. Through his interaction with Dulcie, Cal reflects on his own family and soon finds himself heading to his boyhood home where his father lives. This film was screened at the 2001 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Produced by actress Mimi Rogers (who shows up on screen in the role of Aunt Marion) and directed by actor Eric Stoltz, the made-for-cable movie My Horrible Year! is the story of Nik Faulkner (Allison Mack), a 16-year-old girl about to undergo a crucial rite of passage: the removal of her braces. Nik's exultation over this momentous event is dampened by the antics of her weird friends and her combative parents -- not to mention her zany Uncle Charlie (played by Stoltz) who insists upon being a bother even though he's dead. From time to time, Nik is lectured by her mirror-image alter ego, which only exacerbates her other problems. Things come to a head when Nik endeavors to prevent her parents from getting a divorce -- or at least that's what she thinks she's doing. Produced by Millbrook Farm Productions for the Showtime cable network, My Horrible Year! originally aired on July 8, 2001. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In October 1991, a dying tropical hurricane from Bermuda collided with a cold front from the Great Lakes, resulting in a "perfect storm" of previously unknown destructive impact that resulted in 100-foot waves; tragically, the crew of a fishing boat was lost in the midst of the fearsome storm. Based on the best-selling book by Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm tells the story of the ship's brave and hard-working crew. Billy Tyne (George Clooney), captain of the Andrea Gail, hasn't had much luck finding catch on his most recent trips to sea, and with money short, he and his crew -- Bob Shatford (Mark Wahlberg), Dale Murphy (John C. Reilly), and David Sullivan (William Fichtner) set out again when they hear that the fish are running. Billy's hunch proves correct, but when the ship's refrigeration system goes haywire, they have to return to shore as quickly as possible before the fish spoil, sending them into the middle of the worst storm in history. The supporting cast includes Mary Elziabeth Mastrantonio, Diane Lane, Bob Gunton, and Karen Allen; Wolfgang Petersen, whose breakthrough film was the aquatic wartime drama Das Boot, directed. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

In 1854 Utah, 13-year old Nick Wilson (Blake Heron), bored by life on the family farm with his widowed mother (Karen Allen), accepts an invitation to join a local Shoshone tribe. The Indians are anxious to have the boy among them because he fulfills the prescient dreams of one of the elders, Anuba (Patricia Van Ingen); Nick is just happy to have the adventure. He undergoes training to become a Shoshone warrior, and his ability to shoot an arrow comes in handy as a rival tribe -- led by the fearsome Pocatello (Wes Studi) -- and a posse of white men bring danger to his newly adopted family. ~ Buzz McClain, Rovi

This romantic comedy is the first film from two television veterans, writer Winnie Holzman and director Scott Winant. Gwen Moss (Jeanne Tripplehorn) is a writer working on the life story of former child actress Francesca Lanfield (Sarah Jessica Parker), who is recovering from drug addiction. Nick Dawkan (Dylan McDermott) is an architect working on a housing development that will require razing Gwen's beloved vintage apartment. Gwen frequently visits a restaurant designed by Nick, but she never meets him. In the meantime, she is romantically rebuffed by a college professor (Ken Olin), who reveals that he is bisexual. Eventually, Gwen's crusade to save the apartment complex, which is owned by Francesca, attracts the attention of Nick. ~ Michael Betzold, Rovi

Working in a branch office of the Internal Revenue Service, Kerry Ellison (Rena Sofer) must suffer the unwanted advances of co-worker Jack Gilcrest (Victor Garber), who among his other "eccentricities" carries a live grenade in his car. Even when Kerry is transferred to another division, Jack's stalking does not diminish. Even worse, Kelly's bosses dismiss Jack's obsession as harmless, and her labor union refuses to take action. In a last-ditch effort to see that justice is done, Kerry files a sexual harassment suit against her employers -- and from this point forward, to say that the IRS makes her life hell would be understating the situation. Based on a true story, Hostile Advances: The Kerry Ellison Story was produced for the Lifetime cable network, where it first aired on May 27, 1996. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

A serial killer is transformed into a computer virus out to destroy more than your hard drive in this sci-fi thriller. Terry Munroe (Karen Allen), a single mother, is looking for a gift for her boss and visits a computer store, where one of the employees demonstrates a hand-held scanner than can transfer the information from her address book into a software program that will store the information on her PC. Unknown to Terry, one of the employees of the store is Karl Hochman (Ted Marcoux), known in the press as "The Address Book Killer," who likes to steal other people's address books and murder all the people listed within, including the book's owner. Terry accidentally leaves her book behind at the store, and Karl lifts it, but as he drives to her house to strike her off the list first, he is injured in a serious accident and taken to a hospital. While Karl is being given a CAT scan, lightning strikes the building and Karl is transformed into a series of electrical impulses that can travel as computer code from one system to another, or as current through power lines. Soon Terry begins to suspect something is wrong as her friends succumb to attacks by microwave ovens, hot-air blowers, and other household objects. Terry and her computer-savvy son, Josh (Wil Horneff), realize that they're at risk after Karl appears in Josh's virtual reality games; it's up to Bram Walker (Chris Mulkey), a brilliant hacker-turned-computer maintenance technician, to isolate and destroy the Karl virus before it can kill again. The film's soundtrack features such hip-hop stars as D-Nice and Too Short, Schoolly-D, Grandmaster Slice, and Kool Moe Dee. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Steven Soderbergh, after the success of sex, lies, and videotape and the commercial failure of Kafka, pulls a rabbit out of his hat with this quiet and evocative recollection of a childhood lived in the Depression, based on A. E. Hotchner's memoir. Twelve-year-old Aaron Kurlander (Jesse Bradford) is coming of age in a rotting working class section of St. Louis in 1933. As the film begins, Aaron's family is coming apart at the seams due to the increasingly bleak economy. His father (Jeroen Krabbe) ekes out a living with a series of failed sales jobs as the family lives in the dilapidated Empire Hotel in a seamy section of town. When his younger brother (Cameron Boyd) is sent to live with relatives to save expenses, his consumptive mother (Lisa Eichhorn) goes away to a sanitarium and his father abandons him to sell watches in Iowa. At first Aaron retreats into a concocted fantasy world but he gradually becomes drawn into the shattered lives of the tenants of the hotel. Aaron sees the rotting social fabric laid bare and discovers he must temper his childhood dreams with the hard-hitting realities of adult existence. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

The Sandlot is sparsely narrated by the main character (now an adult) who occasionally drops in on the action to comment on events or help move the story along. Tom Guiry plays Scotty Smalls, the shy new kid on the block who wants to join the rowdy pickup baseball team that plays every day in the neighborhood sandlot. But he doesn't know how to catch a baseball, and his stepfather (Dennis Leary) is too busy to teach him. He tries out for the sandlot gang anyway, and though he isn't very good, it turns out he's lucky: there happen to be only eight of them, and nine makes a team. The summer passes blissfully as Scotty learns to play ball under the wing of Benny Rodriguez (Mike Vitar), the oldest and best player, as well as Ham, Squints, Repeat, and the rest of the kid-eccentrics. The skies darken, however, when Benny literally knocks the stuffing out of the team's only baseball, a sign of impending doom, or worse, bad luck. Wanting to set things right, Scotty returns home and "borrows" his stepfather's ball, which he promptly uses to hit his first home run, knocking the ball clear out of the sandlot into mean old Mr. Mertle (James Earl Jones)'s junkyard, home to Mertle's legendary guard dog The Beast. Scotty admits that he took the ball without asking, and he naively explains that his stepfather will want it back since it had a woman's name written on it: some lady named Babe Ruth. Horror-stricken, the sandlot gang mobilizes to fetch the autographed ball from the clutches of The Beast, building a series of mechanical ball-retrieval machines which get progressively more complicated and preposterous as The Beast's size grows in their imaginations. ~ Anthony Reed, Rovi