Rosie Perez Movies

Blind college student Sofia (Martha Higareda) returns home to investigate the unexplained suicide of her cousin Eva, and learns that the most painful truths can often be the hardest to recognize. Risking her own safety as she unearths sinister family secrets, Sofia discovers that Eva's boyfriend Ethan (Chad Michael Murray) may hold the key to the grim mystery. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Years after Hollywood nearly bled him dry, desperate KC Munk (Peter Dinklage) returns to L.A. to bid an old friend goodbye, and find the $10,000 he needs to repay the ruthless loan shark who just stole his beloved dog Buddha. KC borrowed a tidy sum of money from some very bad people, and if he doesn't get it back soon, he'll never see his dog again. When Jack (Mark Boone, Jr.) convinces KC that he can help raise the 10 grand if KC will come to L.A. to attend the funeral of their old friend Pete Smalls (Tim Roth), a legendary Hollywood action director, the desperate dog lover reluctantly returns to the city he loathes. The first time around KC was lucky to get out of Hollywood without losing his mind, this time it seems as if insanity has become the law of the land. Steve Buscemi, Rosie Perez, Seymour Cassel, and Tim Roth co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Music video director Brad Furman teams with Josh and Jonas Pate, the creators of the NBC series Surface, for this independent drama tracing an armored truck driver's efforts to track down the thief who shot him during a heist, changing his life forever. John Leguizamo stars as the driver who must endure months of rehabilitation before setting out to track down the gunman, and Tyrese Gibson plays the man responsible for pulling the trigger. Rosie Perez and Bobby Cannavale co-star in a thriller that was shot guerrilla-style in the Latino neighborhoods of Los Angeles. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A petty criminal's attempt to turn his life around takes both him and a young boy on an unexpected journey in this independent drama. Twentysomething Daniel Carter (Mark Webber) has been in trouble with the law ever since he was a kid, and his latest misadventure has led him to performing community service at a grade school in the East Village. Daniel strikes up a close friendship with one of the students he's working with, Boone (Antonio Ortiz), an eight-year-old who has shown surprising resilience despite a blighted home environment. When Boone doesn't show up for school one day, Daniel asks some questions and learns his mother has become seriously ill and a foster family has taken him in. Boone is eventually put up for adoption, and Daniel hopes to gain custody of the boy, convinced helping the boy will give him a chance to turn his life around. However, his age and criminal record make Daniel an unfit father in the eyes of the court, and when Daniel's father refuses to help, he has a brainstorm -- Boone has mentioned that he has an older sister in Dallas, so Daniel snatches the boy from his foster parents and hits the road for Texas, planning to reunite Boone with his family. Just Like the Son received its world premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Omnibus films attained renewed popularity during the 1990s and 2000s; this particular seven-episode film-a-sketch arrived during that period, and involved several top-tiered international filmmakers including John Woo, Spike Lee, Ridley Scott, Emir Kusturica and three others. Each helmer was asked to shoot a segment of between 16-18 minutes in length, for UNICEF, on the subject of exploited and/or underprivileged children around the world. The package opens with "Tanza," helmed by Algerian novelist-cum-filmmaker Mehdi Charef and shot in Burkina Faso. It concerns the 12-year-old female title character - an adolescent freedom fighter - who trollops through the countryside accompanied by young male guerilla fighters who spout off deliberately nonsensical English-language dialogue. Kusturica takes the reins for the second segment, "Blue Gypsy," an overtly comical episode in the vein of Time of the Gypsies about a precocious young boy who makes the split from his alcoholic father and thieving family and goes to live in a juvenile detention center, finding it preferable to home. The third episode, helmed by co-producer Stefano Veneruso and entitled "Ciro," recalls neorealismo with its Naples-set tale of a young boy unloved and systematically neglected by his mother, who resorts to spending time with other neglected children and stealing watches, and then gets caught in the direst of ways. The fourth segment, Spike Lee's delicately-handled "Jesus Children of America," stars Hannah Hodson as Blanca, a young Brooklynite ostracized by her peers because her parents are junkies; when she learns of her HIV-positive status, her world crumbles. For the 5th episode, "Bilu and Joao," Brazilian director Katia Lund casts child actors Francisco Anawake de Freitas and Vera Fernandes as two impoverished tykes whose days involve walking around the outskirts of Sao Paulo and pulling a wooden cart, into which they pile aluminum and paper - but do so joyously, with the courage and grace of two individuals delighting in subhuman work despite the direst of circumstances. For the sixth segment, "Jonathan," Ridley Scott teams up to co-direct with daughter Jordan Scott; the episode stars David Thewlis (Naked) as an emotionally-traumatized war photographer who encounters a band of Eastern European orphans. And the closer, John Woo's "Song Song and Little Cat," studies the contrast between the lives of two young Asian girls from polar opposite ends of the socioeconomic spectrum: Oi Ruyi is Little Cat, an abjectly impoverished child discovered in the garbage, during infancy, by a homeless man; she grows up helping her discoverer forage for victuals until he dies, leaving her aimless and bereft. Woo cuts between her story and that of Song Song, a wealthy and pampered little girl whose story is equally tragic in its own way, as her parents are undergoing a bitter divorce. Though this film, as indicated, enlisted the support of at least two major Hollywood directors (Scott and Lee) it did encounter extreme difficulty securing U.S. theatrical and ancillary distribution, which effectively kept it out of North America in the years that immediately followed its global release. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Gini Reticker and Lesli Klainberg direct the 74-minute documentary In the Company of Women, a production of the Independent Film Channel. The film offers an introduction to the major women of independent filmmaking, starting in the 1980s. It includes commentary from directors Allison Anders, Lisa Cholodenko, and Nicole Holofcener. Actresses Patricia Clarkson, Maggie Gyllenhaal, and Rosie Perez also offer insight and comments. In the Company of Women was shown in a special screening at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival before making its broadcast premiere on the Independent Film Channel. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

The documentary What I Want My Words to Do to You offers a look at some actual rehabilitation at a women's maximum security prison. Directors Judith Katz, Madeleine Gavin, and Gary Sunshine used high-definition video cameras to capture an emotional reformation process for several incarcerated women. Activist and playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues) conducted a writing workshop at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York. Some of the inmates were serving long sentences, including some members of the Vietnam war-era radical political group the Weather Underground. The convicts were asked to contemplate their crime and assess possibilities for their future, even if that means life imprisonment. After the workshop, the stories were then performed by actors with the entire prison population as the audience. The personal stories of the inmates shared a common theme of painful truths and acceptance. What I Want My Words to Do to You won the Freedom of Expression Award at the the 2003 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi

Video director Michel Gondry and scriptwriter Charles Kaufman -- who shot to fame after penning Being John Malkovich -- collaborate on this bizarre fable about human behavior in and out of society. The film opens by quickly introducing the three leads -- Lila (Patricia Arquette) who is locked away in prison; Puff (Rhys Ifans) who is testifying before Congress; and Nathan Bronfman (Tim Robbins) who is sitting in a glowing white afterlife waiting room with a bullet hole in his head. Rewinding to the beginning of the story, the film shows Lila as a girl about to enter womanhood. Unfortunately, puberty goes horribly awry and she starts to grow thick hair all over her body. After performing as Queen Kong in a circus freak show, she chucks it all and goes to live in the forest, where she becomes the best-selling author of a misanthropic hard-line ecological tome. At age 30, her itch for male companionship becomes overwhelming and she ventures back into the city. She is helped by electrolysis guru Louise (Rosie Perez), who not only makes Lila presentable to society, but introduces her to Nathan, a 35-year-old virgin who, as a scientist, has devoted his life to teaching table etiquette to lab mice. While showing Nathan the joys of the wild outdoors, Lila and her new beau discover an extremely hirsute feral man whom they dub Puff. Placing him a cage in his lab, Nathan sets out to teach Puff the ways of polite society while dreaming of fame and fortune. The first task is to curb Puff's enormous sexual appetite -- any time he catches sight of a female, Puff either tries to hump her or masturbates vigorously. Nathan yokes him with an electric collar that shocks him any time he acts unseemly. Unfortunately, the humans on the other side of the cage can't quite control their libidos either: Nathan succumbs to the incessant double entendres of his saucy French assistant Gabrielle (Miranda Otto) while Lila finds an animalistic lust for Nathan's science experiment. This film was screened at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Martin Scorsese's seminal 1975 drama Taxi Driver informs this tale of a neglected, Upper West Side outcast who slowly devolves into a potential murderer. John Leguizamo stars as Seymour, the mentally-challenged self-proclaimed "king" of the film's title. He's still in the care of his mother Mona (Julie Carmen), who is a protest organizer against their neighborhood's corrupt police practices. Although Mona lives happily with her lover Joanne (Rosie Perez), her ex-boyfriend Jack (Cliff Gorman) often shows up to antagonize the household, Seymour in particular. His assertion that the unstable young man is faking his malady only sends Seymour into an unpredictable rage. Shortly after the film's production, writer-director Seth Zvi Rosenfeld married his rambunctious star Perez; their friend Annabella Sciorra shows up in a supporting role. ~ Michael Hastings, Rovi

Writer/director Nancy Savoca, who wrote and directed Household Saints and True Love, handles the same duties in this tale of Grace Santos (Rosie Perez). The producer of a New York City local morning show targeted at women, Grace has an active professional life under the watch of her executive producer, Joan Marshall (Patti LuPone), that already intersects her personal life as she is married to co-host Eddie Diaz (Diego Serrano). When the other co-host, Margo (Karen Duffy), reveals Grace's pregnancy on- air, Joan seizes the opportunity to monitor Grace's development on the show. The ratings grow along with Grace, as the show pursues such topics as "The ABC's of C-Sections" and "You & Your Epidural." While Grace takes comfort in her marriage and her new assistant Madeline (Marianne Jean-Baptiste), who has just returned from six years of raising her young children, Grace worries about the needs of her unborn child versus her much-loved career and Eddie's beckoning film career. Her fears realized through her daughter's first year, Grace must determine what it means to be a "24-Hour Woman." ~ Chris Gore, Rovi

The title character of this Alex de la Iglesia film made her first appearance in David Lynch's Wild at Heart (1990) and was originally played by Isabella Rossellini. Rosie Perez takes over the role in this blend of black comedy, graphic sex and violence, voodoo, and weirdness. Perdita Durango is pure trash, a fact she establishes at the film's beginning. Her adventures begin when she hooks up with Romeo Dolorosa (Javier Bardem), a sleek, black-clad, sexually adventurous practitioner of Santeria who routinely kills, robs banks, and steals corpses from graves for his cannibalistic blood-soaked rituals. Santos (Don Stroud) is a pedophile and a crime boss. He hires Romeo to steal a truck filled with human fetuses that are slated to be used for cosmetic experiments. Romeo accepts but feels he must make a human sacrifice before he goes. This bothers Perdita not a bit and she even picks out a pair of blonde teens for the ritual killing. The two crooks kidnap the kids, ritually feather them, sexually abuse them, and are preparing to kill them when Romeo's cheated partner shows up with policemen. The crooks and their prey manage to escape, but the scheme to commandeer the truck gets botched and an ensuing shootout between Santos' men and DEA agents goes wrong. Santos loses many men and swears revenge upon Romeo and Perdita, who continue on their journey with their two doomed victims. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi

Happily Ever After introduces this ethnically diverse version of a classic tale. When Hanselito and Gretelita become lost in a tropical wilderness, they pool their wits to find shelter. When it turns out the house made of candy is home to a witch, the two manage to escape by working together. The Hispanic characters guarantee a worldwide audience for this oft-told tale. ~ Sarah Ing, Rovi