Carolyn Pfeiffer Movies

A small-town beauty queen and an unlicensed mortician set out across the Texas plains on a journey of self-discovery in director Will Geiger's meditative road movie. Annabelle has never known what life is like outside the fiercely competitive world of beauty pageants; her mother's constant demands of physical perfection a never-ending stream of acute, soul-crushing criticism. Elvis doesn't have his mortician's license, but that doesn't stop his eccentric father from putting him to work in the family mortuary. When the sting of her mother's words becomes too painful to endure, Annabelle flees to the town mortuary knowing that is the last place her mother would come looking for her. When Elvis discovers the beautiful Annabelle cowering among the corpses, he sweeps her away on an impromptu road trip so that the pair may free themselves from their daily drudgery long enough to discover their own identities and realize what they really want out of life. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

A withdrawn, deaf, and mute teen adopted by her godparents following the death of her single father finds that life in her dysfunctional new home can be quite deadly in But I'm a Cheerleader director Jamie Babbit's slick and tense teen thriller. The last word Dot (Camilla Belle) ever spoke was when her mother died at the age of seven. Subsequently thrust into a world of silence as a result of her catastrophic loss, Dot lives in a world of withdrawn solitude. When the death of her father renders the muted teen both homeless and orphaned, her suburban godparents, Paul (Martin Donovan) and Olivia Deer (Edie Falco) readily agree to take Dot in and ensure that she has a place to stay as she finishes her high-school education. All is not well in the Deer household, however, and after being rejected and ridiculed by the couple's teenage daughter, Nina (Elisha Cuthbert), Dot soon becomes something of a human confessional to the troubled souls that surround her. From father Paul's twisted incestuous longings to mother Olivia's pill-popping excess and daughter Nina's murderous plan to do away with her leering dad, everyone has something to say to the girl who can say nothing. With Nina's prominent social life quickly unraveling and tensions within the household threatening to explode into violence, Dot is about to reveal that she has a few secrets of her own that are sure to complicate matters. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

In this Jamaican melodrama, single mother Marcia (Audrey Reid) works as a street vendor to support her two daughters. However, she also needs the financial assist of "Uncle" Larry (Carl Davis), who demands repayments in the form of sex with Marcia's teen daughter Tanya. After Marcia's vending stall is threatened by brutal tough Priest (Paul Campbell), she devises a retaliatory plan. The dressmaker Mrs. Gordon (Pauline Stone-Myrie) sews a sexy costume so Marcia can compete for the cash prize in the Dancehall Queen contest. When no one recognizes her in this outfit, she uses the disguise to pit Priest and Larry against each other. Shown at the 1997 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, All Movie Guide

Playwright Sam Shepard wrote and directed this bizarre combination of western film revisionism and Greek tragedy. Silent Tongue (Tantoo Cardinal) is a mute Kiowa who is raped by Eamon McCree (Alan Bates), the owner of the Kickapoo Traveling Medicine Show. Eamon attempts to make up for his crime by marrying her, hoping for forgiveness. Instead, Silent Tongue enacts a bitter retribution through her two daughters, Awbonnie (Sheila Tousey) and Velada (Jeri Arredondo). Awbonnie, as the film begins, has already died, but her grieving husband Talbot (River Phoenix) refuses to let her go, dragging around her corpse. To assuage Talbot, his father Prescott (Richard Harris) sets out to purchase Velada from Eamon, thinking that only Awbonnie's sister can replace her in Talbot's eyes. But Velada's half-brother Reeves (Dermot Mulroney) protests the attempted transaction. As a result, Prescott kidnaps Velada and flees, with not only Reeves and Eamon chasing him, but also Awbonnie's ghost. ~ Paul Brenner, All Movie Guide

Martin (William Hurt) and Jack (Timothy Hutton) are World War II soldiers who go from being army buddies to bitter enemies during the war in this uneven melodrama. Not realizing they are brothers-in-law, Martin eventually learns that Jack is married to his sister Josie (Melissa Leo). On their wedding night, Josie's father Jorge (Francisco Rabal) had abducted her in an attempt to dominate her with his old-world ideals of marriage. When Jorge drowns in a lake after the car skids off the road, black-sheep Martin returns home to learn of his father's death, vowing to avenge his father after he learns his buddy is his sworn enemy. ~ Dan Pavlides, All Movie Guide

In the expatriate-littered Paris of the 1920s, painter Nick Hart (Keith Carradine) mingles with Ernest Hemingway (Kevin O'Connor) and other leading lights of the Lost Generation while palling around with gossip columnist Oiseau (Wallace Shawn), whose reportage has helped establish the international reputation of the writers and artists who fled America for France after WWI. Older and less successful than many of his fellow painters, Hart relies on gallery owner Libby Valentin (Genevieve Bujold) to sell what she can of his work while he supports himself drawing cartoons for Oiseau's weekly column. In a café one day, Hart spies Rachel Stone (Linda Fiorentino) on the arm of her husband, Bertram (John Lone), a condom magnate and art patron who's trying to buy his way into society. It seems Hart and Rachel share a romantic past of which Stone is completely unaware. At the salon of writers Gertrude Stein (Elsa Raven) and Alice B. Tolkas (Ali Giron), Hart suffers a nasty run-in with the Stones and meets Nathalie de Ville (Geraldine Chaplin), a rich socialite who wants to steal three paintings from her estranged husband. Nathalie plies Hart with sexual favors and the promise of cash in exchange for his help in forging copies of the paintings. Although he's loath to follow in the footsteps of his father, a gifted forger, Hart acquiesces, and soon his rivalry with Stone and his involvement with the forgeries leads to death, destruction, and scandal in the art world. Bujold, Shawn, Chaplin, and Carradine are all regular collaborators of iconoclastic director Alan Rudolph, who filmed The Moderns in Montréal and would go on to lens the similarly intellectual Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

The time is The Future: the place is Rain City, formerly Seattle. The city is a police state, while the citizens have adopted the manner and dress of 1940s gangsters. Recently released from prison, ex-cop Kris Kristofferson tries to touch base with his ex-girlfriend Genevieve Bujold, who runs a 1950s-style cafe. Hoping to make up for past sins, thereby redeeming himself in Bujold's eyes, Kristofferson endeavors to save innocent, newly arrived couple Keith Carradine and Lori Singer from the evil designs of crooked Joe Morton. Trouble in Mind strives mightily for a film noir ambience, right down to the presence of a sinister, Greenstreetesque "fat man," played in male drag (for a change) by Divine. The title tune for Trouble in Mind is sung over the credits by Marianne Faithful. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Alan Rudolph's Return Engagement cannot by any stretch of the imagination be labelled "pure cinema." It is essentially a staged confrontation between two aging cultural icons. For nearly 90 minutes, LSD guru Timothy Leary trades insults and profundities with Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy. Despite all the fuss-and-feathers recriminations, Leary and Liddy find that they have a lot in common. Both are "outsiders" whose behavior radically changed many an American's outlook on life, for better or worse. Even though audience interest may flag during the more dogmatic portions of Return Engagement, it is clear throughout that director Rudolph loves both his subjects. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

Roadie is a showbiz saga about the working slobs who make live pop-music performances happen. Texas good ol' boy Travis W. Redfish (pop singer Meat Loaf) drives a Shiner beer truck on his appointed rounds, but he becomes smitten with rock groupie Lola Bouillabase (Kaki Hunter), a "roadie" whose sole ambition in life is to bed her idol, Alice Cooper (playing himself). Travis' grizzled pappy, Corpus C. Redfish (Art Carney), feels disgusted by his son's lifestyle. After hearing that Cooper and his band are on tour, Lola sets out to catch up to them and offer her services, with Travis in pursuit. Along the way, they meet a number of pop-music stars -- Blondie, Asleep at the Wheel, Hank Williams Jr., Roy Orbison, and Ramblin' Jack Elliott -- who are all working on their own tours. Travis signs on, himself, as a groupie for a rock band, and is quickly dubbed "greatest roadie of all time," but he soon realizes that he must return to Texas for the wedding of his sister and his best friend. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide