Lydia Dean Pilcher Movies

Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited stars Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Adrien Brody as three brothers who, at the insistence of the oldest, take a train ride through India together in order to strengthen their bond. Even though the vacation goes wrong in ways they do not anticipate, the strangeness of their setting and some revealing honesty produces some surprising changes between them all. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide

A handful of pioneering women wrestlers look back at the wild and wooly days before "sports entertainment" was a multi-million-dollar business and female grapplers were regarded as a novelty (or worse, a freak show) in this documentary. Lipstick & Dynamite examines the history of women on the professional wrestling circuit (dating back to 1939) and focuses on eight female fighters, two of whom -- The Fabulous Moolah and The Great Mae Young -- are still involved in the fight game. Offering a perspective on the darker side of the wrestling circuit, including fixed matches, male promoters eager to take advantage of naïve female newcomers, and the poor treatment and pay often afforded female contestants, the film also examines the lighter side of the business and what some of the greats of women's wrestling have done after leaving the ring. Lipstick & Dynamite was shown in competition at the 2004 Tribeca Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

German filmmaker Katja von Garnier directs the HBO original movie Iron Jawed Angels, inspired by a pivotal chapter in American history. Hilary Swank plays Alice Paul, an American feminist who risked her life to fight for women's citizenship and the right to vote. She founded the separatist National Woman's Party and wrote the first equal rights amendment to be presented before Congress. Together with social reformer Lucy Burns (Frances O'Connor), Paul struggled against conservative forces in order to pass the 19th amendment to the Constitution of the United States. One of their first actions was a parade on President Woodrow Wilson's (Bob Gunton) inauguration day. The suffragettes also encountered opposition from the old guard of the National American Women's Suffrage Association, Carrie Chapman Catt (Anjelica Huston). The activists get arrested and go on a well-publicized hunger strike, where their refusal to eat earns them the title of "the iron-jawed angels." Iron Jawed Angels was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 before its television premiere on HBO. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

In the aftermath of the tragedies on September 11, 2001, the French film company Studio Canal called upon a group of filmmakers, representing various regions of the world, to address the scope of the situation in however broad or intimate a context as they saw fit. The one guideline they were given was that no one film could exceed 11 minutes, nine seconds, and one frame. The resulting omnibus film, 11'09"01, showed at festivals around the world the following year and garnered a theatrical release in 2003. Each filmmaker's entry takes a different approach: French director Claude Lelouch tells the tale of a World Trade Center tour guide who is on the verge of a breakup with his deaf girlfriend when the terrorist attacks hit; similarly, Hollywood actor-director Sean Penn chronicles the lonely existence of an old man living not far from the Twin Towers. Egyptian director Youssef Chahine and British social realist filmmaker Ken Loach created the most controversy with their entries, which, respectively, address the points-of-view of a suicide bomber and of a Chilean who recalls the brutal coup funded by the United States in his country on September 11, 1973. Alejandro González Iñárritu's piece is the most abstract, taking images from television on the day of the attacks and cutting them with selected bursts of sound. Samira Makhmalbaf, Danis Tanovic, and Idrissa Ouedraogo all tell small-scale stories of the effects of the attacks on tiny villages in Iran, Serbia, and Burkina Faso, respectively. ~ Michael Hastings, All Movie Guide

In this drama based on the novel by Terry McMillan, Zora (Sanaa Lathan) is a woman who dreams of becoming a singing star, meanwhile supporting herself as a schoolteacher. Franklin (Wesley Snipes), a father of two whose divorce is about to become final, has lost his job as a construction worker and is trying to scrape up the money to launch his own business. Neither is looking for a relationship, but when Zora moves into Franklin's neighborhood, they find they're attracted to each other and must deal with the ups and downs of being in love. Produced for the premium cable network HBO, Disappearing Acts also stars John Amos and CCH Pounder; Lisa Jones wrote the screenplay from McMillan's novel. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

The sometimes rocky relationship between art and politics in America in the 1930s -- as well as the gulf between the wealthy and the struggling -- sets the stage for Tim Robbins' ambitious comedy-drama Cradle Will Rock. Pulling together a variety of threads from actual events, Robbins examines the lives and ambitions of a variety of creative mavericks and figures of power. Orson Welles (Angus Macfadyen) and John Houseman (Cary Elwes) are working with Marc Bliztstein (Hank Azaria) to stage the latter's leftist musical "The Cradle Will Rock" for the WPA-funded Federal Theater Project. After Congress cuts funding for the embattled Federal Theater over the perceived leftist slant of their presentations, the project is canceled on the day of its premier. Welles and his cast respond by marching 21 blocks from the theater where the show was to open to another venue where, in deference to Actors Equity regulations, they perform the entire show from the audience. A member of Welles' cast, Aldo Silvano (John Turturro), is a dedicated actor from Italy who is trying to resolve his attitudes about his family, who loyally support Mussolini, to Silvano's disgust. Meanwhile, El Duce's former mistress, Margherita Sarfatti (Susan Sarandon), is consorting with industrial tycoon Gray Mathers (Philip Baker Hall) -- whose wife, Contesse LaGrange (Vanessa Redgrave) is a friend and supporter of Welles' project. Elsewhere, Nelson Rockefeller (John Cusack) has hired expatriot Mexican artist Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades) to create a mural for his projected Rockefeller Center, but the two are soon locking horns over their different views on art, politics and the work at hand. And a ventriloquist fallen on hard times, Tommy Crickshaw (Bill Murray), finds himself trying to teach both comedy and speaking without lip movements to a pair of would-be performers at a WPA-backed vaudeville house. William Randolph Hearst (John Carpenter), Marion Davies (Gretchen Mol), Frida Kahlo (Corina Katt), and Olive Stanton (Emily Watson) are also woven into the tapestry of this historical epic, which premiered at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

In this visually striking saga of one woman's search for personal and sexual freedom in 16th century India, Maya (Indira Varma) is a servant girl who is a handmaid to Tara (Sarita Choudhury), a princess. Maya and Tara have been close friends since childhood, and when Rasa Devi (Rekha), an elegant courtesan, is brought in to instruct Tara in the lessons of the Kama Sutra, the handbook of the art of physical love, Maya is allowed to observe. Rasa teaches Tara the Dance of Enticement as a prelude to her upcoming marriage to the King, Raj Singh (Naveen Andrews), but the beautiful Maya turns out to be the more capable student, and when Raj invites Maya to his bedchamber, he proves to be no match for her seductive powers. Needless to say, Tara is furious when she learns that Maya has stolen Raj's heart, and Maya is banished from the palace. On the road, Maya soon meets a handsome sculptor, Jai Kumar (Ramon Tikaram), who is entranced by Maya's beauty and sexual prowess; she soon becomes his lover and favorite model. However, King Raj is still obsessed with Maya, and while Tara has won his hand in marriage, he has taken to drowning himself in opium and mindless sex with his mistresses when not trying to win Maya back. Several of the erotic scenes in Kama Sutra: A Tale of Love were trimmed so the film could receive an "R" rating for its American theatrical release, but it appeared uncut on home video; the film had to be trimmed more extensively to gain a theatrical release in India, where it was filmed. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

It's 1958, and the producers of the quiz show 21 have a problem. Their current champ, Herbert Stempel (John Turturro), has a phenomenal memory and a broad range of knowledge. He's also a pudgy loudmouth with a grating personality, so Herbert is encouraged to "take a dive" and allow Charles Van Doren (Ralph Fiennes), a handsome and charming college professor, to become the show's new champion. Audiences like Van Doren, and he's certainly not averse to the money he's winning, but the ethics of the situation begin to trouble him, especially when the show's producers begin to give him the questions in advance. Director Robert Redford and writer Paul Attanasio paint a telling portrait of how the network heads and advertising men who manipulated the quiz shows were also able to manipulate the responsibility for the scandal away from themselves. While on the surface a story about the scandal itself, Quiz Show is just as importantly about a turning point in the 1950s when TV and advertising began to change American character and culture. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Following his breakthrough 1989 documentary Roger & Me, Michael Moore revisits his hometown in the 23-minute short film Pets or Meat: The Return to Flint. Unfortunately, he finds things have gotten worse for Flint residents following the loss of 30,000 jobs in the auto industry. Moore pays a visit to Rhonda Britton, the subject in the original film's famous rabbit scene. Since then, she has expanded her rabbit business to include selling rats and mice. Moore also visits Deputy Fred Ross, who now works as a repo man in addition to evicting people from their homes. Pets or Meat was broadcast in 1992 on PBS as part of the P.O.V. series. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide

Based on a book by the great crime novelist Jim Thompson, this dark thriller is set in a small coastal community in New Jersey, where the only action in town is a run-down nightclub called Pavillion. The club's owner, Pete (Jackson Sims), can barely make the payroll for Rags the bartender (William Russell), Myra the barmaid (Jorjan Fox) (who is also Pete's daughter), and clean-up man Ralph (Steve Monroe), so in a bid to bring in more customers, Pete hires a stripper, Danny Lee (Cathy Haase). Danny Lee's act soon turns Ralph's head, which is not good news for his wife Luanne (Loretta Gross). Twenty years older than her husband, Luanne is unable to get out of bed (though the doctor says that there's no medical explanation for this), and while she grudging allows Ralph to sleep with other women, the notion that he might fall in love with someone else sends her into a fit of rage. Luanne's greatest talent (and her most potent weapon) is her gift for gossip, and when she begins to suspect that Ralph might want to leave her for Danny Lee, she starts spreading ugly rumors that have just enough basis in fact to stick. Before long, Luanne has circulated the word that Myra is a drug addict and that her boyfriend Bobbie (Andrew Lee Barrett) is pushing dope at the club, that Pete had an incestuous relationship with Myra, and that Rags was responsible for the death of his family in a car wreck. As this bitter misinformation sweeps through the town, Luanne turns up dead, but this proves to be the beginning and not the end of a wave of violence and ugliness. The Kill-Off was one of three Jim Thompson adaptations to reach the screen within the space of a year, along with The Grifters and After Dark, My Sweet. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

When a biker's retarded brother is murdered, three irresponsible out-of-town college girls, Genevieve (Anastasia Fielding), Carlyle (Michelle Johnson), and Alex (Cristen Kauffman), are blamed for the boy's death, leading to deadly consequences. ~ Iotis Erlewine, All Movie Guide