Jacob Rupp Movies

In a 1950s-era alternate universe where domesticated zombies play a functional role in society by delivering the milk, carrying the mail, and even helping out with household chores, one boy is about to find out just how big of a personal responsibility "pet" ownership truly is. When the Earth passed through a cloud of space dust and the dead arose from their graves to devour the flesh of the living, it first seemed that all hope for humanity was lost. Society's rapid slide into chaos, however, was soon halted when scientists at a company called ZomCom created a special collar that turned the rampaging animated corpses docile. Now, thanks to ZomCom, everything is under control -- or is it? Timmy Robinson (K'Sun Ray) isn't quite convinced. Quiet and withdrawn, the skeptical young boy spends so much time locked away in his room that he's almost become invisible around the household. His mother Helen (Carrie-Anne Moss) has recently purchased a zombie to help keep things tidy around the house though, and when the creature attempts to engage the curious youngster in a game of catch, a friendship is forged between boy and zombie that finds the amiable gut-muncher nicknamed Fido (Billy Connolly) practically becoming a part of the family. Things take a turn for the worse however, when Fido's collar malfunctions and Timmy's neighbors begin dying in droves. When ZomCom's top zombie control specialist Mr. Bottoms (Henry Czerny) moves in across the street from Timmy, the increasingly complicated situation threatens to place a serious stumbling block in the path of human-zombie relations. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide

Patience Philips (Halle Berry) seems destined to spend her life apologizing for taking up space. Despite her artistic ability -- she has a more than respectable career as a graphic designer for Hedare Beauty, a Goliath cosmetics company -- Patience is excruciatingly shy, quick to take blame, and, not surprisingly, more than a little depressed at the end of the day. This comes to somewhat of a screeching halt when Patience not only inadvertently lands herself in the middle of a corporate conspiracy of gargantuan proportions, but on the city police force's most wanted list. Newly quipped with a mysterious feline prowess, Patience is a different person come nighttime -- more accurately, a catwoman. Elusive, untamed, powerful, stealthy, and not necessarily prone to erring on the side of good, Patience has gone from doormat to vigilante. Police officer Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt), who has fallen for shy Patience, is determined to apprehend Catwoman and figure out her role in a recent crime spree, though his fascination with her doesn't cease with the end of his shift and it threatens to lead to the downfall of himself, his investigation, and the woman who was once the timid Patience Philips. ~ Tracie Cooper, All Movie Guide

Director Christopher Nolan follows up his breakthrough sophomore film Memento with this remake of a stylish Norwegian thriller. Al Pacino stars as Detective Will Dormer, a Los Angeles Police Department legend who temporarily escapes an internal affairs investigation that may ruin his career by traveling to Nightmute, AK, the remote site of a murder that has the local authorities flummoxed. Along with his partner, Hap Eckhart (Martin Donovan), and the small town's wide-eyed rookie investigator, Ellie Burr (Hilary Swank), the exhausted Dormer probes the brutal slaying of a teenage girl who was rumored to have a secret lover. A clever ruse quickly lures the killer into a police trap, but the suspect escapes and a tragic accident at the scene leaves Dormer at the mercy of the murderer, a pulp crime novelist named Walter Finch (Robin Williams). As Finch plays a dangerous game of extortion with Dormer, the detective's mental health deteriorates rapidly from guilt over his complicity in a crime and sleep deprivation compounded by the lack of darkness in the land of the midnight sun. Meanwhile, the bright and dogged Ellie continues putting the pieces of a complex puzzle together despite Dormer's skillful attempts to lead the investigation toward the right suspect, but away from his own malfeasance. Insomnia co-stars Paul Dooley, Nicky Katt, Maura Tierney, and Jonathan Jackson. ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide

In this science-fiction thriller set in the very near future, DNA cloning has been perfected and has become an accepted part of everyday life -- cattle and fish are cloned for sale at the market, genetically engineered fruit and vegetables are found in most family's kitchens (nacho-flavored bananas, anyone?), and if your pet dies, you can even order a cloned replacement. But laws have been passed that strictly forbid the cloning of human beings. However, helicopter pilot Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger), who believes people should live and die the old-fashioned way, discovers that someone has been violating these regulations. After Adam luckily avoids being on a copter that crashes, he comes home to discover someone has duplicated him. Now Adam is on a mission to find out who cloned him and why, as he struggles to take back his life from a scientifically created impostor, his boss Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn), and a pair of thugs (Sarah Wynter and Rod Rowland) who have been cloned into near-indestructibility. The 6th Day also stars Robert Duvall as cloning expert Griffin Weir, Michael Rooker as Drucker's right-hand man Robert Marshall, and Michael Rapaport as Adam's partner, Hank Morgan. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

A criminal genius who has carefully planned the ultimate score runs across an unexpected obstacle -- a 16-year-old computer hacker -- in this youth-oriented action-adventure story. Ozzie Paxton (Vincent Kartheiser) is a teenager with a knack for causing trouble; he's been expelled from the Shady Glen School, an exclusive private academy, for pulling one too many pranks on the faculty. Besides, he prefers to stay home with his computer, where for fun and profit he hacks into the systems of computer game designers, downloads new games before they can go on the market, and burns bootleg CD-ROMs that he can sell to his friends. One day, Ozzie's younger sister Melissa (Katie Stuart) talks him into giving her a lift to Shady Glen, where she still attends; looking for a little revenge, he sneaks into the school and intends to have a little fun with their computer system. As it turns out, Ozzie runs afoul of the school's new security chief, former British Secret Service agent Rafe Bentley (Patrick Stewart), who was hired by Principal Maloney (Brenda Fricker) after Ozzie's most recent bit of computer terrorism. But Bentley is not the friend of the law that he seems to be; several of the wealthiest families in America send their children to Shady Glen, and Bentley has a scheme to kidnap ten of the school's richest children and hold them for a ransom of $650 million. Ozzie is caught in the middle of Bentley's kidnapping plot and must now use his computer skills in order to save the children and put Bentley behind bars. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide

Another psychopath haunts another baby sitter in this made-for-TV sequel to the 1979 feature When a Stranger Calls. When prim schoolgirl Julia (Jill Schoelen) accepts a last-minute baby-sitting assignment from a doctor and his wife (Kevin McNulty and Cheryl Wilson), she follows all the rules: She studies diligently, checks often on the kids, and refuses to open the door for strangers -- even when a stranded motorist asks to come in and call his auto club. Julia offers to call for him, but the phone is dead, and rather than alert a strange man that she's without a link to the outside world, she lies and says they're on their way. The man returns to the door repeatedly, angrily wondering why help hasn't arrived; as he continues to badger Julia, she notices things aren't right in the house. Slips of paper disappear, doors mysteriously unlock themselves, the children vanish, and Julia barely escapes with her life. Five years later, Julia is an introverted college student with some heavy-duty locks on her door. Nevertheless, she starts getting that familiar feeling that something isn't right. Enter Jill Johnson (Carol Kane), survivor of a similar baby-sitting atrocity many years earlier. Now a guidance counselor at Julia's university, she offers to help the girl track down her stalker. With the help of an old friend, private eye John Clifford (Charles Durning), Jill picks up the trail of a disturbed ventriloquist (Gene Lythgow). But when Julia ends up with a bullet in her head in an apparent suicide attempt, even John thinks Jill's investigation is a wild goose chase. Reuniting stars Carol Kane and Charles Durning with writer/director Fred Walton, When a Stranger Calls Back features another horror veteran in its cast. Jill Schoelen previously starred in 1990's Popcorn. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

Wealthy-but-troubled Vietnam vet Jeff Fahey, his trailer-trash wife Karen Allen, and drifter Keith Carradine are the characters essential to the action in Backfire. Fahey's horrific flashbacks to his days in Nam plunge him into a catatonic state. Though he has previously drawn up a document granting his wife power of attorney in case this should happen, Fahey's protective sister Dinah Manoff keeps this fact secret, hoping to cut off the mercenary Allen--and her lover Dean Paul Martin--without a penny. Drowning her problems at a local bar, Allen makes the acquaintance of Carradine, who shortly afterwards moves into the family mansion, bag and baggage. Fed up with being treated like garbage, and equally fed up with her noncommunicative husband, Allen enmeshes Carradine in an insidious plan that will regain her the riches she feels she deserves. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide

A woman fears that her amnesia-stricken husband may be a serial killer in this made-for-cable thriller. After family man Ed Vinson gruesomely murders his wife and kids and skips town, police investigator Joe Steiner (Richard Widmark) becomes obsessed with capturing the monster -- even after he's forced to retire from the force. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away, a traffic accident kills one man and leaves another (Keith Carradine) a hideously disfigured amnesiac. Police can't figure out who the survivor is, so he takes the name Allen Devlin and, after reconstructive surgery, falls in love with and marries his recently divorced nurse, Chris Graham (Kathleen Quinlan). Several years later, Steiner shows up in town, convinced Devlin is really Ed Vinson; his dogged pursuit threatens the happiness the Devlins have carved out for themselves and their children -- especially after a series of gruesome rapes begins to occur. The evidence seems to implicate Allen in the attacks, but Chris suspects that her old boyfriend, cop Mike Patterson (Michael Beck), is trying to frame him. The tension escalates as Chris suffers through a series of anonymous phone calls from a man who seems to think he's Ed Vinson; when her son finds a grotesque fetish mask in the garage, even Chris begins to doubt her husband's innocence. Directed by British horror veteran Douglas Hickox and written by Amityville 3D scribe David Ambrose, Blackout premiered on the Home Box Office network in 1985. ~ Brian J. Dillard, All Movie Guide

We first see Asian cave dweller John Lone as he wanders around what seems to be his natural habitat of some 10,000 years ago. Soon we learn that Lone is in a controlled environment in a scientific lab--and that his frozen body was recently discovered during an expedition to the North Pole (hence the nickname "Iceman"). Scientists Lindsay Crouse and Timothy Hutton hope to learn to communicate with Lone, and in so doing discover life was truly like for our neanderthal ancestors. The other, less altruistic scientists want to dissect Lone and analyze his innards. With Hutton's help, Lone escapes, but soon both men realize that there's really no place for "the Iceman" in modern society. Though the settings are convincingly arctic, Iceman was filmed in Manitoba. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide