Oliver Platt Movies
A hulking character actor who brings new meaning to the concept of versatility, Oliver Platt has appeared in a dizzying array of films that make him instantly recognizable but not instantly placeable to the average filmgoer. Since making his screen debut as an oily Wall Street drone in Mike Nichols' Working Girl (1988), Platt has lent his talents to almost every conceivable genre, including period dramas, political comedies, children's films, and campy horror movies.The son of a U.S. Ambassador, Platt was born in Windsor on January 12, 1960, Platt and his family soon moved to Washington, D.C. Thanks to his father's job, he had an exceptionally itinerant childhood. By the time he was 18, he had attended 12 different schools in places as diverse as Tokyo, the Middle East, and Colorado. Long interested in acting, Platt received a BA in drama from Boston's Tufts University; following graduation, he remained in Boston for three years to pursue his stage career. In 1986 he moved to New York, where he performed in a number of off-Broadway productions and had the lead in the 1989 Lincoln Center production of Ubu.
Following his screen debut in Working Girl, Platt began finding steady work in such films as Married to the Mob (1988), Postcards from the Edge (1990), Beethoven (1992) -- which featured him and future collaborator Stanley Tucci as puppy thieves -- and Benny and Joon (1993). He also proved himself adept at cheesy period drama in The Three Musketeers (1993), which cast him as Porthos, and at all-out comedy, as demonstrated by his turn as a struggling comic in Funny Bones (1995). Rarely cast as a leading man, Platt has always been visible in substantial supporting roles, equally comfortable at portraying nice guys, bad guys, and just flat out weird guys alike. As Ashley Judd's suitor in Simon Birch (1998), he was the straight man, while in The Impostors (1998), his second collaboration with Tucci (two years earlier he served as associate producer for the latter's Big Night), he again displayed his capacity for broad physical comedy as a struggling actor who finds himself a stowaway on an ocean liner. In Dangerous Beauty (1998), Platt was able to exercise his nasty side as a bitter nobleman-turned-religious zealot in 16th-century Venice; that same year, his capacity for exasperated quirkiness was displayed in Bulworth, which cast him as Warren Beatty's put-upon, coke-snorting campaign manager.
1999 proved to be a somewhat disappointing year for Platt, as two of his films, Three to Tango (which featured him as a gay architect) and the schlock-horror Lake Placid, which cast him as an idiosyncratic mythology expert, were both critical and commercial flops. A third film that year, Bicentennial Man -- in which Platt played the scientist who turns the titular robot (Robin Williams) into a man -- fared somewhat better. The following year, Platt's comic abilities were again on display in Gun Shy, in which he hammed it up as a bottom-rung mafioso with an overblown ego. ~ Rebecca Flint Marx, All Movie Guide
Jack Black and Michael Cera headline Harold Ramis' Biblical comedy about a pair of misfit hunter-gatherers who embark on a wild journey through the ancient world after being banished from their primitive village. Zed (Black) and Oh (Cera) may lack in the skills that their chieftain is looking for, but they have plans to make it big. Zed has a gut feeling that God has "chosen" him, and so he leads his buddy on a trip through the unknown countryside in search of bigger and better things, bumping into several weird characters along the way -- like a feuding pair of brothers named Cain and Abel (David Cross and Paul Rudd). Unfortunately, their quest for greatness hits a few snags, like being sold into slavery, and later becoming the object of interest to a very amorous, very hairy high priest (Oliver Platt) in the opulent city of Sodom. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Jack Black, Michael Cera, (more)
A graceful Amazon princess of untold strength and beauty attempts to prevent the god of war from instigating a conflict that will last for centuries and destroy the human race as the animated adventure marking the return of DC Comics heroine Wonder Woman. On the mystical island of Themyscira lives a fierce race of warrior Amazons who have raised a powerful daughter named Princess Diana. The Amazons live in secrecy from the outside world, but when Army fighter pilot Steve Travor crash-lands in their tropical paradise, the headstrong princess defies the law of the land by accompanying Trevor back to civilization. But her transition into the modern world won't be an easy one, because when Ares escapes from his Amazonian prison and begins plotting his revenge, Princess Diana is the only person who stands between the god of war, and the destruction of the human race - beginning with the Amazons. Now, as Princess Diana harnesses her unique powers to boldly fight back against Ares and save the planet from certain destruction, Wonder Woman is born and the battle for civilization begins. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Keri Russell, Nathan Fillion, (more)
- 2009
- PG13
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Disaster movie maven Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) crafts this apocalyptic sci-fi thriller following the prophecy stated by the ancient Mayan calendar, which says that the world will come to an end on December 21, 2012. When a global cataclysm thrusts the world into chaos, divorced writer and father Jackson Curtis (John Cusack) joins the race to ensure that humankind is not completely wiped out. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Danny Glover, Amanda Peet, Thandie Newton, and Oliver Platt round out the cast of this end-of-the-world thriller co-scripted by the director and his 10,000 B.C. writer/composer, Harald Kloser. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Cusack, Amanda Peet, (more)
- 2009
Lovely & Amazing director Nicole Holofcener writes and directs this comedy drama dealing with death, family, and real estate, and starring Amanda Peet, Catherine Keener, Oliver Platt, and Rebecca Hall. A woman and her husband live directly next door to the elderly woman whose apartment they own. Realizing that it's only a matter of time before the woman dies and they get their apartment back, the couple waits patiently for nature to take its course. Unfortunately for them, the situation grows complicated with the appearance of the woman's two granddaughters. At first, the newly arrived visitors are a mere nuisance, but before long the girls and the landlords have become close friends. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Amanda Peet, Oliver Platt, (more)
Hollywood heavyweight Ron Howard adapts playwright Peter Morgan's West End hit for the silver screen with this feature focusing on the 1977 television interviews between journalist David Frost (Michael Sheen) and former president Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). At the time Nixon sat down with Frost to discuss the sordid details that ultimately derailed his presidency, it had been three years since the former commander in chief had been forced out of office. The Watergate scandal was still fresh in everyone's minds, and Nixon had remained notoriously tight-lipped until he agreed to sit down with Frost. Nixon was certain that he could hold his own opposite the up-and-coming British broadcaster, and even Frost's own people weren't quite sure their boss was ready for such a high-profile interview. When the interview ultimately got under way and each man eschewed the typical posturing in favor of the simple truth, fans and critics on both sides were stunned by what they witnessed. Instead of Nixon stonewalling the interviewer as expected, or Frost lobbing softballs as the truth-seekers feared, what emerged was an unguardedly honest exchange between a man who had lost everything and another with everything to gain. In this film, viewers are treated to not only a recreation of that landmark interview, but a behind-the-scenes look at the power struggles that led up to it as well. Tim Bevan, Eric Fellner, and Brian Grazer team to produce a film adapted for the screen by original play author Morgan (The Queen and The Last King of Scotland). ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Frank Langella, Michael Sheen, (more)
Much of the group responsible for MTV's The State -- including director/actor David Wain and performers Ken Marino, Kerri Kenney-Silver, and Joe Lo Truglio -- reunite for this outrageous, irreverent, and raunchy sketch comedy, which skewers the Ten Commandments. In the framing sequences, comedian Paul Rudd (who collaborated with much of the cast on Wet Hot American Summer and The Baxter) stands on a black stage with giant Biblical tablets projected behind him and promises to deliver ten mini-stories, each loosely based on one of the commandments, from "Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me" through "Thou Shalt Not Covet." For all of the storyteller's efforts, however, he is constantly, comically distracted by interferences, particularly those emanating from intrusions by his multiple girlfriends. The stories are nonetheless told one by one in short-film form, beginning with a sketch in which Stephen (Adam Brody) goes skydiving with his intended, Kelly (Winona Ryder), but forgets to wear his parachute and gets stuck in the mud, waist-deep, which draws gawkers, media, and in time, worshipers. Several of the subsequent stories consist of raunchy, jet-black riffs on sexual perversion, including one about a virginal librarian (Gretchen Mol) entangled in a sultry and messy affair with a Mexican, and another memorable bit about a nutty surgeon who plays a prank by burying a pair of scissors in a patient's stomach and is then sent to prison -- where he experiences brutal sexual abuse at the hands of other men. As an added bonus, the picture packs in a fully animated sequence, narrated by several crack-smokers, entitled "The Lying Rhino." ~ Nathan Southern, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Paul Rudd, Famke Janssen, (more)
Adapted from a Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novelette by author David Gerrold, Menno Meyjes's Martian Child stars John Cusack as a widowed science fiction writer who adopts a boy (Bobby Coleman) who claims to be from the Red Planet. The writer believes the child acts strangely in order to process the difficulty he has had in his young life, but soon both he and his sister (Joan Cusack) begin to wonder if the boy might be telling the truth. Amanda Peet co-stars as the woman who becomes a mother figure for the boy. ~ Perry Seibert, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Cusack, Amanda Peet, (more)
As Season 5 begins, Christian (Julian McMahon) joins Sean (Dylan Walsh) in Los Angeles, where they soon discover they're pretty small fish in a very big plastic-surgery pond. Needing exposure for the practice, they hire a publicist (Lauren Hutton), who finds them work as medical advisers for the prime-time soap opera "Hearts & Scalpels." It doesn't pan out for Christian, but the opposite holds true for Sean, who begins wielding a scalpel on-screen after the show's star (Bradley Cooper) is fired in a sex scandal. Sean also dates his costar (Paula Marshall) and meets another publicist, Colleen Rose (Sharon Gless), on the set. Colleen takes an intense interest in him, but Julia (Joely Richardson), who arrives in L.A. from New York, has lost interest in him. She's also involved with someone else -- a woman named Olivia Lord (Portia de Rossi). Olivia's promiscuous and duplicitous teen daughter Eden (AnnaLynne McCord) immediately dislikes Julia. Eden also has a brief fling with Sean and ends up in a threesome with Kimber (Kelly Carlson) and Kimber's old porn boss Ram Peters (John Schneider). Kimber has left Matt (John Hensley), but they share custody of their daughter. Meanwhile, Liz (Roma Maffia) follows Christian and Sean from Miami, but leaves McNamara/Troy after a falling out with Christian. Her replacement, adventurous Theodora "Teddy" Rowe (Katee Sackhoff), a recreational anesthesia user, has an affair with Sean. And Dawn Budge (Rosie O'Donnell) finds herself at McNamara/Troy after being bitten by an eagle while hang gliding. She becomes romantically involved with "Hearts & Scalpels" executive producer Freddy Prune (Oliver Platt). And then there's Christian, who has his own issues. He gets sexually reacquainted with Julia and Gina Russo (Jessalyn Gilsig), his adopted son Wilber's sex-addicted mother. Then he faces a health crisis. ~ Paul Droesch, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Dylan Walsh, Julian McMahon, (more)
Filmed on location in New York and Connecticut, the ESPN miniseries The Bronx is Burning was a vivid (if not overly expensive) retelling of the New York Yankees' championship year of 1977. Heading the enormous cast of celebrity lookalikes were Oliver Platt as Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and John Turturro as team manager Billy Martin. The infamously volatile relationship between the two men was the heart of the series, with the prickly Martin curiously emerging as the hero of the piece. Setting the story in motion was the hiring of baseball superstar Reggie Jackson (Daniel Sunjata), the first of several measures taken by the Yanks to reclaim the World Series. To place the action at Yankee Stadium in proper historical context, much was made of the other events which kept the citizens of New YOrk on their collective toes in the summer of 1977, including the frantic search for the serial killer known as the "Son of Sam", the devastating power blackout, the fractious mayoral race, and the ongoing violence in the streets of the Bronx. The title of the series derived from the famous TV-news headline "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning", which was also the title of the Jonathan Mahler novel upon which the show was based. The Bronx is Burning first roared into flame on July 10, 2007. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Turturro, Oliver Platt, (more)
History's most renowned ladies' man finally meets his match in this historical romance laced with comedy and adventure. In Venice in 1753, Giacomo Casanova (Heath Ledger) is a notorious playboy whose way with women goes too far when he's caught leaving the bedroom of a novice nun, and one of the leading prosecutors of the Inquisition, Pucci (Jeremy Irons), puts him on trial. The Doge (Tim McInnerny), Venice's political point man, is a friend of Casanova's and pulls strings to get him off the hook and allow him to stay in the city, but under one condition -- he must take a wife and remain faithful to her. Casanova sets his sights on Victoria (Natalie Dormer), a lovely young maiden who is obviously taken with the handsome ladykiller, but he's not the only one who wants her hand. Giovanni Bruni (Charlie Cox) is a young man who is very much in love with Victoria, and in order to move him out of the picture, Casanova challenges him to a duel. However, when Casanova is bested in swords in the challenge, he discovers he's actually been parrying with Giovanni's sister, Francesca (Sienna Miller). As Casanova gets to know Francesca, he discovers she's a gifted writer and a bright and independent woman as well as a good hand with a sword, and he comes to the realization that she's the woman he wants to take to the altar. However, Francesca has already been promised to the vain and chubby Papprizzio (Oliver Platt), a man she's never met, and she doesn't seem at all interested in the notorious Casanova. Casanova also stars Lena Olin, and Omid Djalili. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Heath Ledger, Sienna Miller, (more)
Two men on the run from the mob end up negotiating more than their share of obstacles along the way in this comedy drama from director Harold Ramis. Vic Cavanaugh (Billy Bob Thornton) and Charlie Arglist (John Cusack) are a pair of friends who work for Bill Gerard (Randy Quaid), a mobster with his finger in a number of illegal businesses. Vic runs a pornography distribution outfit for Bill, while Charlie is a lawyer who keeps Bill and his partners out of jail, and between them, Vic and Charlie have stolen over two million dollars in cash from Bill. On Christmas Eve, Vic and Charlie plan to make off with their money and escape Bill's clutches once and for all, but while Vic stays cool and collected, an increasingly nervous Charlie stops off at a topless bar to fortify his courage with a few drinks, and ends up causing a scene with Renata (Connie Nielsen), a dancer he's long had his eye on. It doesn't take long for word about Charlie to get back to Bill, who sends an enforcer out to track him down, but while Charlie tries to make tracks, he ends up having to look after his friend Pete (Oliver Platt), who is much more drunk than Charlie and even more inclined to make a nuisance of himself. The Ice Harvest was adapted from the novel by Scott Philips. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, (more)
Alfred Kinsey was an entomologist who taught at Indiana University and had a keen interest in an area of human behavior that had seen little scholarly research -- human sexuality. While the courtship and reproductive patterns of animals had been carefully documented, Kinsey believed that most "established facts" about human sexual behavior were a matter of conjecture rather than research and that what most people said about their sex lives was not born out by the evidence (a subject that had personal resonance for him given the troubles he and his wife Clara Kinsey had in the early days of their marriage). After introducing a course in "Marriage" at Indiana University which offered frank and factual information on sex to students, Kinsey began an exhaustive series of interviews with a wide variety of people from all walks of life in order to find out the truth about sex practices in America. When he published Sexual Behavior and the Human Male in 1948, his findings were wildly controversial, indicating that most men had a wider variety of sexual experiences than most people imagined, including a number of practices commonly thought to be dangerous or perverted (including pre-marital sex, same-sex contacts, and masturbation). An even greater outcry greeted Kinsey's next volume, Sexual Behavior and the Human Female, which contradicted common notions than most women went into marriage sexually inexperienced. Kinsey is a film biography written and directed by Bill Condon which examines Kinsey's life and work from his strict childhood until his death in 1956. Liam Neeson plays Alfred Kinsey, and Laura Linney co-stars as Kinsey's wife and colleague Clara. John Lithgow highlights the supporting cast as Kinsey's repressed and moralistic father, while Chris O'Donnell, Peter Sarsgaard, and Timothy Hutton play members of Kinsey's research team and Tim Curry appears as an IU faculty member at odds with Kinsey's teachings. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liam Neeson, Laura Linney, (more)
A mother once neglected as child but possessed of a heart overflowing with love grows increasingly despondent as her beloved child begins to claim his independence in director Kevin Bacon's adaptation of Victoria Redel's best-selling novel. If loving too much were a crime, well-meaning but overbearing mother Emily (Kyra Sedgwick) would be spending life behind bars with no hope of parole. When Emily was a child, her parents were deeply in love with one another but tragically indifferent to their affection-starved daughter. Now a grown adult with a deep-rooted desire to bear a child, Emily goes to desperate lengths to conceive before eventually giving birth to an exceptionally gifted boy whom she names Paul. Emily's devotion to Paul burns brighter than a thousand suns as she creates a wondrous world of books, music, art, and games to share with her growing child, but her ever more desperate attempts to preserve the purity of their relationship reach a frantic fever pitch as a kindhearted local man opens his life to the pair and Paul prepares for his first year of school. ~ Jason Buchanan, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Kyra Sedgwick, Kevin Bacon, (more)
Up until the day that a 15-year-old patient committed suicide right in the middle of his office, prosperous L.A. psychiatrist Dr. Craig "Huff" Huffstodt (Hank Azaria) had been sublimely confident that his was the most secure and well-ordered of lives. But as he finds out in the course of Huff's first season on Showtime, our hero is the central figure in a bizarre, often incomprehensible real-life scenario festooned with hitherto untapped neuroses, sexual hang-ups, dysfunctional family members, and jaw-dropping plot convolutions. Just your typical, everyday midlife crisis. Inasmuch as the parents of his unfortunate teenage patient hold Huff responsible for the suicide, Huff's attorney, Russell Tupper (Oliver Platt), would seem to be the "go-to guy" whenever the going gets too rough. Unfortunately, despite his sympathy toward Huff's plight and his pithy words of wisdom, Tupper himself is an angst-ridden mess, as he proves via his weird behavior during a Medical Board hearing. There's worse in store for Tupper when his latest client turns out to be the hooker (Nichole Mercedes Robinson) with whom he'd previously enjoyed a spontaneous one-night orgy. As for Huff's self-absorbed mother, Izzy (Blythe Danner), she had never been a pillar of moral support before, and is even less of one now as she prepares to divorce Huff's long-estranged father, Ben (Robert Forster). Izzy's other son, Teddy (Andy Comeau), wouldn't have been of any help even if he hadn't gotten himself lost in the middle of a field trip. And Huff's own son, Byrd (Anton Yelchin), has begun messing around with illegal substances, much to the dismay of Huff's wife, Beth (Paget Brewster), who already has a big-time cross to bear in the form of the grave illness that is sapping the life from her mother, Madeleine (Swoosie Kurtz). And believe it or not, this litany of misfortune is often played for laughs -- successfully! Adding to Huff's burdens are the ravings of his bipolar patient Melody Coatar (Lara Flynn Boyle), and his brief flirtation with infidelity as he dallies with a sexy pharmaceutical rep. It's not for nothing that the series' holiday offering is titled "Christmas Is Ruined" -- just as the season finale, "Crazy Nuts & All Fucked Up" bears an appropriate moniker, given Huff's anguished response to his mom Izzy's post-menopausal love affair with...well, let's not give away the entire plot! ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Hank Azaria, Paget Brewster, (more)
- 2003
Actress Julia Roberts was executive producer of Queens Supreme, a weekly, seriocomic look at the judicial system in the Big City. The setting was the Queens Supreme County Courthouse, where a motley crew of judges worked together while working apart. The dramatis personae included eccentric, cynical Judge Jack Moran (Oliver Platt), dignified and equitable Judge Thomas O'Neill (Robert Loggia), witheringly honest and outspoken Judge Rose Barnea (L. Scott Caldwell), and idealistic new apointee Judge Kim Vicidomini (Annabella Sciorra). The flippantly liberal stance of the series was established on the opener, in which a disgruntled smoker held a jury hostage out of frustration over recent multimillion-dollar court decisions against cigarette manufacturers. Queens Supreme debuted January 10, 2003. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oliver Platt, Annabella Sciorra, (more)
- 2003
The relationship between Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Arthur Miller and Oscar-winning director Elia Kazan went far beyond their professional association. In addition to the fact that Kazan directed Miller's earliest Broadway hits, All My Sons and Death of a Salesman, both men held many of the same political and ideological beliefs -- and both were enamored of blonde bombshell Marilyn Monroe (whom Miller ultimately married). Their friendship came to an abrupt end in 1952, at the height of the so-called Communist witch hunt conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Although Miller refused to name names before the HUAC, and was blacklisted from Hollywood as a result, Kazan (after much anguished soul-searching) cooperated by offering testimony against former left-wing associates, and his film career continued. In the years that followed, both men came to grips with their experiences before the HUAC in their art: Miller wrote a play called The Crucible, which drew obviously parallels between the 17th-century Salem Witch Trials and the Red Scare of the 1950s, while Kazan helmed a film called On the Waterfront, which many perceive to be the director's passionate self-defense for testifying as a "friendly witness." Ultimately, Kazan and Miller settled their differences, but though they would work together again, their close off-stage relationship had been permanently damaged. Featuring archival footage, commentary from prominent film and theater historians, and eyewitness recollections by such ex-blacklistees as actors Marge Redmond and Lee Grant, the scrupulously fair and even-handed two-hour documentary Arthur Miller, Elia Kazan and the Blacklist: None Without Sin made its American TV debut as part of PBS' American Masters anthology. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Oliver Platt
Novelist and screenwriter Peter Hedges makes his directorial debut with the comedy drama Pieces of April. Family outcast April Burns (Katie Holmes) lives in a beat-up apartment in New York's Lower East Side with her boyfriend, Bobby (Derek Luke). In order to spend some time with her dying mother, Joy (Patricia Clarkson), April invites her conservative suburban family to her place for a Thanksgiving feast. She discovers that her oven is broken the morning of the big day, so she goes around her tenement building trying to find a sympathetic neighbor with a working oven. Though she doesn't know them, neighbors Eugene (Isiah Whitlock) and Evette (Lillias White) offer the use of their oven, but only for an hour. While she frantically tries to complete the meal, the family drives in from Pennsylvania sharing less-than-pleasant opinions about April's lifestyle. Dad Jim (Oliver Platt) tries to think positively, while daughter Beth (Alison Pill) flaunts her good-girl status and son Timmy (John Gallagher Jr.) captures it all on film. Shot with digital video, Pieces of April is a project of the Independent Film Channel's InDigEnt production company. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Katie Holmes, Patricia Clarkson, (more)
Not a sequel to 1998's Hope Floats, Hope Springs is a romantic comedy based on the 2001 novel New Cardiff, the first new book in over 20 years by Charles Webb, author of The Graduate. Directed and written for the screen by Mark Herman (Brassed Off), the film stars Colin Firth as lovelorn British artist Colin Ware. After being left by his fiancée Vera (Minnie Driver), Colin takes to sulking about in a small Vermont hotel run by Joanie Fisher (Mary Steenburgen). When Joanie becomes aware of Colin's broken heart, she decides to match him up with a local woman named Mandy (Heather Graham). But just as romance begins to ensue between Colin and Mandy, Vera suddenly pops back into the picture with intentions of rekindling her relationship with Colin. Oliver Platt heads up the supporting cast that also includes Frank Collison and Chad Faust. ~ Matthew Tobey, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Colin Firth, Heather Graham, (more)
A relationship between two brothers literally becomes a matter of life and death in this drama from writer, director and actor Edward Burns. Francis Sullivan (Burns) was a street-wise thug with ties to the Irish mob until his younger brother Sean (Elijah Wood) was killed on Ash Wednesday in 1980 while trying to protect Francis from gangsters who were out to kill him. Three years later, Francis is a law-abiding man who is trying to stay on the straight and narrow and keep his eye on Grace (Rosario Dawson), Sean's widow. However, rumors have begun to circulate that Sean's death was just a ruse fabricated by Francis and a sympathetic priest, Father Mahoney (James Handy), to get mobster Moran (Oliver Platt) off Sean's back. Some people have spotted someone who looks a lot like Sean wandering around the neighborhood, and Moran, who doesn't forget a grudge, begins scouring the neighborhood in search of Sean, while Francis has worries of his own about Sean, since his relationship with Grace has started to move beyond simple family friendship. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Edward Burns, Elijah Wood, (more)
Liberty Wallace (Linda Fiorentino), the wife and business partner of wealthy weapons manufacturer Victor Wallace (Oliver Platt), is on her way to her regular assignation with her boyfriend, Russell (Martin Cummins), an actor who's about to go on-stage for the closing night of his hit play. Their plans are ruined by a mysterious gunman who calls himself Joe (Wesley Snipes). Joe straps Russell to a bomb in his dressing room, which will go off if he moves or speaks too loudly. Joe then calls Liberty on her cell phone and coerces her into chaining herself to a hot dog stand in a plaza outside the theater. The hot dog stand is rigged with a bomb, which will go off if Liberty hangs up her cell phone, or when it runs out of battery power. Joe also has a high-powered sniper rifle, her company's best gun, trained on Liberty. Joe doesn't make any demands at first, but it's clear that he has a problem with Liberty's weapons empire, which she inherited from her late father. He eventually tells Liberty that his young daughter was killed in a school shooting by one of the guns her company manufactured. Joe lets Liberty know that she's going to die, but she can die a hero if she exposes her company's shady business dealings and political connections before she's killed. As Joe monitors and records her every move, Liberty reveals secrets about her own past, and her business dealings. When Victor, who's also having an affair, finds out that his wife has been taken hostage, he's torn between following company protocol -- protecting himself and allowing his wife to be killed -- and going to help her. Liberty Stands Still was written and directed by Kari Skogland. The film premiered on Cinemax in July 2002. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Wesley Snipes, Linda Fiorentino, (more)
Zigzag is the directorial debut of screenwriter David S. Goyer (Blade, Blade 2). Based on the well-received debut novel by Landon J. Napoleon, the film tells the story of an autistic teenager, Louis "Zigzag" Fletcher (Sam Jones III). Zigzag is a sensitive and thoughtful boy who retreats into his own mind to escape the harshness of his inner-city life, particularly the abuse of his father (Wesley Snipes). His only friend is Singer (John Leguizamo), his compassionate Big Brother, who gives Louis his nickname, and tells the boy he's imbued with special powers. He's trying to get Zigzag removed from his father's home, and also to teach him to survive. Singer has testicular cancer, and is concerned that he won't always be around when the boy needs him. Zigzag works as a dishwasher in a restaurant owned by the Toad (Oliver Platt), an amusingly caustic Southerner. After Zigzag's father demands 200 dollars for rent, the boy sees Toad opening his office safe, and commits the combination to memory. Later, he takes 9,000 dollars from the safe. When he attempts to give his father the rent, his father takes all the money. When Singer finds out what Zigzag has done, he goes to desperate lengths to get the money back, so he can return it to Toad before Zigzag gets into trouble. As Singer's plan goes awry, this brings the pair into contact with a sleazy loan shark (Luke Goss, who was also in Blade 2) and a kindhearted prostitute (Natasha Lyonne). The film's soundtrack was composed by Grant Lee Phillips. Zigzag was shown at the 2002 SXSW Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Sam Jones III, John Leguizamo, (more)
This psychological thriller from screenwriter Patrick Smith Kelly reunites him with his A Perfect Murder (1998) star Michael Douglas. Dr. Nathan Conrad (Douglas) is a respected adolescent therapist faced with a nightmarish scenario when his young daughter (Skye McCole Bartusiak) is snatched by Koster (Sean Bean), a criminal with a talent for high-tech surveillance. Conrad learns that the kidnapper is desperate for a critical piece of information known only to Elisabeth Burrows (Brittany Murphy), one of his catatonic pro bono patients. While his wife Aggie (Famke Janssen) remains at home, bedridden due to a broken leg, Conrad races to unlock the secret stored in Elisabeth's fractured mind, while a New York City detective (Jennifer Esposito) inches closer to discovering the Conrads' dilemma. Don't Say a Word co-stars Oliver Platt and Guy Torry and is directed by Gary Fleder, who follows up his suspense smash Kiss the Girls (1997). ~ Karl Williams, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Michael Douglas, Sean Bean, (more)
In this action-laced comedy, a cop on the verge of a nervous breakdown finds love at the least convenient time. Charlie Mayo (Liam Neeson) is an undercover agent with the DEA who was nearly killed when a sting set up to nail a gang of drug dealers went horribly wrong. The accident left Charlie shaken, and he's gone into therapy to hold himself together as he struggles through one final case before retiring. Charlie's superior (Mitch Pileggi) has set him up on another undercover assignment as he tries to bring in two Colombian drug kingpins and a low-level Mafiosi with delusions of grandeur (Oliver Platt). As Charlie makes his way through therapy, he's referred to a nurse (Sandra Bullock) interested in New Age healing techniques; now he has love on his mind as he tries to keep himself out of harm's way under increasingly dangerous circumstances. Gun Shy marked the feature directorial debut of television veteran Eric Blakeney. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
- Starring:
- Liam Neeson, Oliver Platt, (more)
