Anne Pitoniak

A young career girl is swept off her feet by a shy florist who fell in love with her after one glimpse through a shadowy window.

A group of masked gunmen steal evidence from a police evidence storage unit, killing several officers in the process. Officer Dennis Meechum (Brian Dennehy) is seriously wounded after stabbing one of the robbers. He survives and publishes a book titled Inside Job based on his experience. Years later, Meechum has been promoted to Detective, and is working on his next novel. He now suffers from writer's block, and is a widowed father raising his daughter, Holly (Allison Balson). On a case at the docks, a suspect runs as Meechum gives chase. A man named Cleve (James Woods) joins the chase. The suspect hides in an overhead crane and attempts to shoot Meechum, but Cleve kills the man, then disappears. Cleve arranges a meeting with Meechum, and tries to convince to write a book about his history as a paid assassin for a corporate empire, Kappa International. Cleve intimidates Kappa's founder, David Madlock (Paul Shenar) about Meechum's next book, and promises Meechum to show evidence to back up his claims. They proceed to take trips to New York and Texas where Cleve tries to convince Meechum of his history of hits. While they are in Texas, it is revealed that Cleve was the injured masked gunmen that Meechum had stabbed years earlier. Madlock, through his legal representatives, tries to bribe Meechum but fails. When an enforcer tries to steal a manuscript of Meechum's novel and attempt to kill Holly, Cleve intervenes by killing him. When Cleve attempts to keep Holly safe by sending her to Meechum's agent, Roberta Gillian (Victoria Tennant). Madlock, however, manages to kidnap Holly. Meechum decides to have a meeting with Madlock at the latter's oceanfront estate. Cleve storms into the house, and guns down all of Madlock's bodyguards. Cleve then sacrifices his own life to save Holly from Madlock. Meechum arrests Madlock, before comforting a dying Cleve. At the end of the film, it is revealed that Meechum has published the book titled Retribution: The Fall of David Madlock and Kappa International.

The film begins in the 1940's, when Ruth ("Ruthie") and her little sister, Lucille, two young girls living in a city apartment, are taken for a drive by their unstable yet prim and beautiful mother to the rural small town of Fingerbone, a place situated in the mountains. A narrative by an older Ruth reveals that their grandfather, as a boy, came to Fingerbone looking to visit the mountains; a luxury train crash occurred in Fingerbone which later killed him. Ruth and Lucille are dropped off at their kindly old grandmother's house, a cozy and quite large place constructed by their grandfather. The girls' mother then leaves and never returns. Ruth and Lucille spend time talking with a nice police officer and the elderly friends of their grandmother, as the police officer tries night and day to locate their mother. Meanwhile, their mother parks the car in a private field, and requests that three passing boys aid her in getting it unstuck from the mud. The boys kindly offer to help, but are shocked when she insists that they use a beautiful plaid blanket and a good autumn coat to wedge under the tires in order to get the car unstuck. When they finally do, the mother offers the boys her purse, and the boys, thinking she is offering them money as a return for their help, take it, only to then watch in horror as she drives straight through the field and over the edge of a large cliff, sinking into the lake. This lake is the same lake where all the deceased passengers of the luxury train, including Ruth and Lucille's grandfather, drowned in, their bodies mostly never recovered. Ruth and Lucille grow up with their grandmother, never being told that their mother died by suicide in the lake. In fact, after their grandmother's funeral, they skate on the lake's frozen ice with a number of other schoolchildren, oblivious to it. Lucille barely remembers her mother, while Ruth has vague memories, trying to hold onto her family by clinging to her grandmother's old photographs hidden in a small box in a drawer near the floor. They continue to live in their grandparents' house with two elderly great aunts, both of whom are paranoid about the cold weather and detest living in Fingerbone. Although the great aunts are kind-hearted and treat the girls well, Ruth and Lucille feel out of place, having grown up with old people for years and knowing no other children their own age. The much younger, ditzy and eccentric Aunt Sylvie, stops by to see the girls. As Sylvie is taken to peculiar rituals such as eating with the lights out, hanging around with hobos at the train station, and wandering around outdoors at odd hours, Ruth and Lucille take an instant liking to her as a person closer to their age range, and also as their mother's sister. After the two elderly aunts move away and leave the girls in Sylvie's guardianship, the girls begin to ask many questions about their mother; Sylvie is uncomfortable about this, and refrains from breaking the news to either of the girls that their mother died by suicide. Sylvie is perpetually cheerful, except once, when Lucille hounds her with questions about pregnancy and Sylvie's absent husband; she tells Lucille that some questions are impolite and should not be asked, although she does mention that her husband was a soldier in the Pacific War; a domestic violence situation is implied that Sylvie fled from. At first, Ruth and Lucille fear that Sylvie will leave them, but Sylvie decides to stay. A disastrous flood hits the house, destroying most of the objects on the lower floors (including many of the grandmother's photos, much to Ruth's upset), but they quickly get the house cleaned up, putting the sofa out on the lawn to dry and scraping mud from the porch and walls. Sylvie shows the girls some old wallpaper that their mother wrote on, as well as the mountain paintings that their grandfather did. The house takes on a visibly dirty appearance though, and as Sylvie's eccentric habits take root there, it quickly falls into a state of squalor. Sylvie has a particular affinity for animals, and cats and dogs quickly fill the face. The sofa, now dingy and sun-faded, remains on the lawn. The white picket fence collapses, the bush surrounding the house becomes overgrown, and Sylvie's hoarding leads to stockpiles of old newspapers and tin cans being kept. Ruth and Lucille initially see this as a kind of rebellion, taking advantage of the fact that Sylvie's absent-minded eccentricity allows them to ditch school every day, since they both hate going. Embarrassed by their dated, well-worn clothing, the girls find solace by the lake, spending hours there every day near the train bridge, reading and playing. As this goes on, however, and the school fails to notice that they're missing for the entire semester, the novelty quickly wears off. Lucille mentions that she can't wait to go to Boston, hoping that escaping to a big city will get her out of Fingerbone. Ruth dreads the thought of Lucille leaving, and doesn't see the point in trying to. That summer, when the girls catch Sylvie walking straight past them as she searches for them, they realize that she may be mentally ill. This is further suggested when she behaves recklessly atop the train bridge. The girls, believing she is going to jump, tell her that everybody will think she's committed suicide. Reminded of the girls' mother, Sylvie assures them that this was not the case, although again, she hasn't got the heart to mention to them that their mother died by suicide. It is hinted at that Sylvie had run away years ago from the family homestead to marry her (now-estranged) husband, leaving her sister, and that both women went separate ways in their adolescence. Her sister, the more proper of the two, led a more conventional life as the mother of Ruth and Lucille after leaving for the big city until her suicide. Sylvie simply stops speaking of her after a certain point, taking on a more sisterly role than a motherly one with Ruth and Lucille. After Sylvie is found sleeping on a park bench with a book on top of her face, Lucille becomes more and more embarrassed by their aunt's quirky behavior. She chastises her for talking to "trashy" people down at the train station, and finds that she cannot fit in with any of the preppy girls she knows in town. When Ruth and Lucille both return to school, this is only heightened further. Ruth refuses to style her hair or wear appropriate clothing, and during a trip into town, when the girls stop at a soda fountain and Ruth won't speak or look anybody in the eye, Lucille begins to take notice that her older sister is beginning to exhibit the same odd and subversive behavior as Sylvie. Lucille, wanting to fit in with a circle of girls from school who use sewing patterns, makes an effort to sew a two-piece for school, but refuses to concede to the fact that she doesn't know how to sew because she missed the offered home economics class during the semester that she ditched school. She instead blames Ruth, angry that Ruth has used the dictionary with sewing terms in it for pressing flowers. Lucille and Ruth become increasingly distant. Upon returning to school, Lucille puts down Ruth in front of the principal, and when Ruth still refuses to make an effort to fit in, Lucille abandons her entirely. Lucille begins to dress like the preppy girls, stays in a clique (while never inviting any of them over to the house after school), and chooses to eat in her bedroom, avoiding Ruth and Sylvie at any cost. Ruth, lonely and desperate for the companionship with her sister she once had, makes repeated attempts to talk with her, to no avail. Instead, Ruth becomes closer to Sylvie, reveling in her eccentric whimsy and chaos. Lucille attends her first school dance, wearing a stylish silver gown with gloves and a pink ribbon. Upon returning home, she is disheartened to find that while Ruth is studying, the house is still a mess and Sylvie is asleep with a book covering her face. Lucille tells Ruth, "somebody should really cover that up" (pointing to Sylvie) before fleeing; she goes to her home economics teacher's house, claiming to be homeless, after which she is taken in by the teacher and moves away completely, disassociating herself from her aunt and sister. Depressed, Ruth opts to start ditching school again, and goes with Sylvie to the lake to visit a secret house on a deserted island across from Fingerbone. The pair steal an angry fisherman's canoe and row across the water, in a trip that takes up the whole day. Sylvie shares that she has seen small children living on the island they are visiting, but Ruth secretly doubts this. Upon arriving at the island, Sylvie shows Ruth the collapsing remains of an old house with nothing in it but an old Singer sewing machine. It is implied that the house was there when the train bridge was being built, but was abandoned when it no longer became convenient to live so far away from town. Ruth watches for the children that Sylvie claims to have seen, concluding that she "feels" them there like Sylvie does, even if she can't see them. The pair roast marshmallows over an open fire, and by the time they row home, it's already the middle of the night. Lucille wishes to speak to Ruth after school the next day, wondering why she didn't attend for an important test. When Ruth suggests they talk at the drugstore, Lucille, not wanting to be seen with her, goes to the lake with her instead. She urges Ruth to leave Sylvie, but Ruth refuses, insisting that the trip to the island the previous day was perfectly safe. Unbeknownst to her, Lucille tells her teacher, who then calls the police. A police officer arrives and, concerned for Ruth's well-being, sends his wife and two women from church to the dilapidated house for a visit. The women are horrified by the spectacle; one woman winds mushrooms growing in a dead potted plant, another woman nearly sits on a large pine cone that's been brought into the house, and piles of newspapers block the windows. The women are even more disturbed when Sylvie innocently remarks that she can see the girls' mother in Ruth. They urge Sylvie to give up her niece to a new guardian, and later on, the police officer returns, declaring that there will be a hearing to determine Ruth's guardianship the next day. Sylvie and Ruth know that Sylvie will never be able to hold up to the standards of a proper guardian if she's examined in a courtroom. They work instead on dressing Ruth properly, styling her hair, and burning all the old newspapers, as well as a racy sex book that Ruth had in the house. They then go to play a game of hide and seek, but unfortunately for them, the police officer arrives and takes Ruth's absence to mean that she is missing. When Ruth finally does appear, the police officer urges her to come back to his house where she can stay with him and his wife, but she refuses, choosing to stay with Sylvie. Unprepared for the court hearing, Sylvie and Ruth light fires all around the house to burn it down, packing only two small suitcases as they flee. Knowing that they'll be caught, Sylvie insists that they'll have to walk across the lake on the train bridge rather than waiting with the hobos until morning. Despite Ruth's fear that they might both fall into the lake or be hit and killed by a train, she follows Sylvie as Sylvie promises that another train won't be coming until morning. The ending is left ambiguous as the pair cross the tracks, with only a voice-over by Lucille from earlier in the film remarking that Sylvie is always running away.

Norman Jewison's adaptation of John Pielmeier's stage play. When naive novice nun Agnes is discovered with a dead newborn baby in her convent quarters, court-appointed psychiatrist Dr. Martha Livingston investigates her case. When a dead newborn is found wrapped in bloody sheets in a wastebasket in the bedroom of a young novitiate, psychiatrist Martha Livingston is called in to determine if the seemingly innocent novice, who knows nothing of sex or birth, is competent to stand trial for the baby's murder. While searching for the answer that her supervisors want, Dr. Livingston finds herself inevitably drawn into searching for the truth about the baby's conception and death. Despite the lack of cooperation that she receives from her own organization and the church itself, she eventually discovers more than she may have bargained for. —brado.3

Having both lost their jobs, two strangers become unlikely friends after a run in with a would be robber, who is actually a hitman with a grudge against the two. Sonny Paluso and Donald Quinelle are two unfortunate people who have just lost their jobs; Sonny's gas station has been blown away and Donald has just been fired by his boss's parrot! But that day, their lives change when they prevent a robber from holding up a bar, and they become heroes. Unfortunately, Jack (the robber) gets away, and when he sees Donald's face on the TV, he decides to go after them. In the meantime, Donald becomes obsessed with guns and leaves for the mountains to join a survivalist group... —Chris Makrozahopoulos <makzax@hotmail.com>