James Gammon

In October 1957, during the Cold War, an object (Vin Diesel) from space crashes in the ocean just off the coast of Maine and then enters the forest near the town of Rockwell. A fishing boat collides with the object, which appears to be a giant robot made of Iron. The boat sinks, but the skipper survives and swims to the coast, guided by the lighthouse. The skipper reaches Rockwell and makes a call to the Government about what he saw. Hogarth meets an artist named Dean in a diner, where Hogarth's mother Annie works as a waitress. The following night, nine-year-old Hogarth Hughes (Eli Marienthal) is watching a late-night movie on TV, as his mother is working late at the cafe. The TV suddenly has no picture, and Hogarth climbs to the roof to find the antenna cut off, and a trail going into the forest. Hogarth investigates a trail of destruction in the forest and finds the object, a 50-foot-tall alien robot. He runs away but then returns to save the robot when he gets electrocuted while trying to eat the transmission lines of an electrical substation. Hogarth turns the substation power off, to stop the robot from being electrocuted. Hogarth's mother returns from work and is worried at not finding him at home. She goes into the forest looking for him and finds him near the substation. Hogarth tries to tell her about the robot, but his mother refuses to hear anything and takes him home. Hogarth eventually returns and befriends the Giant, finding him docile and curious. The robot follows Hogarth back to his house, where he lives with his mother Annie (Jennifer Aniston). Upon their return, the Giant attempts to eat the rails off the ties of the nearby railroad tracks. Alarmed by the sound of an oncoming train, Hogarth tells the giant to repair the tracks. The Giant attempts this, but takes too long, causing the train to collide with his head. Hogarth and the robot flee before the train crew can investigate. Hogarth discovers that the giant is self-repairing, as loose parts from the collision return under their own power and reassemble. Hogarth hides the robot in their barn and helps to teach it about life. He is able to teach the robot how to speak English through his comic books. The robot is impressed with Superman but distressed when he discovers a comic about an evil robot; Hogarth tells the Giant that he can be "who you choose to be". Investigating the destroyed power station, US government agent Kent Mansley (Christopher McDonald) discovers evidence of the robot and decides to continue his inquiries in nearby Rockwell. At the substation, while he is investigating, the robot eats Mansley's car. Finding a BB gun Hogarth left near the substation, Mansley takes up a room for rent at Hogarth's home and trails the boy to learn more. He is paranoid about an alien invasion and alerts the U.S. Army to the possible presence of the robot. Worried that they will be discovered, Hogarth evades Mansley and takes the robot to beatnik artist Dean McCoppin (Harry Connick, Jr.). Hogarth enjoys his time with the Giant but is compelled to explain the concept of death to the Giant after he witnesses hunters killing a deer. Hogarth is detained and interrogated by Mansley when he discovers evidence of the Giant after finding a photo of him next to Hogarth and summons a U.S. Army contingent led by General Shannon Rogard to the scrapyard to prove the Giant's existence. Dean is able to pass off the robot as one of his works of art when Mansley and Lieutenant General Rogard (John Mahoney) investigate. Later, while playing with a toy gun, Hogarth inadvertently activates the Giant's defensive system, firing a laser beam in the process. Dean yells at him for nearly killing Hogarth, and the saddened Giant runs away with Hogarth giving chase. Dean realizes that the Giant was only acting in self-defense and catches up to Hogarth as they follow the Giant. In Rockwell, the Giant rescues two boys falling from a roof when he arrives, winning over the townspeople. Mansley, having seen the robot, orders an attack to stop it. Hogarth and the robot attempt to flee but Hogarth is knocked unconscious. Hogarth is knocked unconscious, but the Giant assumes that Hogarth is dead, and in a fit of rage and grief transforms into a war machine and returns to Rockwell. Mansley convinces Rogard to prepare a nuclear missile launch from the USS Nautilus, as conventional weapons prove to be ineffective. Hogarth awakens and returns in time to calm the Giant while Dean clarifies the situation to Rogard. Rogard is ready to stand down and order the Nautilus to deactivate its primed nuke, but a panicked Mansley snatches Rogard's radio and orders the missile launch. The missile is targeted to hit Rockwell, where it will destroy the town upon impact in the resulting nuclear detonation. Mansley attempts to escape, but the Giant intervenes, and Rogard has Mansley arrested. To save the town, the Giant bids farewell to Hogarth and flies off to intercept the missile. As he soars into the missile's path, the Giant remembers Hogarth's words, "You are who you choose to be," smiles contentedly, and declares himself "Superman" as he collides with the weapon. The missile explodes in the atmosphere, saving Rockwell, its population, and the military forces nearby, while the Giant is presumably destroyed, leaving Hogarth, Dean, Annie, and Rogard devastated. Months later, Dean and Annie, now a couple, have a chat at a memorial of the Giant made by Dean, standing in Rockwell. Hogarth is given a package from Rogard containing a screw from the Giant, which is the only remnant found. That night, Hogarth finds the screw trying to move on its own and, remembering the Giant's ability to self-repair, happily allows the screw to leave. The screw joins many other parts as they converge on the Giant's head on the Langjökull glacier in Iceland, and the Giant smiles as he begins reassembling himself.

The early career of legendary lawman Wild Bill Hickock is telescoped and culminates in his relocation in Deadwood and a reunion with Calamity Jane. Maverick Writer and Director Walter Hill's version of the famous Wild Bill Hickok legend is a dreamscape western that is told entirely in flashback. Hickok's friend Charley Prince (Sir John Hurt) narrates the events of Wild Bill's life while sitting at Bill's graveside. Hickok is played by Jeff Bridges as a mean, high-spirited, but gallant outlaw. He wanders the West, adding to his reputation with some well-chosen gunfights, and he meets up with characters such as Calamity Jane (Ellen Barkin), who becomes his sidekick for a time. After becoming a legend, Hickok signs up for a stint with Buffalo Bill Cody's travelling variety show. Eventually, he falls in love with Susannah Moore (Diane Lane), and his love leads him to tragedy in the town of Deadwood, South Dakota. Wild Bill Hickok, famed lawman and gunman of the Old West, is haunted by his past and his reputation. He is loved by, but cannot love, Calamity Jane. Dogging his trail is young Jack McCall, who blames Bill for abandoning the boy's mother and destroying her life. McCall has sworn to kill Bill, and Bill's ghosts, his failing eyesight, and his fondness for opium may make McCall's task easier. —Jim Beaver <jumblejim@prodigy.net>

Two contrasting women, one optimistic and the other cynical, embark on a life-changing road trip to Alaska, where an unexpected inheritance awaits one of them, leading to a series of adventures that challenge their perspectives. For her entire life, 27-year-old Marianne Johnson has been on the move; the decisions she's made as an adult have been total failures, such as her second-most-recent marriage to Curtis Johnson, which brought her to Normal, Wyoming. However, she has an optimistic view of life, always believing that each decision she makes will be the right one. She is a linear thinker and despite being bright in this regard, she has no life or job skills and has never had a paying job besides a short stint in the Army, where she met Curtis. Conversely, 38-year-old Darly Peters wears her failures openly on her sleeve, bulldozing her way through life. Currently a cocktail waitress in Normal, Darly receives news that her ex-husband, whom she left 18 years ago, has died and has deeded the house which they were building at the time in remote Palmer Valley, Alaska to her. She believes this house will be the first time in her life she will feel settled. Seeing in Marianne a stranger in need, Darly offers her a ride to Portland, where she will be staying with her judgmental sister and brother-in-law. As that move to Portland also proves to be another disaster in Marianne's life, she decides to accept Darly's invitation to go to Alaska with her. Along the way, they get into one adventure after another, meeting people who may affect their view of life. What will also affect their lives is Darly's Alaska past which leads to life in Alaska not quite what they were expecting. —Huggo A female buddy picture whose initial run was handicapped by being released after "Thelma and Louise." The film chronicles Marianne and Darly's cross-country adventure and, the hardships and characters they encounter. Where "Thelma and Louise" was about keeping control until the very end, "Leaving Normal" is about knowing when to stop. —Robert B. Young Marianne is a child at heart while everyone around her is mad at the world and taking it out on her for not being "mature" like them. She runs away and joins "hardened by life" Darly on her trip to claim land in Alaska. Its a classic "iron sharpens iron" road-trip movie. —Hannah Hudson < inferno_ears@hotmail.com >

Joey Boca (Kevin Kline) owns a pizza parlor, and is married to Rosalie (Tracey Ullman). He's also a serial womanizer. Rosalie goes to extremes when she finds he has been cheating. Joey Boca (Kevin Kline) works with Rosalie (Tracey Ullman) in their pizza parlor. She is convinced that he works all of the time for them and her world dissolves when she finds that he has been fooling around for years. Being Catholic, divorce is out of the question, so she, her mother, and her best friend decide to kill him. Hopelessly incompetent as killers, they hire incompetent professionals as they beat, poison, and shoot Joey, who remains oblivious to their attempts. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net> In Tacoma, Washington, Joey Boca (Kevin Kline) and his loving wife, Rosalie Boca (Tracey Ullman), have two children, own and operate their own successful pizzeria, and own an apartment building, which Joey manages. All of their customers and tenants seem to love affable Joey, perhaps a little too much, as Joey is a chronic philanderer, something of which Rosalie is completely unaware. Things change when Rosalie secretly catches Joey undeniably cheating on her. After she gets over the initial shock and grief, which makes her want to kill herself, she instead figures a better idea is to have Joey killed. She decides to confide in her mother, handy woman Nadja (Dame Joan Plowright), who lives with them and has not liked Joey for a long time for taking Rosalie for granted, and Devo (River Phoenix), Joey and Rosalie's busboy and cleaner at the pizzeria, who Rosalie knows has always loved her. Unable to do the job to completion, they figure they need some professional help. Who Devo finds to do the job, are druggie cousins Harlan (William Hurt) and Marlon (Keanu Reeves), whose interest is solely in the money, as they have never killed anyone before. Through the entire proceedings, the truth may set them all free. —Huggo

The accidental breakdown of an irrigation valve launches a hot confrontation between the mainly Latino farmers in a tiny New Mexico town and the real estate developers and politicians determined to acquire their land for a golf resort. In the tiny town of Milagro, New Mexico, where the local water is a premium resource, shady developer Ladd Devine has conceived a glitzy resort that will ultimately siphon off all the water from the neighboring crop-fields. When handyman and farmer Joe Mondragon accidentally breaks a water valve reserved for major companies, he inadvertently sets off a small-scale water-rights war between the farmers and the developers. —Jwelch5742 Milagro is a poor, drought-stricken New Mexico village populated largely by Mexican-Americans. The only economic activity of any note is the development of the partially state-funded Miracle Valley Recreation Area which will consist of among other items a ski resort and a golf course. It is being developed by rich out-of-town white people, namely the [Ladd] Devine Land Development Company, for rich out-of-town white people. Milagro resident, handyman Joe Mondragon, who just wants to earn money to support his family, can't even get a job with Devine working on this development. In frustration, Joe kicks and breaks a sluice on an irrigation ditch that is diverting all the water of the region to Devine's development, that break which ends up flooding a small field owned by Joe. It is a former beanfield his legacy as passed down to him by his father, and which is located in the middle of the recreation development area, Joe the one resident who did not sell. In this act, Joe comes up with the idea of "stealing" the water to do with the field as it was intended, namely to plant a crop of beans. With that stealing of water caught up in state bureaucracy, Joe's act of public mischief draws the battle lines largely by race and by pro versus anti-Miracle Valley development, with the beanfield itself the physical symbol of the battle. While some necessarily need to straddle the line, such as Chicano Sheriff Bernabe Montoya, others may not be as one-sided in the matter as they appear on the surface. —Huggo In Milagro, a small town in the American Southwest, Ladd Devine plans to build a major new resort development. While activist Ruby Archuleta and lawyer/newspaper editor Charlie Bloom realize that this will result in the eventual displacement of the local Hispanic farmers, they cannot arouse much opposition because of the short term opportunities offered by construction jobs. But when Joe Mondragon illegally diverts water to irrigate his bean field, the local people support him because of their resentment of water use laws that favor the rich like Devine. When the Governor sends in ruthless troubleshooter Kyril Montana to settle things quickly before the lucrative development is cancelled, a small war threatens to erupt. —Reid Gagle

After being dumped by his girlfriend, a boy runs away to California. But he ends up in heaven because he dies after trying to help a family from drowning in a river. In heaven he'll meet a beautiful girl, who has never reincarnated before. In 1952 while driving to California to start his life anew, twenty-something Mike Shea accidentally dies while doing a heroic act. Despite floundering in his life - he was having troubles holding a steady job and his supposed girlfriend was about to marry someone else - he was not ready to leave the living. In heaven, he learns that despite it being a fantastical other world existence, he still has human emotions, such as romantic love, which he feels for a "new" soul he meets named Annie Packert (i.e. she has never been among the living on Earth), who in turn loves him. He also learns that one's next life is somewhat predetermined by their stay in heaven. So when Annie is sent to Earth for her first go around as a human, Mike pleads with the man in charge at heaven, Emmett Humbird, to locate him in his next human life at least in the same country so that he can find Annie. Emmett reluctantly agrees, but only gives Mike thirty years in his next life to find her. Those next lives of Annie and Mike are as Allison Chandler and Elmo Barnett respectively. Each carries a bit of their experience with each other in heaven to their new subconscious human being, Ally's manifesting itself in an imaginary childhood friend named Mike, whereas Elmo grows up to be a drifter but one not sure for what he is looking. With Elmo receiving a little help from both Emmett and some people from his past life, will the match made in heaven find its way to Earth before the thirty year deadline? —Huggo A romantic, occasionally funny, drama about two souls who consummate their marriage literally in "Heaven". Mike Shea, in his first life dies as a young man performing a heroic rescue. Shortly after arriving in "Heaven" he meets a new soul, Annie Packert, who has never lived on Earth before. The drama centers around their separation soon after being wedded and the burning question is whether they will reunite on Earth before time runs out or whether they are fated to eternal soul-searching. —Anonymous During the 1950s, Mike Shea lives with his parents and has a normal relationship with his girlfriend. But one day, she tells him that some other man has proposed her matrimony and the worst: she has said yes. So, Mike runs away from his little town to California, with his dog. The trip is going fine, until a car accident crosses in his way. An entire family has fallen to a river and they're trapped inside their car. In an heroic gesture, Mike dives in the river and he rescues all the family members, but unfortunately he dies drowned. He goes to heaven and he meets with his aunt, who is now a talented painter. After find some known people from his life in Earth, Mike meets with a beautiful woman, Annie, a new soul which has never reincarnated before. Mike learns that he can reincarnate and return to Earth. But before that, he and Annie fall in love and get married. The problem is that Annie is very curious about Earth and some time later, she tells Mike that she wants to reincarnate in a baby. Mike's now very sad missing Annie and he wants to return to Earth and find her. He will make a deal with Emmett, a kind of angel, in which Mike will have 30 years to find Annie, otherwise each one will have an unhappy life with other people. Annie in the 1960s has become a toy designer, named Ally, married with a filmmaker. Meanwhile, Mike is a quite disorientated kid, which tries everything, like being a painter, then a soldier, just to become later a musician. Many years pass, but it seems that Mike and Annie are having some difficulties to meet each other again. —Alejandro Frias

Bud Davis (John Travolta) moves to Houston for a job in the city's oil refinery industry. He hopes to save enough money to move back to his hometown of Spur, Texas and buy some land. Bud stays with his Uncle Bob (Barry Corbin) and his family, with whom Bud is close. Bob takes Bud to the local honky tonk bar, Gilley's. Bud quickly embraces the local nightlife there. At the club, Bud meets Sissy (Debra Winger), who asks if he is a real cowboy. They fall in love, and soon after Bud asks Sissy to marry him. Their wedding reception is held at Gilley's, and they immediately move into a brand new mobile home. Although they are in love and passionate, Bud and Sissy have many quarrels. Sissy is a feisty, independent woman while Bud believes in traditional gender roles (that a man works and a woman's place is in the home). However, both of their lives settle into a routine of work by day and hanging out at Gilley's at night, where Bud takes a liking to riding the mechanical bull. When Sissy also wants to ride, he forbids her. Meanwhile, Wes Hightower (Scott Glenn), on parole from Huntsville Penitentiary, lands a job at Gilley's running the mechanical bull due to his rodeo skills. He flirts with Sissy, who is flattered, but a drunken Bud is enraged, and he and Wes end up in a fist fight. Sissy, against Bud's wishes, spends her free time at Gilley's during the day learning how to ride the mechanical bull. One night, Jessie, Sissy's friend, and Wes convince Sissy to ride the bull. She does it to impress Bud, but he becomes angry and resentful that Sissy defied him, and challenges her. When Bud falls off during his second ride in that challenge, Wes swings the bull around fast, breaking Bud's arm. At home, Sissy accuses Bud of being jealous because she rides the bull better than he can. Bud physically slaps her and throws her out of the trailer. Shortly after, Sissy and Bud see each other at Gilley's, but Sissy, still angry, refuses to talk to Bud. To make Sissy jealous, Bud introduces himself to a beautiful girl named Pam (Madolyn Smith) and dances with her, while Sissy dances with Wes. Bud and Pam leave together but Sissy, upset, declines Wes' sexual advances. Soon after, however, Sissy moves in with Wes, who lives in a run-down trailer behind Gilley's. Bud wants to enter the mechanical bull riding contest at Gilley's and starts training with his uncle Bob, a former rodeo champion. Bob advises Bud to swallow his pride and make up with Sissy. Meanwhile, Sissy returns to their mobile home to pick up her things, but she also cleans house and leaves Bud a note saying she hopes they can get back together. Pam arrives, and after Sissy leaves, Pam throws the note away. Meanwhile, Sissy catches Wes with Marshalene, who works at Gilley's. Wes is abusive when Sissy reacts angrily. A few days later, Uncle Bob is killed in an explosion at the refinery. At his funeral, Sissy tells Bud that Wes was fired from Gilley's and is unable to find another job. They are going to Mexico after Wes wins the $5,000 prize at the bull riding contest. It is Bud who wins the contest, however, and Pam, realizing that he still loves Sissy, encourages him to reconcile with her. Sissy refuses to go to Mexico with Wes, but relents after he hits her. He orders her to wait for him in her car behind Gilley's. Unknown to Sissy, Wes is inside stealing the prize money. Bud finds Sissy in the parking lot and tells her he still loves her. She reciprocates and they embrace. Seeing Sissy's bruised face, Bud goes after Wes and a fight ensues at the bar entrance. The fight causes Wes to drop his gun, and the stolen money falls from his jacket. Bud overpowers Wes and after punching him several times, pins him down on the floor. Gilley's staff, having discovered the robbery, apprehend Wes. Bud and Sissy, reconciled, go home together.