Paul Guilfoyle

A dysfunctional married couple retreats to a secluded cabin to repair their relationship, but each secretly plots to murder the other.

An adventure racer adopts a stray dog named Arthur to join him in an epic endurance race.

Kirkbride Mental Health Hospital, built in 1871 is being reclaimed as a town hall and renovated after being closed down nearly fifteen years earlier in 1985. Hazmat Elimination Company, an asbestos removal company run by Gordon Fleming (played by Peter Mullan) and his associate Phil (played by David Carusoe), are the first to start on the renovation of the building. The film opens with a lightly humoured tour through the asylum led by Bill Griggs (a cameo by Paul Guilfoyle) as Gordon and Phil get their first glimpse of the aforementioned mad house. Distracted by ghastly rooms and one hallway in particular, Gordon hears a voice call out to him but is snapped back to reality by partner Phil. After the heebie-jeebies have been established cut to a scene of Gordon sitting alone in his truck as he fawns over pictures of his newborn and watches her and his wife as they play out front of their home. This scene is cut short by terrible screams and a haunting feeling that perhaps all is not well in the Fleming household. Now cue Gordon's employees: Hank (played by Josh Lucas), Gordon's nephew Jeff (Brandon Sexton III), and Mike (Stephen Gevedon) a former lawschool student who's father was the district attorney who indirectly led to the closing of Kirkbride through a patient's lawsuit in 1984. As the film glides along with horror stories of old, employee banter, and Gordon's increasingly distant behaviour, Mike finds some old recorded sessions (labeled 1-9) in an office while checking a generator and Hank stumbles upon coins from the 1800's in another part of the building. Mike begins stealing time away from the job to sneak downstairs and listen to the recorded sessions which are centered around patient #444 Mary Hobbes, a patient with multiple personalities. As the week continues Gordon becomes more irritable, Mike continues deeper into the sessions and Hank heads back late at night, for the silver dollar payload, and mysteriously disappears. After Hank's disappearance the rest of the crew becomes more and more edgy as the week continues. Gordon's history with his distant wife comes to light, Phil's anger and impatience with Gordon becomes a factor and all the while Mike gets closer and closer to the end of the sessions with Mary Hobbes. You begin to see the number 444 show more often in the film on rooms and tombstones, and Gordon reveals to Phil that he hit his wife by accident that night after their tour of the asylum. Phil goes to Mike with this news recommending that Gordon could use some time off, all the while unbeknownst to them Gordon listens from around the corner. Just then Hank is found wandering the halls by Jeff. As Jeff runs to tell the others Hank disappears again and the manhunt is on. With flaring tension between Phil and Gordon, Mike and Jeff swimming in a sea of apprehensive paranoia and the manhunt for the missing Hank, the story reaches its climax with a shot of each character alone against the unseen villian. The film is tied together as a replacement employee for Hank arrives for work and searches the seemingly abandoned Hospital for Gordon and the others. Come to the room where Hank lies on the floor still breathing, Phil telling Gordon to wake up , and the arrival of the new employee. It is revealed through flashbacks that Gordon has now killed each one of his employees, nephew, wife and child. The stress of life had caught up with Gordon and after killing the man who had just arrived and realized his deadly misgivings; the film ends with Gordon apologizing to his dead wife on a broken phone and the voice who has been calling to him throughout the film is revealed as Simon, Mary Hobbes' third personality. Simon caps the movies finish as he speaks on the the final recorded session as the one who "live(s) in the weak, and the wounded."

Police Sergeant Dutch Van Den Broek and U.S. Representative Kay Chandler lose their spouses in a plane crash, and they soon discover that their spouses were having an affair with each other. After the death of their loved ones in a tragic plane crash, Police Sergeant Dutch Van Den Broek (Harrison Ford) and U.S. Representative Kay Chandler (Dame Kristin Scott Thomas) find keys in the possessions their loved ones left behind. They realize the two had been having an affair and are determined to discover all of the details. —Andy Heitz The wife of Police Sergeant Dutch Van Den Broek (Harrison Ford) and the husband of U.S. Representative Kay Chandler (Dame Kristin Scott Thomas) are killed in a plane crash. Now Dutch discovers some anomalies in what his wife told him before she left, and discovers that she and Chandler's husband were travelling together. Dutch then goes to Chandler and tells her that he suspects that they were having an affair. He tells her that he wants to know the truth. She tells him that she doesn't, but she later joins him and they grow close. —rcs0411@yahoo.com

A suburban housewife learns that she has a dreamworld connection to a serial murderer, and must stop him from killing again. The housewife Claire Cooper is married to the pilot Paul Cooper and their little daughter Rebecca is their pride and joy. When a stranger kidnaps a girl, Claire dreams about the man but Detective Jack Kay ignores her concerns. But when Rebecca disappears during a school play, Claire learns that her visions were actually premonitions and she is connected to the killer through her dreams. She has a nervous breakdown and tries to commit suicide. Her psychologist Dr. Silverman sends her to a mental institution and soon she finds that her husband will be the next victim of the serial-killer. Further, the serial-killer was interned in the same cell in the hospital where she is. Will Claire be able to save Paul? —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Claire Cooper dreams strange things from time to time. One night, she dreams about a little girl being taken away by a stranger, right in her neighbourhood. When her own daughter Rebecca is kidnapped and murdered only a little later, Claire is sure about the chilling truth that her and the killer's mind are connected to each other in dreams. But nobody believes her being able to foresee the killer's next steps, as she could with her own daughter. In addition, the nervous breakdown she suffers gets her into a mental facility after a suicide attempt. And here, locked away in a padded cell, she dreams of her husband being murdered... —Julian Reischl <julianreischl@mac.com>

Former FBI secretary Erin Grant (Demi Moore) loses custody of her young daughter Angela (Rumer Willis) to her ex-husband Darrell (Robert Patrick), a criminal who cost Erin her job as a secretary for the FBI (as Darell was a drug addict and dealt in illegal drugs). The judge was sympathetic to Darrell as he was collaborating with the Miami Police Department as an informant. To afford an appeal to get her daughter back, Erin becomes a stripper at the Eager Beaver, a strip club in Miami. Erin has been working there for 8 weeks and needs to come up $15k in 6 weeks to appeal her daughter's custody decision. Erin is the top draw at the Eager Beaver and patrons come specifically to watch her strip on stage. Other strippers include Monique (Dina Spybey) who comes from Paris, Lorelei (Barbara Alyn Woods) who is a transfer from a rival club called Flesh Farm and Urbana Sprawl (Pandora Peaks). Erin would have to dance day and night and hope for generous tips to have any chance of making the money she needs for her appeal. Meanwhile Darrell has moved without informing Erin and is using Angela to steal hospital medical supplies and selling them on the black market. Rita (Siobhan Fallon Hogan) is Darell's sister, and Erin tries to find out from her where he has moved to. Shad (Ving Rhames) is a bouncer at the club and looks out for Erin. Shad wants to get rich by suing a yogurt company for a cockroach he found in their product. In reality, Shad had put the cockroach inside the yogurt himself to make his case. A Congressman named David Dilbeck (Burt Reynolds) representing Florida's 5th congressional district, visits the club and becomes infatuated with Erin. Erb Crandall (Robert Stanton) is Dilbeck's executive assistant. A patron named Paul Guber was at the club for his bachelor party. He got enamored with Erin, got on stage and hugs her, causing Dilbeck to attack Paul with an empty Champagne bottle. Shad was busy in the backroom and hence was not around to protect Erin. Aware of Dilbeck's embarrassing indulgences, another Eager Beaver patron Jerry (Orly) approaches Erin with a plan to manipulate the congressman to settle the custody battle and help her get Angela back. However, as he is the chairman of the subcommittee on sugar, Dilbeck has powerful business connections including lobbyist Malcolm Moldowsky (Paul Guilfoyle) his right-hand man, and father-and-son sugar barons Willie and Chris Rojo, whose price supports are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and who want to ensure he remains in office. Consequently, those who can embarrass him (including Jerry, who contacted Malcolm to blackmail Dilbeck) in an election are murdered. Attorney Alan Mordecai (Stuart Pankin), who has acquired photos of the night when Dilbeck became intoxicated at the club and assaulted fellow patron Paul Guber, his client, invites Shad, a bouncer and the club's head of security, to join him in a scheme to blackmail Dilbeck. Meanwhile police officer Al Garcia (Armand Assante) has fished out Jerry's body from a lake. Al Garcia is on vacation there with his wife Donna and son Andy. Autopsy has revealed that he was drowned in tap water first before being thrown into the lake. It was murder. Jerry had Erin's photos all over his apartment and that's how Al finds Erin at the Eager Beaver and understands her full situation. Erin wants Al to make sure that Miami PD dumps Darrell as an informant, so that during her appeal he doesn't have any protection from the police department and can be exposed for the criminal he is. Fully sympathetic to her plight, he complies. However, L.W. Fingerhut, the judge overseeing Erin's case in civil court, suffers a fatal heart attack and is pronounced dead on arrival at Don Shula Hospital, causing her appeal to be delayed by six months. To protect Angela, Erin retrieves her from Rita's care, having found Darrell's address by stealing her mail. Alan approaches Dilbeck with the picture from the Eager Beaver and Malcolm is worried. Erin takes Angela to work and sees Erin dancing on stage, topless. Darrell attacks Erin outside the club, but is saved by Shad, who breaks Darrell's hand. Angela tells Erin that she looked pretty dancing on stage. Al Garcia meets Erin and tells him that Congressman Dilbeck has a crush on her and shows her the photo being used for his blackmail. Al wants Erin to contact him if Dilbeck is in touch with her. Dilbeck's personal interest in Erin persists, and she is invited to perform privately for him. He asks her to become his lover and later his wife, despite his staff's concerns that she knows too much. Malcolm threatens Erin that he knows that Angela is with Erin illegally and will put Angela in state care if Erin talks about Dilbeck to anyone. Eventually, Alan turns up dead as well and Al is now worried about Erin. However, Erin and Al Garcia begin to suspect the congressman's guilt in the murders, and Erin concocts a plan to bring the congressman to justice. But she doesn't know that Malcolm knows that Al is in touch with her (& that she is ex-FBI). Dilbeck and Malcolm then debate whether to kill Erin or simply silence her by threatening to take away her daughter. Malcolm gets Dilbeck to invite Erin for another private show and plans to kill her just after. Erin goes for the private dance without Al or Shad. Darrell then interrupts the dance, allowing Erin to retrieve a gun and force him and Dilbeck to the nearby Belle Glade sugar refinery, where she has arranged for TV crews to arrive for a news conference. On route, she forces Darrell to write a note releasing custody of Angela to her and once there, she tricks Dilbeck into confessing to the murders on tape. As Malcolm arrives, Garcia suddenly appears along with the news crew, and Dilbeck is soon after arrested. Erin, having regained full guardianship of Angela, thanks Garcia and Shad for assisting her and jokingly expresses interest to Garcia in running for Congress as Dilbeck's replacement.

The story is narrated in first person by Porter Wren (Adrien Brody), a columnist and crime reporter for a New York City newspaper with a reputation as a good listener. One night, he attends an after-work party hosted by publishing magnate Hobbs (Steven Berkoff), who has just purchased the newspaper. He is approached by socialite Caroline Crowley (Yvonne Strahovski), whom Porter recognizes from headlines regarding the death of her husband, Simon (Campbell Scott). Simon was a successful movie producer obsessed with capturing authentic life, often disappearing at night to film random things. His body was discovered in the rubble of a demolished building (with little pieces of jade found next to his body). No one could figure out how the body got there, as the site was fenced off and locked up. Caroline invites Porter to her apartment where she shows him confidential police reports related to Simon's still-unsolved death. She asks Porter to investigate and, over a series of meetings, gradually seduces him. Porter, whose relationship with his wife Lisa (Jennifer Beals) and children has become stale, soon gives in. Caroline reveals how she met Simon at a bar, and he proposed to her after a few hours of talking. Caroline had no money or prospects in NYC and said yes. Caroline wants Porter to help find how and why Simon died, as he is the guy that people talk to and tell him all sorts of things. It's been 17 months since Simon died. It is not clear is Simon was in the building before it was demolished. Going through Simon's belongings, Porter forms an image of him as an eccentric and controlling man. He filmed his own life almost obsessively, sometimes with hidden cameras, and subjected Caroline to cruel pranks and mind games for the sake of capturing authentic reactions. She has a vault filled with thousands of memory cards containing footage of these incidents. None of it, however, gives Porter any insights into his death. Hobbs learns of Porter's affair with Caroline and forces him into an investigation on Hobbs' behalf by making threats against Porter's family (He threatens to fire Porter and initiate a medical malpractice suit against his wife, who is a doctor). Hobbs is looking for a particular memory card he believes Caroline is using to blackmail him. When Porter questions her, Caroline admits she is also looking for the memory card. Simon, after beating her in a drinking game, dared her to have sex with a stranger and record the encounter with a hidden camera. She randomly crossed paths with Hobbs and decided to sleep with him. When Simon watched the video, something about it infuriated him and he hid the memory card; after his death, Hobbs began threatening her. Porter, forcing Caroline to admit she only seduced him to enlist his help, leaves in disgust. Outside his house, he is accosted by thugs working for Hobbs, who beat him up and promise to do worse until he finds the video. Porter goes to see Simon's father, who is in a nursing home, but he is unresponsive. Porter discovers a video camera in a bedside table, but the memory card in it only has footage of Simon visiting his father. Meanwhile, Hobbs' men force their way into Porter's house and accidentally shoot and wound his son, causing a distraught Lisa to take the children and walk out on Porter. After attacking Hobbs' lawyer in revenge, Porter watches the nursing home video again and realizes Simon's father had regular visits from a lady named Mrs. Segal (Linda Lavin). He breaks into her house and finds financial records indicating that she has been billing Simon's estate for the visits to Simon's father but also for unknown services at $5000 per month. Before he can find the memory card, Mrs. Segal returns to find him there. After explaining himself, he learns that she is a friend of Simon's family, who became a surrogate mother to Simon after his own mother passed away when he was a child. Wanting to repay her kindness, he arranged a monthly allowance for her once he became rich. Mrs. Segal felt obligated to earn the money and became a caretaker of sorts to Simon's father. Questioned by Porter about the charges to the estate, Mrs. Segal reveals she was asked by Simon before his death to send copies of a memory card to Hobbs every month. Never having seen what is on it, she gives her last remaining copy of the card to Porter. Watching it, he sees that Hobbs and Caroline had a long and intensely personal conversation (where Hobbs revealed that his penis was butchered by random thugs in France, when he was 20 years old. Caroline also whispered a secret about her stepfather to Hobbs, but this was not audible in the video) before they had sex. Porter returns the video to Hobbs, ending the threat against him and his family. In a show of good faith, Hobbs gives him a key his men found when searching Caroline's apartment for the video. Porter figures out the key is for the basement lock of the building where Simon was found. He goes there and discovers another hidden camera. The memory card in this one reveal Simon took Caroline to the building the night he died. Having watched the sex tape, he demands to know a dark secret about her stepfather that she revealed to Hobbs. Caroline refuses to divulge the story to Simon. So, Simon puts a padlock around Caroline's ankle and swallows the key. Caroline kills Simon during the interrogation and since the building is to be demolished the following morning, Caroline has no choice but to cut into Simon's stomach to retrieve the key and get out of the building. The next morning, Porter meets Caroline and reveals the recording. He gives her a copy, with the original as insurance against her contacting his family (something she had previously done for her own enjoyment). She in turn reveals the secret she told to Hobbs but kept from Simon. Basically, as a little girl, Caroline wanted a horse, and her stepfather never gave her one. She begged and begged and then her stepfather starting sexually abusing her with the promise to get her a horse by her next birthday. On the birthday, the stepfather drives Caroline to a farm to present a horse to her, only to shoot him right in front of her eyes. Porter wishes her well and leaves. In voiceover, Porter expresses guilt for all that happened, including his divorce, while admitting that the experience has both corrupted him and revealed an inner darkness that was always there. In the final scene, Porter drives by the house of a now-remarried Caroline and they look at each other one last time.

Jude Madigan (Curtis) suddenly leaves her husband, Robert (Gallagher) and three sons without any explanation. Three years later, when Robert finally files for divorce, Jude returns and tries to reclaim her former life. Robert refuses and insists on the divorce. Jude does not accept Robert's decision. She tries unsuccessfully to seduce him and harasses Robert's new girlfriend, Callie. Eventually, Jude manipulates and convinces her eldest son, Kes, that Callie is the only person standing in the way of their reunited family. Influenced by Jude, Kes details a plan to his two brothers to scare off Callis, convincing the younger boys that it is just a "game". As the boys debate the plan, Jude's mother, Lydia (Redgrave) overhears and confronts Kes and threatens to tell their father. Kes tries unsuccessfully to convince his grandmother that it was just a "game" and tries to stop her from calling his dad, a brief struggle ensues and Lydia accidentally falls down the stairs. While in the hospital, Lydia tells Jude she is not about to let her go through with her plans. In a fit of rage, Jude tries to murder her mother by asphyxiation but is interrupted by a nurse, Jude flees the hospital. Meanwhile, the boys, under the guise of playing the game, handcuffs Callie and puts her on "trial" for destroying their family. They tie her to a chair but when the youngest boy cuts himself on a broken glass, Callie convinces the middle child to free her before his brother dies. She runs with the boy in an attempt to find a hospital. The other boys get in Callie's car and chases them, but the brakes have been cut by Jude and they go over a cliff, leaving them perched precariously on a tree on the side of the cliff. Callie manages to rescue the middle son, but as she tries to rescue Kes, she slips and is left dangling from the car. Jude rushes to "help" by grabbing Callie's hand from Kes. Jude intentionally lets go of Callie's hand, who still manages to hang onto the car with her other hand. However, Jude loses her balance and falls to her death. The film ends with Robert's emotional embrace of Kes, who is very shaken after having a nightmare of Jude coming back from the dead. Callie is right by Robert's side, comforting them both.

Best friends from law school to election night, their friendship is sorely tested when one learns of another's betrayal. Peter and Tim are both law students looking to get into the battleground of politics in Washington, but they both have different ideals and ethics. Tim wants to pursue a career in justice, but Peter is determined to be a big political power broker any way he can, even if that means bending the rules. As their careers push them towards political opposites, their friendship must constantly adapt to the new situation. —Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au> Peter Burton and Tim Garrity both meet when they go to law school. Tim comes from an affluent family, while Peter comes from the working class, which he is a bit ashamed of. Tim's a noble person who wants to do what is right, while Peter's willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. And that includes blackmail and intimidation. And when his latest scheme burns Tim, Tim decides to find out if Peter deliberately betrayed him or if the man he works, John Palmeri made him do it and if so to make them answer for it. —rcs0411@yahoo.com

Joey gets 2 days to sell 12 cars to keep his job and keep his girlfriends happy. It gets worse. He's juggling 3 buyers when a guy with a machine gun crashes into the car dealership and takes everybody hostage. Joe's a car salesman with a problem. He has two days to sell 12 cars or he loses his job. This would be a difficult task at the best of times but Joe has to contend with his girlfriends (he's two timing), a missing teenage daughter and an ex-wife. What more could go wrong ?.. a lot, enter a crazy jealous husband with a machine gun.. —Rob Hartill Joey is a car salesman, with an ex-wife, a daughter in trouble, a girlfriend, a married lover, and a 20 thousand dollar debt to the mob... and he's 24 hours away from losing his job! Thank God, all his troubles will go away thanks to a lunatic who takes him as hostage! —Jorge Mota

An anthropologist goes to Haiti to research a drug that makes someone appear dead by suspending all vital signs. In 1985, after a successful research in Amazonas, Dr. Dennis Alan from Harvard is invited by the president of a Boston pharmaceutics industry, Andrew Cassedy, to travel to Haiti to investigate the case of a man named Christophe that died in 1978 and has apparently returned to life. Andrew wants samples of the voodoo drug that was used in Christophe to be tested with the intention of producing a powerful anesthetic. Dr. Alan travels to meet Dr. Marielle Duchamp that is treating Christophe and arrives in Haiti in a period of revolution. Soon Alan is threatened by the chief of the feared Tonton Macuse Dargent Peytraud, who is a torturer and powerful witch. Alan learns that death is not the end in the beginning of his journey to hell. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Dennis Allan is a scientist who visits Haiti on the strength of a rumour of a drug which renders the recipient totally paralyzed but conscious. The drug's effects often fool doctors, who declare the victims dead. Could this be the origin of the "zombie" legend? Alan embarks on a surprising and often surreal investigation of the turbulent social chaos that is Haiti during the revolution which ousted hated dictator "Baby Doc" Duvalier. Often a pawn in a greater game, Alan must decide what is science, what is superstition, and what is the unknown in a anarchistic society where police corruption and witch-doctory are commonplace. —Murray Chapman <muzzle@cs.uq.oz.au>