Richard Schiff

Clark learns the source of his abilities and real home when he enters a Kryptonian ship in the Artic. However, an old enemy follows him to Earth in search of a codex and brings destruction.

Johnny English, the most unlikely intelligence officer in Her Majesty`s Secret Service, must stop international assassins from killing a Chinese leader and causing global chaos.

Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) works as a jingle writer for television commercials in Manhattan, a job not in keeping with his one-time aspiration to be a jazz composer and pianist. We see him at work and he is very good at what he does. However, his boss does not seem impressed with his latest output. As Harvey departs for London to attend his daughter Susan's wedding, his boss actually suggests that he spend more time there than he had originally planned. Harvey declines, making the point that he needs to be back for an upcoming pitch to an old client. His boss insists that it is being done by other musicians, and that Harvey's latest work was his last chance to keep his job. On the plane, Harvey tries to chat up a fellow passenger, but she is having none of it. He is left sitting there with egg on his face and we come to regard him as even more of a loser. Meanwhile, we witness the mildly strained relationship between Kate Walker (Emma Thompson), a single Londoner, and her mother, whose husband left years earlier. Kate tries to reassure her mother that despite being single, she may yet find a man. Further, Kate tells her mom to quit worrying about the new Polish neighbor who has moved in next door and seems to be stacking a lot of firewood. Upon arrival at Heathrow Airport in London, Harvey encounters Kate at her job collecting statistics from passengers as they pass through the terminals. She attempts to question him about his reasons for visiting the UK. Tired and anxious to get to his hotel, Harvey brusquely dismisses her when she approaches him to ask questions. Harvey heads for the hotel to check in and discovers that he is the first one to arrive. Upon calling his daughter to double check where everyone else is when they were all supposed to be staying together, he learns that his ex-wife Jean actually rented a house to accommodate family and friends from the States and he is the only one at the hotel. After a brief nap, he showers and hurriedly dresses. On the way to the rehearsal dinner in the taxi cab, he realizes the anti-shoplifting device is still attached to the sleeve of his jacket. And to make matter worse, he has worn a white suit (thinking this was requested) while all the other men wore black. During the meal, it becomes increasingly clear Harvey is considered a mere guest and the role of father of the bride has been delegated to Jean's husband Brian. To add insult to injury, Brian stands to give the toast, and recollects the vacation they all spent in Rome, and his stepson-in-law-to-be embraces him and calls him Dad. Just before leaving back to his hotel, when Harvey tells Susan (with whom he has shared a strained relationship since his divorce) that he will be attending the ceremony but not the subsequent reception because he needs to return to the States for an important meeting, she informs him she has asked Brian to give her away. Meanwhile, Kate is set up on a blind date by a well meaning co-worker that does not go well. When she returns to the table after taking yet another call from her mother, she discovers her younger date has invited some of his younger friends to join them. Feeling unwanted and excluded from the conversation, she eventually excuses herself and goes home. As it turns out, Kate's increasingly neurotic mother seems convinced that her Polish neighbor is some kind of murderer because she sees him toting strange looking, lumpy packages into a shed in the back yard. The following morning Harvey attends Susan's wedding, but heavy traffic delays his arrival back to Heathrow, and he misses his plane. When he calls his boss Marvin in NYC to inform him he will be returning a day later than planned and that he will try to get there as soon as possible, he is told that he is fired. In his glum mood, Harvey makes his way to the airport bar and starts slugging down scotch, determined to drown his sorrows. Kate is sitting in the lounge reading a novel and drinking wine when she notices Harvey. She makes a barb to him about the drinking being a big help to whatever is bothering him and he fires back about her reading a trashy novel and drinking chardonnay not being so much better. They gradually warm to each other over the course of their salads. After an awkward goodbye at the exit, where Harvey wistfully watches Kate walk away, he decides to follow her to the Heathrow Express and upon arrival at Paddington station, asks if he can walk her to her writing class on the South Bank. She accepts his offer and is pleased when he offers to meet her after class. As they stroll along the River Thames, Harvey mentions he is missing Susan's wedding reception, and Kate urges him to go. He finally relents, but only if she will accompany him. When Kate insists she is not properly dressed for such an occasion, Harvey buys her a dress and the two head to the Grosvenor House Hotel, where they are welcomed warmly by Susan and her new husband Scott. When the father of the bride is called upon to make a toast, Brian rises and begins to speak until Harvey taps his glass and reminds him who the real father of the bride is. He then delivers an eloquent speech that redeems him with his daughter and endears him to Kate. Following the reception, Harvey and Kate walk and talk until dawn. They exchange a single, gentle kiss and agree to meet again at noon at the same place, a cafe near a water park. They are both excited about the upcoming rendezvous, but after running up the hotel stairs too quickly, Harvey suffers an attack of arrhythmia! Paramedics rush him to the hospital, where he protests to doctors that he is fine and must leave to meet someone. The doctors insist that he must stay for further tests. Kate buys some flowers and does her makeup in anticipation of seeing Harvey again. She waits at the cafe where they agreed to meet, yet he is still in the hospital, unbeknownst to Kate. After a long time waiting, she leaves alone, crushed and rueful. Harvey immediately attempts to contact Kate after he is released from the hospital, but is surprised to receive a call from his ex-boss Marvin, who explains how his superiors like Harvey's latest work so much that he wants him to return to his job right away. Harvey pauses and then tells Marvin that he no longer wants the job. Kate visits her mother again and discovers that the Polish neighbor has left a rather large smoked ham. Turns out that he is not a killer after all, just a meat smoker. Kate then returns to her job taking surveys at the airport, and when Harry calls her there, she refuses to take his call. Harvey rushes to the airport to redeem himself with Kate but she has left for the day. Her workmates are suspicious of him at first but know that she likes him, and let him know that she is at her writing class. He tracks her down after class and reveals why he missed their rendezvous. Overly cautious about romance because of so many past disappointments, Kate initially resists his suggestion that they see what the future might bring them, but finally agrees to give things a chance. When she asks Harvey how it will work, he replies that he does not know, "But it will, I promise you that." As they walk away, Kate takes off her shoes to make her closer in height to the shorter Harry. He says, "I think you're my kind of girl." When he recalls that she never did ask him the questions from her airport survey, she asks for his name and residence, to which he replies, "I'm in transition." Over the end credits, we see that Kate's mom has gone to visit her Polish neighbor to thank him for the ham. The neighbor invites her to come into his house, and after some feigned hesitation, she agrees to enter.

A widowed science-fiction writer considers adopting a six-year-old outcast who thinks he's an alien from Mars. What's the nature of being a parent and of being a child? David is a widower grieving for two years. He writes science fiction and was considered weird as a boy. He meets Dennis, a foster child who claims to be on a mission from Mars, stays in a large box all day, fears sunlight, and wears a belt of flashlight batteries so he won't float away. David takes the six-year-old home on a trial. His sister and his wife's best friend offer support, but the guys are basically alone to figure this out. Dennis takes things, is expelled, and is coached by David in being normal. Will the court approve the adoption, and will Dennis stay? Can a man become a father and a child become a son? —<jhailey@hotmail.com> Widowed for two years, David Gordon, a successful writer of fantasy fiction, believes it's time to move on with his life by doing what he and his wife Mary were planning on doing before she passed away, namely adopt a child. Partly because of understanding fantasy, not only in writing it but having believed such in his formative years, David is ultimately convinced by Sophie, the manager of the home, that he should consider adopting Dennis, an adolescent who is largely a loner in his belief that he is a Martian, his ultimate mission to make it "home". David gets a reluctant approval from the adoption board to proceed with Dennis, their hesitance in Dennis being classified as special needs and David being single. With help from his sister Liz, who jokes that her own two sons are the spawn of the devil, and his platonic friend Harlee, a landscaper who could be more if he opened his eyes to the possibility, David tries to connect with Dennis, which may be more challenging than he anticipated in Dennis' behavior all in light of his belief of being from Mars, and, by association, what he does to try and make it home. The situation is made more difficult as David has to finish his next book, his contractual obligation in it being the next in his Dracoban series. —Huggo

Kevin Caffrey, a thief and connoisseur is at a local auction looking for things worth stealing. He meets Amber Belhaven who is auctioning off her father's painting to pay a hotel bill. When Kevin asks Amber about her hotel room which leads to Amber asking if he was trying to sleep with her, Kevin blinks rapidly and lies while also telling her that when he blinks he lies. When Kevin asks Amber if he could see her sometime Amber pretends to have the same thing Kevin has and says yes. While knowing what hotel she was staying in, he shows up to her room with the painting she auctioned off, having stolen it. Kevin tells Amber about his stealing business which shocks Amber at first but she accepts it in order to be with Kevin, and she later gives Kevin her father's lucky ring. Elsewhere, Max Fairbanks, a snarky businessman whose company, TUI, is going into bankruptcy, is going over with his lawyer Walter Greenbaum on how to save his company. Walter is exhausted as Max does not take the proceeding seriously and still spends freely even asking to declare bankruptcy immediately without trying to budget so his assets are protected. He tells his wife Lutetia Fairbanks that his company is in a technical procedure to disguise what his company is really going into. Kevin goes to a local bar which his Uncle Jack owns to see Amber. Whilst inside he also runs into his friend Berger, who is also a thief and happens to know what places to hit. While having Kevin going outside to tell him about Max Fairbanks, he shows him an article about Max's current situation with his company, as well as what he couldn't access due to the critical condition of the chapter 11 bankruptcy code which includes going into his beachfront mansion. Kevin and Berger go to the house to rob it, but Max captures Kevin. Before the police take Kevin away, Max spots Amber's ring and tells the police that the ring was also stolen. Kevin is forced to hand over the ring. After escaping from the police, Kevin returns to the beach house to get his ring back from Max, but fails to find him. Angry at Max, Kevin finishes off what he started by robbing Max of the valuables inside the house and one of Max's three cars outside. Kevin tells Amber that the ring was stolen from him. The next day an exasperated Walter informs Max he was banned from his summer house, and his being there breached the terms of his bankruptcy. Max flippantly says he'll be fine as the ring is his lucky charm. Meanwhile, Kevin and Berger hire Shelly Nix, a computer hacker, to track Max's whereabouts by hacking into his e-mail. During an airplane flight, Max talks to his associate Gloria, a psychic, about the ring. Gloria consults her cards, and draws a king with five daggers on his head. Shocked at the result, Gloria doesn't tell Max what she drew and pretends that her phone connection is breaking up. Max meets a judge that he thought he paid off to keep his house, but his insults lead to the judge ordering him to sell his house and his contents at a public auction. Upon knowing Max's plan to go to a cocktail party and then head to his beach house for one final visit, Kevin and Berger, with the help of their partners Windham and Edwina, rob another one of Max's houses. The next morning Max finds out that his house has been robbed and meets with Detective Alex Tardio of the Robbery Division. Having enough of Kevin stealing from him, he calls his head of security, Earl Redburn. Kevin finds out from Shelly that Max is going to Washington, D.C., for a Senate hearing and has an apartment there. Kevin and Berger go to Washington to try and rob Max's apartment. There, Kevin learns that Max intends to secretly bribe the senators, and replaces the bribe money with insulting notes in Max's name. Max and Earl later storm into the apartment, having deduced Kevin's presence there. In the ensuing scuffle, Kevin tries to steal back the ring, but instead steals Max's wedding ring. Afterwards, Amber decides that Kevin's feud with Max has gone too far and that she no longer cares about the ring. While Max later addresses the Senate Committee he gets a call from Kevin who tells him that if Max will give him his ring back he will give him back his. Max refuses and proceeds to repeatedly curse at Kevin. To the senators, and other viewers, it appears he is speaking to them, with the result being that the hearing ends very badly for Max. While going back to his apartment in Philadelphia, Walter quits as his lawyer and Earl tells him that he was hacked; Max tells Earl his plan to get Kevin once and for all. Kevin goes to Jack to find out where Amber is; Jack tells Kevin to stop robbing Max out of personal conflict and to forget about the ring. But when Berger tells Kevin about Max's bankruptcy auction and for how much his auction full of valuables is worth, Jack wants in on it too. Max gets a call from Lutetia about Max's behavior on TV, and tells him not to come home, while Amber breaks up with Kevin due to his obsession with Max and the ring. Lutetia finds Amber at Jack's bar wearing a jacket of hers that Kevin stole from their house and confronts her, Amber tells her that Max stole the ring she gave to Kevin. Knowing that they are both in the same situation, they come up with a plan. Gloria, thinking about Max, still draws the same card and decides to come clean. Noticing how bad it is, she tells him to put an end to it, but Max still refuses to give up Kevin's ring. Realizing Max's arrogant determination to keep the ring, she quits being his associate, and goes to Tardio to give him Max's company records. At the bankruptcy auction, Lutetia tells Max that she wishes him well and sends him a masseuse. While Earl keeps looking out for Kevin through his monitors, Berger, Jack, Windham, and Edwina set their scheme in motion. Edwina and Windham are disguised as waiters, with the real waiters bound and gagged in their truck. Berger is disguised as the auctioneer, while Jack is his associate, having tied up and gagged the original auctioneer. Shelly hacks into Max's security system. The crooks steal as much as they can, and later flee. Windham plants smoke bombs to obscure their escape and calls the fire brigade. At 2:00 Shelly plants a video of Kevin delivering a message to Max that he was being robbed without him being there on Earl's monitors. Angry and enraged, Max goes out into the smoke to find Kevin, but a firefighter, actually Kevin in disguise, drags him out of the smoke, stealing the ring in the process. Kevin steals Max's boat to escape, but Max jumps onto the boat and struggles with Kevin to get back the ring. While hitting a buoy, causing the boat to sink, Kevin and Max find out that the ring is a fake, the ring having an inscription inside it that said: "Grow up." a message that they both got from their lovers. Max realizes that Lutetia had induced the masseuse to steal the ring during his massage. When Tardio finds Max and Kevin, Kevin tells Tardio that he was saving Max, while Max corroborates his story, telling Tardio that he had never met Kevin. Kevin thanks Max and tells him that he owes him one. While going back to the hotel where Amber used to be before she moved in with Kevin, she shows him the ring, revealing that she was the masseuse. She tells Kevin that the ring had bad luck and that he should throw it away. Kevin agrees and flings the ring out of sight and gets back together with Amber. Kevin, pretending to be Max's lawyer, fixes the Senate hearing and goes into the press conference victorious. When it is over Max and Kevin part ways, but as they do so, Kevin steals one of Max's watches.

A television weatherman scams a local lottery. Winter 1988. Harrisburg, Pennsylvania is Russ Richard's oyster, there where he is the popular weatherman for WTPA Channel 6 News. That popularity allows him many perks in the city, especially at his local Denny's. Things start to go off the rails for him as this winter is unseasonably warm and not white, meaning that no one is buying from his snowmobile dealership, and none of his usual sources are willing to advance him any money to tide him over this rough business patch. In turning to Gig, a slightly shady acquaintance who operates a strip club and bar, Russ decides to turn to illegal activities to get the money he needs. After one failed attempt at that criminal life which has its own negative consequences, Russ instead decides on a lottery scam, his partners in crime being Gig, and Crystal Latroy, Russ' colleague at WTPA as the Pennsylvania Lucky Six Lottery girl - the lottery numbers which are drawn live on air during WTPA's supper hour news - and his sometime lover. Crystal is also sleeping with her and Russ' married boss, WTPA manager Dick Simmons, in an effort to get ahead in the world. Russ, Gig and Crystal are able to devise a plan to win the next jackpot, worth $6.4 million. As they enact the plan, which requires the assistance from a few others, the plan also potentially starts to go off the rails as those in the know and those who think that they know something about the fraud want what they believe is their fair share which, if Russ would agree, would get him further in the hole than he was before going into the venture. But as things get more and more dangerous and potentially lethal, Russ, Crystal and Gig begin to have diverging views on how to get out from the increasing mess based on their own tolerance of the risk for the potential reward. —Huggo Winter, 1988: Harrisburg PA's celebrity weatherman, Russ Richards, is broke: he's borrowed heavily to open a snowmobile dealership, and it's still unseasonably warm. Gig, his seedy pal, advises him to run an insurance scam; when it goes awry, Russ is out another $10,000 and in trouble with Dale, a bat-wielding thug. Gig convinces Russ to rig the state lottery with the help of Crystal, a gold-digging ditz with a heart of tin. They have to find a beard to buy the ticket, and then they have to cash it. Soon, murder and various double-crosses add to Russ's nightmare. A lazy cop zeroes in. Jail is closer than riches. Will Russ have to choose between his money and his life? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

Two days before his wedding, Ben gets stranded in New York and must hitch a ride with the free spirited Sarah, leading to a series of mishaps, disasters and an irresistible attraction.

This film moves back and forth between its two main characters. 1- Peejoe Bullis (Lucas Black) and his brother Wiley (David Speck) are orphans who live with their grandmother (Sandra Seacat). 2- Lucille Vinson (Melanie Griffith) kills her husband Chester because he won't let her go to Hollywood to star in the sitcom Bewitched, where she has been cast on a 2-episode role. Lucille is Peejoe and Wiley's aunt, and the sister of Dove, another uncle of the two boys. When Lucille goes to Hollywood with Chester's head in a Tupperware container after having poisoned him with rat poison, she leaves her seven children with her mother, so Grandma has no more place for Peejoe and Wiley. They have to go to live with Uncle Dove (David Morse), and his wife Earlene (Cathy Moriarty). Dove tells sheriff John Doggett (Meat Loaf), that they don't know where Lucille is heading for. On her way to New Orleans, Lucille can hear Chester's head talking to her (represented by the voice of Brent Briscoe), making sarcastic comments. The assistant at the Fleur de Lys hat shop (Marion Zinser) is a bit sarcastic at the beginning as well, but she is not so when Lucille buys a 500-dollar couture hat because she needs the hatbox to put Chester's head in. Later, Lucille stops at a bar, and a barman (John Fleck) thinks she is a whore and is rude to her. She gets annoyed, and steals the barman's money and car. Later on, she stops at a road coffee shop. There, Sally (writer Fannie Flagg) is a waitress, and realizes Lucille's being sought by the police, but she doesn't give her in. She talks to her for a while, and then she tells her to go without paying saying "it is on me". Because of the stolen car, Lucille gets pulled over by a police officer, who gets all excited hearing the story she is telling with sexual overtones. When they are kissing, Lucille handcuffs the police officer and steals his gun, although she leaves it outside the police station. Back home, Peejoe sees black people queueing up to register for voting although it's illegal in Alabama, and focuses on 17-year old Taylor Jackson (Louis Miller). Peejoe and Wiley go to a small swimming-pool, the only one in town but only-white. Taylor jumps in the pool, and all the white people get out of the pool, except Peejoe. Peejoe watches how the sheriff kills Taylor when he was running away from him, pulling him down from a railing, hitting his head on the cement and killing him. Later, Peejoe has an incident with a lawn mower, which hits him in an eye with a golf ball, and everybody wants to think he was attacked by the sheriff. Peejoe will carry a patch in his eye for almost the rest of the film. At the funeral, Peejoe parades with Taylor's mourners. He coaxes Wiley into following him. They all finish at the same pool, singing and jumping in, only to be disbanded by the sheriff. A Look magazine photographer (Michael Arata) is there, and takes a close-up picture of Peejoe's face. Peejoe is considered a hero, although he insists he only happened to be there. When Martin Luther King (Dudley F. Craig II) arrives in town -we never see his face-, Peejoe is introduced to him, and they shake hands. Lucille had earned some money in Las Vegas, having the time of her life playing roulette and shagging a very handsome bellboy (Brad Beyer). Eccentric limousine driver (Richard Schiff) takes her to Hollywood, where her agent Harry Hall (Robert Wagner) is expecting her. She presents herself under the name of Caroline Clay. There, bitchy actress Joan Blake (Elizabeth Perkins) is rude to her. Lucille works on the set of Bewitched, with the stand-in actors (Charlie Dell, Oliver Clark and Tracy Griffith) giving her the cue lines. Hall thinks Lucille should appear in films as well. At a party, the bitchy actress investigates what's in the hatbox, because her badly-behaved dogs are snuffing at it. When she sees Chester's head, she walks stiffy and dizzily, goes through a closed window and drowns herself out of shock, but nobody suspects Lucille had anything to do with it. Norman drives her out of the party. Back in Alabama, Earlene complains because the whole town is ostracizing her, because of Peejoe's involvement with the cause. She wants the two siblings out of her house, but Dove won't allow it. In the middle of the discussion, they see Lucille's episode on TV. They stop quarrelling and they watch it in amazement. Back to Hollywood, when Lucille is about to throw Chester's head from the Golden Gate Bridge, all her money -kept in a red bag- slips away. She tries to retrieve it. Two patrolmen (Kirk Fox and Jordan Lund) ask her questions, because they think she's trying to commit suicide, and that's when one of them see all the money and the head in the hatbox. Lucille is discovered and sent back to Alabama, where she could be sentenced to the electric chair. Peejoe and Dove have been talking to FBI Agent Murphy (William Converse Roberts) in secret, but Dove is afraid of Peejoe's security and doesn't want him to testify. Nehemiah Jackson (John Beasley) is Taylor's grandfather. He's in prison as well, because of his demonstrations and parades. He gives Lucille something to eat. Judge Louis Mead (Rod Steiger) is an eccentric man, who makes Lucille's children go away, in order not to influence the jury. At one moment in the trial, he wants to talk to Lucille alone. She's pleading self-defence and sanity. When Peejoe testifies, he says that there is a deal between sheriff Doggett and Dove: if he doesn't accuse the sheriff of Taylor's murder, Lucille will not be given the death penalty. Later in the trial, Lucille tells the jury how Chester abused and mistreated her and her children -all with cinema stars' names like Marlon, Rock, Marilyn... (Dane Le Blanc, Dakota Johnson, Estella del Carmen Banderas and Jackson Isaacs) However, the jury isn't adamant to feel pity for her, and they find Lucille guilty on all counts. Outside the courtroom, Murphy arrests sheriff Doggett, who is unrepentant. Dove asks Peejoe if he had planned it all, and he said it just came to him in the spur of the moment. Dove tells Peejoe that that was something he couldn't run from, so that he won't have the opportunity to change his mind. Peejoe is happy about that. Judge Mead gives a long speech when sentencing Lucille. He says the jury wants Lucille to go to the electric chair, but that he has never sent a woman there. He doesn't think she's a danger to anybody, except her late husband. First he sentences her to 20 years, then he suspends the sentence and makes it a 5-year probation sentence, if she seeks psychiatric counselling. Lucille can go free, although the prosecutor shouts and is really angry. Outside the court, Norman is waiting with a car and a bunch of flowers. He and Lucille go away with all of Lucille's children, presumably back to Hollywood. Back in Alabama, the town is filling the pool with cement, because a judge has ruled it should be integrated (be for everybody, not only for white people). Peejoe and Wiley find it ludicrous. They go away fishing with a black friend, and he says that now nobody has a pool.

It has been four years since the disaster at Jurassic Park and two groups are in a race against time that will determine the fate of the remote island`s prehistoric inhabitants.

Zane Zaminski (Charlie Sheen), a radio astronomer working for SETI, discovers an extraterrestrial radio signal from Wolf 336 (An F class star. These stars have from 1.0 to 1.4 times the mass of the Sun and surface temperatures between 6,000 and 7,600 K), a star 14.6 light years from Earth. Calvin (Richard Schiff) is Zane's colleague at the observatory and Char (Teri Polo) is an investment banker and his girlfriend. As soon as Zane hits the signal, he and Calvin run the entire sequence of detection protocols to confirm that the signal is genuine and from an extra-terrestrial source. Zane runs the first 2 steps of the protocol, but the signal fades away when he tries to get an independent source to verify the signal. The signal lasted 42 seconds. Zane reports this to his supervisor, Phil Gordian (Ron Silver) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but Phil dismisses the claims. Phil says that Wolf 336 is a variable star and thus no intelligent life can thrive in such a volatile environment. Zane and Calvin say that Wolf 336 was a stable star and has only been variable for the last 50 years or so. Zane speculates that the signal might be a distress call. After Zane leaves, Phil destroys the tape of the signal that Zane brought with him. Zane soon finds that he has been fired because of supposed budget cuts, and blacklisted, preventing him from working at other telescopes. Zane finds that Phil had told the other observatories that Zane was faking signals to keep his job at JPL. When Zane confronts Phil and asks for his tape back, Phil denies any knowledge of it. Calvin tells Zane that the DOD folks have confiscated all of their original research, including the back-up data on the signal. Later the same DOD agents arrive at Calvin's home, presumably killing him. Taking a job as a television satellite installer, he creates his own telescope array using his customers' dishes in the neighborhood, operating it secretly from his attic with help of his young next-door neighbor, Kiki (Tony T. Johnson). Zane relocates the signal, but it is drowned out by a terrestrial signal from a Mexican radio station. Zane is now confused because this signal seems to be Earth based. He knows that the first signal came from space, but then he found the next signal (identical to the first one) coming from Earth. Zane speculates that this is a communication signal. Zane attempts to tell his former coworker, Calvin (Richard Schiff), but finds he has just died suspiciously from carbon monoxide poisoning. Zane travels to Mexico and finds the radio station was burnt to the ground. Searching the local area, he comes across a new power plant. There is an assassination attempt on Zane, and he survives. He runs after the assassin and corner him, but when he is distracted for one second, the assassin folds his legs in a crooked way and jumps over the roof of the nearby building to escape. Zane does not see this. Climatologist Ilana observes that the Earth's temperature has recently risen several degrees, melting the polar ice. She has discovered flower patches growing in the middle of the Arctic ice. Ilana has been trying to get her hands on the satellite data on greenhouse gas concentrations in the Earth's atmosphere to work on her hypothesis, but the data has been denied to her for several months, claiming that the satellite recording the data had a malfunction and the new satellite has not been put in place by NASA. Ilana gets her hands on some data from ground stations, weather balloons and other informal sources and finds that greenhouse trace gases concentration has increased by 700% in specific locations such as Mexico, Ecuador, and Brazil. According to projections, this would lead to 12 degrees rise in Earth's surface temperature over the next 10 years. Ilana decides to travel to Mexico to take further reading and confirm her hypothesis. There, Zane runs into Ilana and helps Ilana Green (Lindsay Crouse) protect her atmospheric analysis equipment from the plant's overzealous security forces. Ilana is investigating the power plant, which seems to be one of several recently built facilities across the world that may be responsible for the rise in temperature. The two are released, but without Ilana's equipment. Surprisingly, Zane realizes one of the guards could pass as the identical twin of his former boss, Phil, except that he is of Mexican ethnicity (whereas Phil is not). As Zane and Ilana regroup, Phil instructs some agents, posing as gardeners, to release an alien device in Zane's attic that creates a miniature black hole, consuming all of Zane's equipment. Zane leaves Ilana to again investigate the power plant and she is soon killed by a deadly scorpion planted in her room. Zane discovers the plant is a front for an underground alien base. The very different looking aliens are able to disguise themselves with an external skin to infiltrate our society. Zane finds that all of the bases expel large amounts of emissions into the atmosphere. Zane is discovered but escapes back into the nearby town and attempts to convince the local sheriff of the situation. However, alien agents bring Ilana's body to the police station, making Zane a suspect in her death, Zane escapes and sneaks back into the United States. Zane accosts Phil on the JPL grounds, forcing him to admit that the aliens are trying to raise the Earth's temperature to not only kill off humans but make the planet hospitable for themselves. Zane secretly records the conversation and once Phil discovers the recording, he sends agents to stop Zane. Zane returns home to find his attic devoid of equipment. He figures out the only way to broadcast the tape is to go to a nearby telescope and beam the signal directly to a television satellite, broadcasting it worldwide. With the help of his girlfriend Char (Teri Polo) and Kiki, he travels to the telescope. Phil and his agents soon disable the telescope controls from the main building. Zane leaves the tape with Kiki and instructs him to transmit it when he gives the order and then he and Char sneak over to the telescope's base and barricade themselves in the control room. Zane makes the necessary adjustments and tells Kiki to active the tape, but Kiki reveals himself to be an alien agent, and opens the door to allow Phil inside and confiscate the tape himself. Phil and his agents ram down the door to the telescope room with a van, but Zane freezes them with cryogenic gases. As he works to free the tape stuck in Phil's frozen jacket, one of the agents drops a sphere which starts to form another singularity in the room. Zane and Char escape through the telescope's optical path before the device implodes most of the telescope base, exiting safely onto on the collapsed dish. In the distance they see Kiki, and Zane tells him to tell the aliens that he will soon broadcast this tape; they watch as Kiki runs off. In the film's epilogue, Zane's conversation with Phil is broadcast across the globe.

In 1963, Edna Buxton (Illeana Douglas) is a steel heiress living in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, who wants to be a singer and enters a local talent contest. She plans to sing "You'll Never Walk Alone," until, backstage, she meets a blues singer named Doris Shelley (Jennifer Leigh Warren) who is belting out "The Blues Ain't Nothin' (But a Woman Cryin' for her Man)." Doris advises Edna to follow her heart, so Edna sings "Hey There" instead and wins the contest. She uses some of her own money to record a demo of her first original song, "In Another World". Record producer Joel Milner (John Turturro) likes the demo but says he cannot market a girl singer-songwriter. He becomes her agent, renames her "Denise Waverly" and invents a blue-collar persona for her. Milner also reworks her song for a male doo-wop group, the Stylettes, and the song becomes a hit. Denise (formerly Edna) moves to New York and becomes a professional songwriter in the Brill Building. Over the next several months, she worries that she will not be able to pen a follow-up to "In Another World," but Milner encourages her to look at the world around her. She meets fellow songwriter Howard Caszatt (Eric Stoltz), and after a difficult first encounter she becomes professionally and romantically involved with him. She also meets once again with Doris, who is now an unsuccessful young singer, and persuades Milner to let Doris and her group audition. Milner likes the group and the song Denise has written, and he renames them the Luminaries. The group is a success, and disc jockey John Murray (Bruce Davison) credits Denise with "sparking the craze for girl groups." Denise and Howard write a song about the condition of working class black girls in New York City. Denise then suggests that she and Howard should write a wedding-themed song for the Luminaries. Howard refuses, but when Denise reveals that she is pregnant with Howard's child - and is herself an heiress - they get married and have a daughter. However, Howard starts flirting with Cheryl Steed (Patsy Kensit), a newly hired English songwriter. In 1965, Joel asks Cheryl and her husband Matthew (Chris Isaak) to write a song for the Luminaries. The result becomes a hit. Howard, annoyed, concedes that Denise's instincts were right. Then Joel asks Denise and Cheryl to collaborate on writing a song for closeted lesbian ingenue singer Kelly Porter (Bridget Fonda). Denise agrees, even though she dislikes Cheryl, but when she arrives home unexpectedly and finds Howard in bed with another woman, she takes her child in a cab to the studio and tells Cheryl what has happened. Cheryl holds and comforts Denise, and the two become close friends. Denise learns that she is pregnant with Howard's second baby; Cheryl convinces her to go to an obstetrician, who safely performs an illegal abortion. Over the next few years, Denise throws herself into her work and becomes a highly successful songwriter. Having broken up with Howard, she has a brief but unhappy affair with the married John Murray, which ends when he moves with his family to Chicago. With the British Invasion, the Brill Building songwriting machine has become obsolete. Milner tells Denise she should not be so sad, because she forced him to take chances he would have never had the courage to tackle alone. He finally allows her to become a singer, and introduces her to Jay Phillips (Matt Dillon), the singer, songwriter and producer of a popular surf-rock group. Denise initially hates Jay's music, but agrees to let him produce her. She writes and sings "God Give Me Strength," and she is delighted when he gives the song a skilful orchestral arrangement. However, the record bombs, and Denise blames herself for making the song too personal. Denise and Jay become a couple and re-settle in California at the height of the hippie movement. Denise is soon reunited with her old friend Cheryl who is working as a songwriter in Los Angeles. She and Denise collaborate on songs for a Bubblegum pop TV show called 'Where the Action Is'. Jay is affectionate but also childlike, reclusive and a heavy drug user, and becomes increasingly paranoid. He disapproves of Denise writing songs for the TV show, insisting that it's beneath her. His band mates distance themselves from him, leaving him to work alone in his studio. In a fit of paranoia, he accuses Denise of stealing tapes from him, but when it turns out that he threw the tapes over the studio balcony in a fit of irritation and then forgot that he had done so, Denise is distressed. He also takes his and her children to the museum and forgets to bring them home. While Denise is at a club with Doris, Jay, directionless and in despair at his inability to be more responsible, wanders into the ocean and drowns. Numbed by Jay's death, Denise retires with her two children to a hippie commune in the mountains above Palm Springs and adopts yet another father-figure in the commune's guru. Joel Milner visits Denise in the commune and takes her and her children out to dinner. That night, he confronts her with her constant reliance on men for guidance and her failure to take responsibility for her own talent. Denise's suppressed anger spills out, and she screams at Milner that he is a "fucking leech" who exploited her. He agrees with her, and the more he agrees with her the angrier she becomes, until he deliberately provokes her by throwing his drink into her face. She strikes him and then collapses in tears, grieving for Jay. Milner consoles her and the two are reconciled. In the closing sequence (set in 1973), Denise is seen confidently recording and producing her first solo album 'Grace of My Heart' with her extended family and friends in attendance.

This complex 1996 drama directed by Harold Becker (Sea of Love) attempts to explore big-city corruption and the flexibility of what's right and wrong in the political arena. John Cusack plays the senior aide to mayor John Pappas (Al Pacino), a popular and seasoned politician whose administration is threatened when what seems to be an accidental shooting of a child reveals a nest of corruption and lifelong personal debts. This tests Cusack's loyalty to the man he thought he knew. Pacino turns in a finely textured performance as a man who has his own lofty ideals, but whose pragmatism sets in motion a series of events with tragic results. Cusack admirably captures the essence of someone polished and savvy at his job but must cope with fundamental disillusionment. This political thriller suffers at times from a lack of focus, but still offers an insightful and poignant treatise on the quagmire of politics in the modern age and the human toll it sometimes exacts.

In the early 1940s, an infamous New York paparazzo gets an assignment from a club owner to do a background search on a mysterious gangster, which leads him down a very dangerous path. Leon Bernstein is New York's best news photographer in 1942, equally at home with cops or crooks. The pictures are often of death and pain, but they are the ones the others wish they had got. Then glamorous Kay Levitz turns to him when the Mob seem to be muscling in on the club she owns due to some arrangement with her late husband. Bernstein, none too successful with women, agrees to help, saying there may be some good photos in it for him. In fact, he is falling in love with Kay. —Jeremy Perkins {J-26} Lonely World War II-era New York photographer Leon Bernstein, known as "The Great Bernzini," possesses a steadfast commitment to his artistic ambitions, even if his gruesome crime scene tabloid photos -- his métier -- earn him the revulsion and shunning of proper society. His agnosticism toward his subject matter allows him to be trusted by crooks as well as cops, and it is that which draws him via a beautiful widow's manipulation into a web of intrigue that may result in his death, or in possibly the greatest photoshoot in U.S. history. —HallowLooyuh