Nick Stahl

Disturbing Behavior

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Disturbing Behavior
  • IMDb: link

Playing with the idea of mind control at a remote high school on a Washington island community, 1998’s Disturbing Behavior begins with the arrival of Steve (James Marsden), his sister (Katharine Isabelle), and parents (Terry David Mulligan and Susan Hogan) to Cradle Bay. Running away from tough memories of his brother’s (Ethan Embry) suicide, the family attempts a new start in the picturesque surroundings that aren’t nearly as perfect as the local high school guidance counselor and mad scientist (Bruce Greenwood) would have you believe.

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Re-Released on Home Video: T3: Rise of the Machines

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
  • IMDB: link

Terminator 3: Rise of the MachinesI know there are those that feel otherwise, but I like Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and appreciate the kind of story director Jonathan Mostow and screenwriters John D. Brancato and Michael Ferris set out to tell.

Whereas the first Terminator had no higher goal than that of straight-forward monster movie (still the best Hollywood has produced in the last 30 years), and Judgement Day was more concerned with action that developing the themes presented in the first film, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines is the only movie of the three that is actually a sci-fi film at its core. That fourth film starring Christian Bale? Yeah… we don’t talk about that one.

Picking up years after the second film, Rise involves John Connor (Nick Stahl) finally beginning to understand and embrace the destiny which was introduced in The Terminator.

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Wake Up!

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Sleepwalking
  • IMDB: link

“I’m pretending not to hate my life.”
 

sleepwalking-poster

Joleen (Charlize Theron) is a mess.  She can’t raise her daughter Tara (AnnaSophia Robb) and has just been evicted.  Unable to deal with the harsh realities of her life, she pawns off her daughter on her only slightly more stable brother James (Nick Stahl), and takes off (for most of the film’s running time), without saying goodbye, with promises to return after she hits it big.

Trouble is James is almost as big a screw-up as his sister and promptly loses both his apartment and his job.  Tara is shipped off to Social Services and James goes off to live in a friend’s (Woody Harrelson) basement.

By this point your obviously wondering what the point of the film is.  I was too.  In fact after watching the entire thing I’m still unsure.

Unable to abandon Tara as her mother did James kidnaps her and takes her on a road trip back home to the farm where he and Joleen were raised.  There Tara meets her grandfather (Dennis Hopper) who, let’s just say doesn’t stand a good chance at winning grandfather of the year.

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Frank Miller’s Sin City

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Sin City
  • IMDb: link

Walk down the right back alley in Sin City, and you can find anything…

It might seem strange to call a movie as violent and bloody as Sin City beautiful but no other word quite fits.  After all the movie vividly contains decapitation, canibalism, castration, severed limbs, truckloads of guns and explosions, and blood in all different shades and colors.  It’s a film noir overflowing with deceit, treachery, torture, murder and death.  Yet somehow this is all captured as originally drawn by Frank Miller and transferred so lovingly onto screen that one can not help but sit back with wonder and appreciation.  Beautiful?  ‘Bet your ass!

The plot of the film blends three main stories, with one or two small ones,  compiled from Frank Miller’s successful Sin City graphic novels.  We get three hardboiled protagonists in the sinful setting of Basin City.

Hardigan (Bruce Willis) is one honest cop in a city owned by the crooks.  On his last day on the job he saves 11 year old skinny little Nancy Callahan (played as an adult by Jessica Alba) from a senator’s demented son (Nick Stahl) only to be shot by his partner and put in prison for Junior’s crimes.

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