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Narratively speaking, the film is kind of a mess, however despite its flaws the film presents a compelling portrait of the AIDS crisis in the gay male community during the 1980s.

Willy (Campbell Scott, THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE) is a trainer, who meets an acting agent named Alan — nicknamed Fuzzy (Stephen Caffrey, THE BABE) — at a gay resort in the early ‘80s. Willy’s friends David (Bruce Davidson, X-MEN), Sean (Mark Lamos, only film performance) and John (Dermot Mulroney, ABOUT SCHMIDT) accept Fuzzy and his sister Lisa (Mary-Louise Parker, TV’s WEEDS) into their family of friends right from the start. In addition to them, the story also follows the lives of Howard (Patrick Cassidy, TV’s SMALLVILLE), an actor who struggles with the stigma of being a gay performer, and his lover Paul (John Dossett, BIG EDEN). The ensemble cast is perfect. Davidson received a well-deserved Oscar best supporting actor nomination.

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Rounding out Gus Van Sant’s trilogy of death, this film is loosely based on the final days of Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. Blake (Michael Pitt, BULLY) is the Cobain-like grunge rocker, who has closed himself up in an old castle in the Pacific Northwest, suffering from the final phases of drug addiction.

Staying with him are hanger-ons Scott (Scott Patrick Green, MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO) and Asia (Asia Argento, LAND OF THE DEAD), who spend the length of the story leeching off Blake and keeping people away from him like fellow young rocker Luke (Lukas Haas, BRICK). A friend named Donovan (Ryan Orion, film debut) brings a detective (Ricky Jay, BOOGIE NIGHTS) to the house to find Blake, who avoids detection.

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Actor Stanley Tucci (BIG NIGHT) has directed four films and this is his best thus far. Based on a true story, Tucci plays NEW YORKER staff writer Joe Mitchell, who during the 1940s wrote profiles of people living in New York City. One day he meets Joe Gould (Ian Holm, THE SWEET HEREAFTER), an eccentric bohemian, who is always asking people for contributions to the “Joe Gould Fund.” He’s been writing the oral history of New York for years, claiming to have written down the overheard conversations of the average citizen.

Mitchell decides to write about Gould, who is a tortured soul that swings from moments of brilliance to raging fits of anger. He’s Greenwich Village’s beloved mad genius. He has many benefactors including poet e.e. cummings, painter Alice Neel (Susan Sarandon, DEAD MAN WALKING) and art dealer Vivian Marquie (Patricia Clarkson, PIECES OF APRIL).

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I don’t know why I torture myself with horror films I know are going to be awful. However, my completist tendencies override my logic all the time. Plus, I get to write reviews like this one.

In 2001, I wrote a review of FRIDAY THE 13TH: THE FINAL CHAPTER, this film’s predecessor, and complained about that film’s lack of logic when it came to its elaborate kill scenes. Oh boy, I would have killed for a good elaborate kill scene in his piece of junk. Like so many of the films in this series, the characters only exist to be killed off. But at least in some of the other installments, the deaths were on a grand scale. We don’t even get that sick satisfaction from A NEW BEGINNING.

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HBO has become a wonderland of great made-for-TV movies; this is not one of them. Based on a screenplay by Tom Epperson and Billy Bob Thornton, this crime thriller finds drug addict Jesse Parish (Eric Stoltz, MASK) stealing $100,000 from drug dealers in L.A. then fleeing for his hometown of Galveston, Texas.

After having dropped off the face of the Earth for years, Jesse meets up with his old friends Morgan (John Corbett, TV’s NORTHERN EXPOSURE) and Steve (Josh Hamilton, ALIVE). Morgan is still a party animal, who laments his boring tour of duty in the first Gulf War. Steve is a family man, whose wife Michelle (Annabeth Gish, MYSTIC PIZZA) doesn’t like her husband staying out long hours with a heroine addict. Jesse also tries to make amends with his grandfather Isaiah (R.G. Armstrong, DICK TRACY). Back in L.A., Skipper (Dwight Yoakam, SLING BLADE), the dealer Jesse stole from, has a not so nice run in with his boss Marshall (Thornton).

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This film is Woody Allen’s sweet ode to agents… and I mean that without sarcasm. Danny Rose (Allen) is a manager who will take any act and give it his all. I mean he represents a bird act, a water glass musician and a blind xylophone player.

His story is told by a group of veteran comedians, at dinner, reminiscing about all of Danny’s crazy exploits. The central tale chronicles Danny’s experience with washed up ‘50s lounge singer Lou Canova (Nick Apollo Forte, only film performance) and his big-haired mistress Tina Vitale (Mia Farrow, ZELIG), who use to be married to a bagman for the mob. There’s a nostalgia craze in swing and Danny is able to arrange Milton Berle to come and see Lou perform, which could lead to big things.

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This stagy 1950s thriller talks a lot about blood and murder, but shows very little of it. To clarify that statement, the screenplay tells more than it shows, which keeps the viewer at a distance emotionally. Many of the key events take place off screen. For the screenplay, John Lee Mahin (CAPTAINS COURAGEOUS) based it on a play by Maxwell Anderson, which was based on a book by William March. Mahin retains too much of the play’s structure for the film’s good.

The story follows Christine Penmark (Nancy Kelly) as she slowly comes to realize that her “perfect” blonde-haired daughter, Rhoda (Patty McCormack, TV’s THE SOPRANOS), was born to kill. While her husband, Kenneth (William Hopper, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE) is gone on duty in the military, Christine receives help with Rhoda from her landlord Monica Breedlove (Evelyn Varden, THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER), who is an amateur psychologist. Right from the start, the oily apartment caretaker Leroy Jessup (Henry Jones, SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL SHERIFF!) suspects Rhoda of evil intentions. When a young boy, who Rhoda was envious of for beating her out for a penmanship metal, drowns at a picnic, Christine really starts to worry, especially when the boy’s drunken mother Hortense (Eileen Heckart, THE FIRST WIVES CLUB) keeps coming over and wanting to talk to Rhoda. And when Christine’s father Richard Bravo (Paul Fix, TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD) shows up there are more secrets to be revealed.

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