Finding Amanda

From director Peter Tolan, creator of the hit television series Rescue Me, comes Finding Amanda, a hilarious and heartbreaking autobiographical comedy about the compulsions we can’t shake, and the unlikely lengths we’ll go to while trying.

Taylor Mendon (Matthew Broderick) is a television writer and producer working on a low-rated, little-respected half-hour sitcom. Once destined for bigger and better things, Taylor's compulsive gambling, recreational drug use and drinking all conspired to throw his career off the rails. After kicking the alcohol and drugs, he only has one more hurdle...the horses.

His beautiful twenty - year old niece Amanda (Brittany Snow) has her own habit to kick. Living in Las Vegas, working as a "dancer," her family has just discovered she is actually a prostitute, and they suspect hooking for drug money.

On their way home from an emergency family meeting, Taylor's wife Lorraine (Maura Tierney) finds recent racing stubs in Taylor's glove compartment. After years of standing by him, she leaves.

Taylor comes up with a plan: he'll win back his wife by doing the right thing. He'll go to Las Vegas, find Amanda, and deliver her to a rehabilitation center in Malibu. While he’s at it, he might even catch up with some old friends (like slimy casino host Steve Coogan). But besides that, it’s strictly the business at hand—while he's there, he vows, he won't gamble a single cent, but things don’t turn out quite as he’d planned.

Finding Amanda has its HDNet Movies Sneak Preview Wednesday, June 25th, at 8:15 PM ET, with an encore at midnight ET, only on HDNet Movies.

Diggers

Four best friends on Long Island in 1976 find their vocation threatened and their personal lives in flux in this bittersweet comedy-drama about the inevitability of change, and the necessity of embracing it.

Directed by Katherine Dieckmann from an original screenplay by Ken Marino. The film stars Paul Rudd, Marino, Josh Hamilton, Ron Eldard, Maura Tierney, Lauren Ambrose and Sarah Paulson.

Official Site | Trailer | Buy the DVD

Fay Grim

Fay Grim, a single mom from Woodside, Queens, is afraid her 14 year old son, Ned, will grow up to be like his father, Henry, who has been missing for seven years. Fay's brother Simon is serving ten years in prison for aiding in Henry's escape from the law. In the quiet of his cell, Simon has had time to think about the tumultuous years of Henry's presence among them--chronicled in Hartley's earlier film Henry Fool (1998). He has come to suspect that Henry was not the man he appeared to be. His suspicions are validated when the CIA asks Fay to travel to Paris to retrieve Henry's property. Her mission turns into a sprawling con-game, pitching Fay deep into a world of international espionage.

REVIEWS

“Hal Hartley’s funniest and sharpest movie in years. Reminiscent of the Marx Brothers.” – New York Magazine

“IT MAKES YOU DIZZY WITH ITS FRESHNESS. A modest masterpiece from Hal Hartley.” – Troy Patterson, Spin

“FANTASTIC AND DELIGHTFULLY OFFBEAT. Parker Posey is wonderfully sexy and archly funny.” – Dennis Dermody, Paper

“**** GRANDLY ENTERTAINING AND RELEVANT. Delirious and delectable, Fay Grim is one marvelous creation.” – Jason Clark, Slant

“A GEM. Just about as sharp and funny as a Hal Hartley fan could wish for.” – Kim Voynar, Cinematical.

Official Site | Trailer | Buy the DVD

Broken English

In a startling mature and nuanced performance, Parker Posey plays Nora Wilder, a thirty-something Manhattanite who is cynical about love and relationships, in this astute collaboration with first-time writer/director Zoe Cassavetes. Nora plugs away at her job in a posh downtown hotel and can't help but wonder what it is she has to do to find a relationship as ideal as her friend Audrey's (Drea De Matteo) "perfect marriage." It doesn't help that her overbearing mother (Gena Rowlands) takes every opportunity to remind Nora that she's still unattached.

Broken English will be available on DVD August 21st.

REVIEWS

“A pitch-perfect lead performance by Parker Posey” – Dennis Harvey, VARIETY

“A must see for Sex and the City fans.” – Ruthe Stein, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“With Broken English, Cassavetes has reinvented an old genre and given it a decidedly new millennial spin, concocting a totally enjoyable and fresh approach to the well-explored "love story." – AOL Moviefone

“A career-defining performance for the exquisite Parker Posey.” – Dark Horizions.com

Official Site | Buy the DVD | Trailer

Cashback

When art student Ben Willis is dumped by his girlfriend Suzy, he develops insomnia. To pass the long hours of the night, he starts working the late night shift at the local supermarket. There he meets a colorful cast of characters, all of whom have their own 'art' in dealing with the boredom of an eight-hour-shift. Ben's art is that he imagines himself stopping time. This way, he can appreciate the artistic beauty of the frozen world and the people inside it - especially Sharon, the quiet checkout girl, who perhaps holds the answer to solving the problem of Ben's insomnia.

Official Site | Trailer | Buy the DVD

Closing Escrow

Closing Escrow is the story of three quirky families seeking to buy their next home. Each has a reason for moving and a reason they don't get along with their real estate agent. All three families converge on the same property which inevitably goes into multiple offers. Who gets the house? Closing Escrow: A comedy about real estate.

Buy the DVD

Weirdsville

When stoners Dexter and Royce mistakenly assume their friend Matilda has overdosed, they can’t call the cops because she’s OD’d on stolen drugs. So, they decide to bury her body themselves. Good news is she’s not dead. Bad news is she wakes up just in time to interrupt a Satanic cult performing a ritual sacrifice in the same place the guys were going to bury her. Our heroes end up on the run from the Satanists, the drug dealer they stole the stash from, and a gang of angry little people all while trying to pull off a heist of their own. It’s one crazy night in one crazy town!

Official Site

Redacted

A fictional story inspired by true events, Redacted is a unique cinematic experience that will force viewers to radically reconsider the filters through which we see and accept events in our world, the power of the mediated image and how presentation and composition influence our ideas and beliefs. A profound meditation on the way information is packaged, distributed and received in an era with infinite channels of communication, Redacted utilizes a variety of created source material—video diaries, produced documentary, surveillance footage, online testimonials, news pieces—to comment on the extreme disconnect between the surface of an image and the reality of ideas and the truth, especially in times of strife.

Centered around a small group of American soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in Iraq, Redacted alternates points of view, balancing the experiences of these young men under duress and members of the media with those of the local Iraqi people, illuminating how each have been deeply affected by the current conflict and their encounters with each other. The charged apotheosis of Brian De Palma’s filmmaking career, Redacted caps off a body of work which has explored the politics of image-making and reception more fully than any living filmmaker

Outlaw

London: present day. In lawless streets the guilty are left unhindered to go about their business. Returning from a tour of duty in Iraq, former Paratrooper Bryant (Sean Bean) is appalled by what he sees in a country he no longer recognizes. Determined to do something about it, he assembles a group of like minded souls who resolve to restore the balance between right and wrong, good and evil, enforcing justice with a brutality to match that of the once unpunished, unsuspecting wrongdoers. But when the law of the land is co-opted in this way, who decides when enough is enough?

Shrooms

When five American college students arrive in Ireland to go on camping trip with their old college buddy Jake, they are in high spirits. Jake has promised them the ‘trip’ of a lifetime’ because he claims Ireland has the best magic mushrooms in the world. It sounded like it would be great fun. Now that they are tripping things don’t seem so funny. Bluto, one of the gang, is missing. Tara thinks he’s dead because she feels she has seen his death before but nobody believes her they think she is just out of it. They’re out of it too. That was the whole point of coming here, but there is something out there, something watching them, something that will kill them if they don’t get out of the forest and get help.

Directed by Paddy Breathnach

Starring: Lindsey Haun, Jack Huston, Max Kasch, Maya Hazen, Alice Greczyn, Rob Hoffman, Don Wycherley, and Sean McGinley.

Shrooms has it HDNet Movies Sneak Preview on Wednesday, January 30th at 10 PM ET followed by an encore presentation at midnight ET.

Romulus, My Father

Romulus, My Father is based on Raimond Gaita's critically acclaimed memoir. It tells the story of Romulus, his beautiful wife, Christina, and their struggle in the face of great adversity to bring up their son, Raimond. It is the tale of a boy trying to balance a universe described by his deeply moral father, against the experience of heartbreaking absence and neglect from a depressive mother. It is, ultimately, a story of impossible love that celebrates the unbreakable bond between father and son.

Romulus, My Father was directed by Richard Roxburgh and stars Eric Bana and Franka Potente. It had its HDNet Movies Sneak Preview in February 2008.

Preview Romulus, My Father

Flawless

Flawless is a clever thriller set in 1960s London with Demi Moore and Michael Caine as unlikely allies who set in motion a diamond heist of dizzying proportions, the likes of which London has never seen.

Flawless had its HDNet Movies Sneak Preview in March 2008. It was directed by Michael Radford and stars Michael Caine and Demi Moore.

Surfwise

Surfwise follows the odyssey of 85-year-old, legendary surfer Dr. Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz, his wife Juliette, and their nine children - all of whom were home-schooled on the beaches of Southern California, Hawaii, Mexico and Israel; they surfed every day of their lives, and were forced to adhere to a strict diet and lifestyle of animals in the wild, by their passionate and demanding, health-conscious father.

Surfwise has its Sneak Preview in May of 2008.

Quid Pro Quo

Isaac Knott (Nick Stahl) is a Public Radio reporter in New York City. When he was eight, his mother and father died in an automobile accident that left him in a wheelchair.

On air, Isaac recounts how he recently received an anonymous tip from someone identified only as "Ancient Chinese Girl." She tells him a perfectly able-bodied man walked into an emergency ward downtown, and attempted to bribe a doctor into amputating his leg.

As Isaac investigates the eerie tip, he encounters Fiona (Vera Farmiga) who, through her own quandary, leads Isaac to a netherworld of people afflicted with a perverse desire to be disabled. Like a contemporary noir detective film, Quid Pro Quo follows Isaac as he embarks on a dream-like journey to pull back the layers of what makes people feel whole.

Reviews

“A strikingly original and provocative first feature. A detective story that morphs into a twisted romance. Lenser Michael McDonough amplifies the film's detective-fiction undercurrents and dreamlike feel with a noirish, amber-glow lighting scheme.” - Justin Chang,Variety

"Quid Pro Quo is impressively assured for a first feature -- Brooks is a guy who absolutely has a future in movies.” - Cody Clark, Salt Lake Daily Herald

“Illuminating with a good deal of humor & style, worth seeing for the two leads alone.” - Scot Weinberg, Cinematical.com

“Did somebody say ‘Hitchcock?’ the gloss of high style and the sprinkling of dark wit? Carlos Brooks' debut feature Quid Pro Quo, which is not a thriller at all – there isn't even a murder – but which nevertheless generates suspense through the odd relationship that develops between cool, blonde, chic Vera Farmiga – easily channeling Grace Kelly – and Nick Stahl's Jimmy Stewart-like disabled radio reporter.” - Pam Grady, FILMSTEW.COM

Quid Pro Quo had its HDNet Movies Sneak Preview in June 2008.