Word: polley
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...judge from the script by John August (a comer; no, an arriver), Ralph's Market in Hollywood is stocked with sirloin starlets. Katie Holmes, she of the angel-slut face, is there from Dawson's Creek. Sarah Polley--with Creature-from-the-Black-Lagoon eyes and a mouth born to pout (some clever director will cast her as Heather Graham's younger, savvier sister)--is a cashier. Party of Five's dreamboat Scott Wolf is in Polley's check-out line. The film isn't five minutes old and already you suspect you'll be entranced even if it stinks...
...doesn't stink. August and director Doug Liman, of that lovely L.A. fable Swingers, have many amusing tricks to play on you. Ronna (Polley) is substituting for Simon (Desmond Askew), now off to Vegas, who retails drugs on the side. Soap opera stars Adam (Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr) want to buy some from Ronna, who needs rent money. Claire (Holmes) thinks that's all very cool, until she is left as collateral with Simon's evil wholesaler Todd (Timothy Olyphant). The movie is rather too frolicsome about drug use, but it carries an internal message...
...that kind of four-on-the-floor joyride, seemingly heedless of Hollywood story conventions as it spins from one attractive group of actors to the next. When Polley disappears after 40 minutes, you may feel no one can take her place; then Diggs (our choice for Afro-fab star of the future) assumes center screen and is just as beguiling. Wolf is delightfully disdainful of getting an ear kiss from the narc's free-love wife: "And that ear thing. I have Q-Tips, thank you." Olyphant is also an accomplished hunk. In fact, why not round up the entire...
...packer Ally Sheedy, who resurfaced after a decade of TV movies with her acclaimed performance in last year's High Art, has a chance with two new films, the dysfunctional-family weepie The Autumn Heart and the music-industry romp Sugar Town. But your best bet might be Sarah Polley, a 20-year-old Canadian actress who stars in the way-cool teen comedy noir Go and in Guinevere, a serious coming-of-age story about a May-September romance...
Actresses with a wide range like Polley's thrive at Sundance because many movies there take risks with compelling, quirky characters. Where Hollywood favors vapid females whose greatest apotheosis is a kiss, indies prefer complex women who can also kick butt. "Independent films almost have a province when it comes to portraying strong women," says festival programming chief Geoffrey Gilmore. "They're not just the archetypal roles of the girlfriend, the wife or even the women who get together to cry. Actresses get to play the kind of fully fleshed-out characters who just aren't in most studio scripts...