An eleven-year-old girl watches her father come down with a crippling depression. Over one summer, she learns answers to several mysteries, and comes to terms with love and loss.
Fact-based biography of early film Producer and Director Bill Tilghman (Sam Elliott). Tilghman was a real-life cowboy, who rode with the Earps and faced down countless bad guys. When he ... See full summary »
Director:
John Kent Harrison
Stars:
Sam Elliott,
Arliss Howard,
Carolyn McCormick
A mysterious bomber is planting explosive devices in Seattle, Washington. Since their quality takes too big a toll amongst Seattle Police bomb experts, John Pierce, former head of the Bomb ... See full summary »
Director:
Roger Christian
Stars:
Sam Elliott,
Charles Martin Smith,
Kelly Benson
Bill wakes up from a coma in a hospital ward, raving about tissue regeneration experiments, final injections, organ transplants and having been cryogenically frozen. Battling flashbacks of ... See full summary »
Terri Hansen is discovered in the desert beside the blackened husk of her car which contains the charred corpse of her husband. When forensic evidence makes her out to be her husband's ... See full summary »
A San Francisco, California detective (Sam Elliott) goes wild when he discovers his partner dead and the presumed culprit standing over him. After beating the man to death, he comes to his ... See full summary »
A mockumentary of pitching and filming television game show "Company Retreat," which places white collar workers on teams opposite their company's blue collar workers. The zany characters ... See full summary »
An eleven-year-old girl watches her father come down with a crippling depression. Over one summer, she learns answers to several mysteries, and comes to terms with love and loss.
The movie took place in 1974, as a radio played Richard Nixon's resignation announcement during one scene. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Adult Bo:
[narrating]
The summer my father was depressed the face of our Lord Jesus Christ appeared on a tortilla at the Taos Junction Cafe. It hung on a nail by the door, and pilgrims came to bear witness. Maria, who saw the face emerge and fainted dead away, wanted to shellac it to preserve it for all eternity. It was a wish of vanity, for she'd hoped only to extend her new-found notoriety. But time had its way, and within the years the face was gone, though something of its anguish ...
See more »
"Off the Map" is an "old-fashioned" film that made me feel, in the immortal words of Frank Zappa, that it's f*cking great to be alive. This film took me to a place in my heart I haven't been since the wonderful Bill Forsyth ("Local Hero") faded from the movie-making scene. It is high time for humane, gentle, wholly original stories of people and places off the map (or in our technological dystopia, perhaps `off the radar screen' would be more appropriate) to fill our movie dreamscape again. New Mexico is the only place in the United States this could have been filmed because, indeed, only the Land of Enchantment could have fit this gorgeous, lyrical story so well.
There wasn't a single relationship in this film that wasn't unique and fully realized. We've seen these set-ups before: the school-girl crush of Bo for William Gibbs, the awe-inspired worship of William for Arlene, the friendship between Charley and George. But don't we always get the caricatures, the popcorn images that point out the woeful arrested development of our country and its mythmakers? We think we want to be young forever. But it takes a film like "Off the Map" to show us all the richness we're missing out on by not growing up. (And the casting and direction of this ensemble of actors was nothing short of genius, especially Joan Allen. It's nice someone can see her as something more than middle-class white bread and pull this very individualistic performance out of her.)
I'm feeling kind of emotional just thinking about some to the great scenes in this film: when Charley runs 20 miles to George's house and goads him into wrestling; when Charley and William talk about what it feels like to be depressed; when William watches Arlene standing naked in her garden watching the totemic coyote; when Bo extracts from George the information she needs to apply for a MasterCharge card; Arlene reading Bo's letter in the newspaper advice column; Bo thanking the squirrel for giving up its life to feed her and her family; George's presence, like an old pair of sneakers, in the Groden home.
Like I said before, I didn't think people made films like this anymore. Thank you, Campbell Scott, for proving me wrong.
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"Off the Map" is an "old-fashioned" film that made me feel, in the immortal words of Frank Zappa, that it's f*cking great to be alive. This film took me to a place in my heart I haven't been since the wonderful Bill Forsyth ("Local Hero") faded from the movie-making scene. It is high time for humane, gentle, wholly original stories of people and places off the map (or in our technological dystopia, perhaps `off the radar screen' would be more appropriate) to fill our movie dreamscape again. New Mexico is the only place in the United States this could have been filmed because, indeed, only the Land of Enchantment could have fit this gorgeous, lyrical story so well.
There wasn't a single relationship in this film that wasn't unique and fully realized. We've seen these set-ups before: the school-girl crush of Bo for William Gibbs, the awe-inspired worship of William for Arlene, the friendship between Charley and George. But don't we always get the caricatures, the popcorn images that point out the woeful arrested development of our country and its mythmakers? We think we want to be young forever. But it takes a film like "Off the Map" to show us all the richness we're missing out on by not growing up. (And the casting and direction of this ensemble of actors was nothing short of genius, especially Joan Allen. It's nice someone can see her as something more than middle-class white bread and pull this very individualistic performance out of her.)
I'm feeling kind of emotional just thinking about some to the great scenes in this film: when Charley runs 20 miles to George's house and goads him into wrestling; when Charley and William talk about what it feels like to be depressed; when William watches Arlene standing naked in her garden watching the totemic coyote; when Bo extracts from George the information she needs to apply for a MasterCharge card; Arlene reading Bo's letter in the newspaper advice column; Bo thanking the squirrel for giving up its life to feed her and her family; George's presence, like an old pair of sneakers, in the Groden home.
Like I said before, I didn't think people made films like this anymore. Thank you, Campbell Scott, for proving me wrong.