Rick Leed

Company Man -- A quirky, dark comedy, COMPANY MAN shows us that happy, devoted government employees in unusual departments aren't always as they appear.

Company Man -- A high school teacher in the 60s becomes an international spy and becomes involved in a plot to overthrow Fidel Castro.

Former Woody Allen collaborator Douglas McGrath co-wrote, co-directed, and stars in this historical screwball comedy that offers up its own creative suggestion as to what might have spurned 1961's Bay of Pigs invasion. McGrath plays Allen Quimp, a nebbish schoolteacher who in an attempt to appease his browbeating wife Daisy (Sigourney Weaver) boasts that he leads a double life as a CIA operative. Daisy immediately sets to work writing a tell-all biography, and as his rumor spreads, Quimp bumbles his way into working at an actual CIA post in Cuba. There, he's confronted by a Cold War vigilante (John Turturro) who enlists his help in taking down the country's communist strongman, Fidel Castro (Anthony LaPaglia). Company Man was co-written and co-directed by New York stage director Peter Askin; both Askin and McGrath sued the film's production company in 1999 when, they claimed, the privilege of editing the final cut was denied to them.

Novalee Nation (Natalie Portman), 17 and very pregnant, has never been part of a real home. The closest thing to family for the hard-luck teen is her selfish, would-be musician boyfriend, Willy Jack, with whom she's traveling from Tennessee to California in a rust bucket that used to be a Plymouth. A bathroom stop en route, at an Oklahoma Wal-Mart, changes Novalee's life forever. For when she leaves the store, she discovers that Willy Jack and the Plymouth are gone. Forced to take refuge back in the store, Natalie has her baby in the aisles of Wal-Mart and becomes an overnight celebrity. At long last, Natalie begins to put her life together with the help of the quirky strangers who become her surrogate family.