Roger Spottiswoode Filmography

Born:: January 5, 1945 in Canada
Occupation:: Director, Editor
Biography:: Filmmaker Roger Spottiswoode is a highly competent director of mainstream films. The Canadian-born son of Raymond Spottiswoode, an ex-producer and technical planning officer with the National Film Board of Canada, young Spottiswoode was raised in Britain where he worked as a TV and documentary...Read More

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The Children of Huang Shi

Crew: Director

Actors: Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Radha Mitchell, Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, David Wenham

Synopsis: As China is ravaged by war in the late '30s, a young English journalist named George Hogg (Jonathan Rhys-Meyers) leads 60 orphans over the Liu Pan Shan mountains and into the safety of the Mongolian desert. Joining the journalist and the children on their arduous journey are an American nurse (Radha Mitchell Read More

5/23/08
Jack and Jill vs. the World

Crew: Producer

Actors: Freddie Prinze, Jr., Taryn Manning, Kelly Rowan, Vanessa Parise, Robert Forster

Synopsis: A man learns about life and love from someone who has only so much of each to spare in this romantic comedy-drama. Jack (Freddie Prinze Jr.) is an advertising executive in his early Thirties who has grown jaded before his time; he devotes his life to his work but doesn't believe in it, and is Read More

4/8/07
Shake Hands With the Devil

Crew: Director

Actors: Roy Dupuis

Synopsis: Director Roger Spottiswoode adapts Romeo Dallaire's harrowing autobiography in this historical drama focusing on Dalaire's experiences as the leader of a 1994 U.N. peacekeeping mission to Rwanda that failed to prevent a massive act of genocide in which 800,000 Rwandans were brutally slaughtered. Read More

1/1/07
Brothers of the Head

Actors: Harry Treadaway, Luke Treadaway, Bryan Dick, Sean Harris, Tania Emery

Synopsis: Brothers of the Head was adapted from Brian Aldiss' novel by screenwriter Tony Grisoni, and marks the narrative feature debut of Keith Fulton and Louis Pepe (Lost in La Mancha), who have structured Aldiss' story as a mock documentary. Twins Luke and Harry Treadaway star, respectively, as conjoined Read More

7/28/06
Ripley Under Ground

Crew: Director

Actors: Barry Pepper, Tom Wilkinson, Claire Forlani

2005
Spinning Boris

Crew: Director

Actors: Jeff Goldblum, Anthony LaPaglia, Liev Schreiber, Boris Krutonog, Svetlana Efremova

Synopsis: Roger Spottiswoode directs Jeff Goldblum, Anthony LaPaglia, and Liev Schreiber in the political satire Spinning Boris. The film takes place during the Russian elections of 1996 that ended with Boris Yeltsin becoming the head of the country. The trio of lead actors play political consultants who Read More

2003
Ice Bound: A Woman's Survival at the South Pole

Crew: Director

Actors: Susan Sarandon, Aidan Devine, Cynthia Mace, Kathryn Zenna

Synopsis: It is during the final months of 1999 that 46-year-old physician Jerri Nielsen (Susan Sarandon) finds herself stranded at the Amundsen-South Pole Research Station along with a tiny staff of researchers and technicians. Although, at first, there is little love lost between the somewhat aloof Read More

2003
The Matthew Shepard Story

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This fact-based TV movie explores the story behind the infamous Matthew Shepard gay-bashing case, in which a Laramie, WY, college student was brutally murdered by a pair of local boys in 1998. Sam Waterson and Stockard Channing star as Judy and Dennis Shepard, the parents whose agonizing decision Read More

2002
The 6th Day

Crew: Director

Actors: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tony Goldwyn, Michael Rapaport, Michael Rooker, Sarah Wynter, Robert Duvall

Synopsis: In this science-fiction thriller set in the very near future, DNA cloning has been perfected and has become an accepted part of everyday life -- cattle and fish are cloned for sale at the market, genetically engineered fruit and vegetables are found in most family's kitchens (nacho-flavored Read More

11/17/00
Noriega: God's Favorite

Crew: Director, Executive Producer

Actors: Bob Hoskins, Jeffrey DeMunn, Luis Avalos, Denise Blasor

Synopsis: Bob Hoskins stars as Manuel "Tony" Noriega, former leader of Panama, in this biographical comedy-drama about his improbable rise to power and inglorious fall. Abandoned by his parents at an early age, Noriega grew up fending for himself among the desperate poverty of Panama's slums. In search of a Read More

2000
Tomorrow Never Dies

Crew: Director

Actors: Pierce Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce, Michelle Yeoh, Teri Hatcher, Joe Don Baker

Synopsis: Roger Spottiswoode (Air America) directed this film, the 18th chapter in the 35-year-old James Bond series (excluding Casino Royale and Never Say Never Again). James Bond (Pierce Brosnan) learns billionaire media mogul Elliot Carver (Jonathan Pryce) is manipulating world events via an exclusive Read More

11/19/97
Murder Live!

Crew: Director

Actors: Marg Helgenberger, David Morse, Christine Estabrook, Lauren Tom, Eloy Casados

Synopsis: In the middle of a live talk-show telecast hosted by the supremely arrogant Pia Postman (Marg Helgenberger), audience member Frank McGrath (David Morse) suddenly pulls out a gun and seizes control of the studio. Slapping a piece of tape over Pia's mouth (a moment that is invariably applauded by Read More

1997
Hiroshima

Crew: Director

Synopsis: This Canadian-Japanese co-production uses both vintage historical footage (including armed forces films and period newsreels) and contemporary dramatic reenactments to tell the story of how the scientific and military minds behind the Manhattan Project, under the orders of President Harry Truman (Kenneth Welsh Read More

1995
Mesmer

Crew: Director

Actors: Alan Rickman, Amanda Ooms, Gillian Barge, Jan Rubes

Synopsis: This historical drama is based on the true story of controversial medical pioneer Franz Anton Mesmer. In 18th century Vienna, Mesmer (Alan Rickman) believes that many of the favored medical treatments of the day -- most notoriously the inducement of bleeding to remove harmful "humors" from the Read More

1994
And the Band Played On

Crew: Director

Actors: Richard Gere, Anjelica Huston, Alan Alda, Steve Martin, Lily Tomlin

Synopsis: The late journalist Randy Shilts' best-selling book on the burgeoning AIDS crisis was adapted for cable TV by Arnold Schulman. In 1981, researchers begin discerning a mysterious new disease that apparently affects only homosexual males (or so they thought at that time). Working independently, and Read More

1993
Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot

Crew: Director

Actors: Sylvester Stallone, Estelle Getty, JoBeth Williams, Roger Rees, Martin Ferrero

Synopsis: Despite his status as a major action star, Sylvester Stallone has made a number of attempts to remodel himself as a comic actor; one of his more infamous efforts in this direction was Stop! or My Mom Will Shoot!. Police detective Joe Bromowski (Sylvester Stallone) has just broken off his Read More

2/21/92
Air America

Crew: Director

Actors: Mel Gibson, Robert Downey, Jr., Nancy Travis, Ken Jenkins, David Marshall Grant

Synopsis: Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr. play a couple of what-the-hell flyboys flying contraband to Laos during the Vietnam War. Gibson doesn't seem to care about anything but the "guts and glory" aspects of the job, but Downey has serious questions about the moral implications of their mission. When a Read More

8/10/90
Turner and Hooch

Crew: Director

Actors: Tom Hanks, Mare Winningham, Craig T. Nelson, Reginald VelJohnson, Scott Paulin

Synopsis: One by-product of two consecutive Oscar wins is that Tom Hanks no longer has to appear in such potboilers as Turner and Hooch. Hanks plays Turner, a meticulously groomed, excruciatingly well-organized detective working in a small California coastal town. When local "character" John McIntyre is Read More

7/28/89
Third Degree Burn

Crew: Director

Actors: Treat Williams, Virginia Madsen, Richard Masur, CCH Pounder, Michael Chapman

Synopsis: Third Degree Burn, from concept to title, is an HBO-produced Body Heat clone. Treat Williams stars as a tough private eye involved in murder and cuckoldry. Virginia Madsen is the smouldering femme fatale. Here's what the ads for Third Degree Burn promised: "Passion in the third degree. Murder in Read More

1989
Time Flies When You're Alive

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Time Flies When You're Alive is, literally, a one man show. Repeating his stage performance, actor Paul Linke delivers an exhausting monologue on the subject of his wife's losing battle with cancer. Before the film's 80 minutes have elapsed, the audience is as emotionally drained as Linke. Despite Read More

1989
Shoot to Kill

Crew: Director

Actors: Sidney Poitier, Tom Berenger, Kirstie Alley, Clancy Brown, Richard Masur

Synopsis: Sidney Poitier makes his long-overdue return to films in the 1988 thriller Shoot to Kill. Poitier plays an FBI agent, on the trail of an elusive killer. Reluctantly teamed with tracker Tom Berenger, the citified Poitier braves the wilds of the Pacific Northwest in search of his quarry. For Berenger Read More

2/12/88
The Last Innocent Man

Crew: Director

Actors: Ed Harris, Roxanne Hart, David Suchet, Bruce McGill, Darrell Larson

Synopsis: Filmed in Portland, Oregon, The Last Innocent Man stars Ed Harris as an adroit criminal lawyer. Having gotten several obviously guilty clients off the hook, Harris suffers a conscience attack and takes a few months off to get his act together. He is pulled out of his sabbatical by his girl friend Roxanna Hart Read More

1987
The Best of Times

Crew: Director

Actors: Robin Williams, Kurt Russell, Pamela Reed, Holly Palance, Donald Moffat

Synopsis: Small-town banker Robin Williams has never been able to live down the fact that he dropped an important pass during a crucial high-school football game. Likewise tainted for life is the team's star quarterback Kurt Russell, now a garage owner. Fed up with living his life under a cloud, Williams Read More

1/31/86
Baby... Secret of the Lost Legend

Crew: Producer

Actors: William Katt, Sean Young, Patrick McGoohan, Julian Fellowes, Kyalo Mativo

Synopsis: Eight years before the dinosaur mania created by Jurassic Park, Bill L. Norton released this more dinosaur-friendly story about a 10-foot baby dinosaur in dire straits in Africa because Dr. Eric Kiviat (Patrick McGoohan), an evil paleontologist, is after it with a vengeance. He is the nemesis of Read More

1985
Under Fire

Crew: Director

Actors: Nick Nolte, Gene Hackman, Joanna Cassidy, Jean-Louis Trintignant, Ed Harris

Synopsis: This gripping, emotional story of a roving photographer's transformation from a neutral artist with a camera to an involved human rights activist with a camera begins in Chad, travels to Nicaragua in the early 1980s, and ends when the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza takes off for the palm trees and Read More

1983
The Renegades

Crew: Director

Synopsis: In this drama, undercover investigators are recruited from the streets to prevent arms smugglers from getting their weapons to street gangs. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1982
48 Hrs.

Crew: Screenwriter

Actors: Nick Nolte, Eddie Murphy, Annette O'Toole, Frank McRae, James Remar

Synopsis: A variation on the "buddy-cop" hybridized genre, 48 HRS. greatly bolstered the career of Nick Nolte and made comedian Eddie Murphy a bonafide box-office sensation. When a pair of reckless cop-killers break out of prison, grizzled detective Jack Cates (Nolte) is left no alternative but to spring Read More

1982
The Pursuit of D.B. Cooper

Crew: Director

Actors: Robert Duvall, Treat Williams, Kathryn Harrold, Ed Flanders, Paul Gleason

Synopsis: The mysterious 1971 hijacking of an airliner by a bold thief who parachuted into legend over the Pacific Northwest became fodder for this action comedy that's mostly speculative. Treat Williams stars as Jim Meade, an ambitious former Army man who devises a clever scheme to hold up an airliner for Read More

1981
Terror Train

Crew: Director

Actors: Ben Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Hart Bochner, David Copperfield

Synopsis: Riding the coattails of the resurgent boom in horror films after the success of Halloween, Terror Train features teeth-chattering direction by Roger Spottiswoode and pristine cinematography from John Alcott. The story is the basic slasher film premise, remounted on a moving train. A college Read More

1980
Hard Times

Crew: Editor

Actors: Charles Bronson, James Coburn, Jill Ireland, Strother Martin

Synopsis: Also known as The Streetfighter, Hard Times stars Charles Bronson as Chaney, an aging bare-knuckle boxer, trying to scratch out a living in the middle of the Depression. "Speed" (James Coburn) is the two-bit promoter who books Chaney in the tank towns of the South and Midwest. He is briefly Read More

1975
The Gambler

Crew: Editor

Actors: Starletta DePaur, James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton, Morris Carnovsky, Jacqueline Brookes

Synopsis: James Toback made his screenwriting debut with this taut drama, loosely adapted from the story by Dostoevsky. Axel Freed (James Caan) is an intelligent and well-respected professor of literature at a noted New York university, who uses great writing as a springboard for examining moral and Read More

1974
Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Crew: Editor

Actors: James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Bob Dylan

Synopsis: A former friend betrays a legendary outlaw in Sam Peckinpah's final Western. Holed up in Fort Sumner with his gang between cattle rustlings, Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) ignores the advice of comrade-turned-lawman Pat Garrett (James Coburn) to escape to Mexico, and he winds up in jail in Read More

1973
The Getaway

Crew: Editor

Actors: Steve McQueen, Ali MacGraw, Ben Johnson, Sally Struthers, Al Lettieri

Synopsis: In Sam Peckinpah's version of Walter Hill's script, from Jim Thompson's novel, an ex-con and his wife go on the lam after a Texas bank heist. Denied parole after four well-behaved years, Doc McCoy (Steve McQueen) sends his wife Carol (Ali MacGraw) to dirty politician Jack Benyon (Ben Johnson) to Read More

1972
Straw Dogs

Crew: Editor

Actors: Cherina Mann, Dustin Hoffman, Susan George, Peter Vaughan, T.P. McKenna, David Warner, Colin Welland

Synopsis: Sam Peckinpah examines the instinctual capacity for violence in his controversial 1971 film, loosely based on the novel The Siege of Trencher's Farm. To avoid the Vietnam-era social chaos in the U.S., American mathematician David Sumner (Dustin Hoffman) moves with his British wife Amy (Susan George Read More

1971
Einstine, Symphony of the Planets, & Tomorrow...

Crew: Director

Synopsis: Video art by Eric Siegfal--three, short abstract works. ~ All Movie Guide Read More

1968