The best Marisa Tomei’s thriller movies
Marisa Tomei was born on December 4, 1964, in Brooklyn, New York, to mother Patricia "Addie" Tomei, an English teacher and father Gary Tomei, a lawyer. Marisa also has a brother, actor Adam Tomei. As a child, Marisa's mother frequently corrected her speech as to eliminate her heavy Brooklyn accent. As a teen, Marisa attended Edward R. Murrow High School and graduated in the class of 1982. She was one year into her college education at Boston University when she dropped out for a co-starring role on the CBS daytime drama As the World Turns (1956). Her role on that show paved the way for her entrance into film: in 1984, she debuted with a bit part in The Flamingo Kid (1984). Three years later, Marisa became known for her role as Maggie Lawton, Lisa Bonet's college roommate, on the sitcom A Different World (1987).
Her real breakthrough came in 1992, when she co-starred as Joe Pesci's hilariously foul-mouthed, scene-stealing girlfriend in My Cousin Vinny (1992), a performance that won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Later that year, she turned up briefly as a snippy Mabel Normand in director Richard Attenborough's biopic Chaplin (1992), and was soon given her first starring role in Untamed Heart (1993). A subsequent starring role -- and attempted makeover into Audrey Hepburn -- in the romantic comedy Only You (1994) proved only moderately successful.
Marisa's other 1994 role as Michael Keaton's hugely pregnant wife in The Paper (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. Fortunately for Tomei, she was able to rebound the following year with a solid performance as a troubled single mother in Nick Cassavetes' Unhook the Stars (1996) which earned her a Screen Actors Guild nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She turned in a similarly strong work in Welcome to Sarajevo (1997), and in 1998 did some of her best work in years as the sexually liberated, unhinged cousin of Natasha Lyonne's Vivian Abramowitz in Tamara Jenkins' Slums of Beverly Hills (1998). Marisa co-starred with Mel Gibson in the hugely successful romantic comedy What Women Want (2000) and during the 2002 movie award season, she proved her first Best Supporting Actress Oscar win was no fluke when she received her second nomination in the same category for the critically acclaimed dark drama, In the Bedroom (2001). She also made a guest appearance on the animated TV phenomenon The Simpsons (1989) as Sara Sloane, a movie star who falls in love with Ned Flanders. In 2006, she went on to do 4 episodes for Rescue Me (2004). She played Angie, the ex-wife of Tommy Calvin (Denis Leary)'s brother Johnny (Dean Winters). At age 42, Marisa took a provocative role in legendary filmmaker Sidney Lumet's melodramatic picture Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), in which she appeared nude in love scenes with co-stars Ethan Hawke and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Marisa then took on another provocative role as a stripper in the highly acclaimed film The Wrestler (2008), opposite Mickey Rourke. Her great performance earned her many awards from numerous film societies for Best Supporting Actress, a third Academy Award nomination, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe and a BAFTA. Many critics heralded this performance as a standout in her career.
The First Purge
5.2/10
To push the crime rate below one percent for the rest of the year, the New Founding Fathers of America test a sociological theory that vents aggression for one night in one isolated community. But when the violence of oppressors meets the rage of the others, the contagion will explode from the trial-city borders and spread across the nation.
Zandalee
4.3/10
Bored with her marriage to burnt out poet turned corporate executive Thierry, Zandalee falls prey to an old friend of her husband, the manipulative and egotistical Johhny and becomes enmeshed in a sensual, passionate and destructive affair.
The Watcher
5.3/10
FBI agent Joel Campbell, burnt-out and shell-shocked after years spent chasing serial killers, flees L.A. to begin a new life for himself in Chicago. But five months later, Joel's best laid plans are abruptly cut short when his new hometown becomes the setting for some particularly gruesome murders--murders that could only have been committed by one man: David Allen Griffin. One of Joel's most elusive and cunning nemeses, Griffin has followed his former pursuer to Chicago in order to play a sadistic game of cat and mouse. Taunting Joel with photographs of his intended victims and leaving his crime scenes meticulously free of clues in order to keep the police at bay, Griffin derives as much pleasure out of watching Joel react to every movement as watching his victims die. But when Griffin moves into Joel's inner circle, Joel must quickly find some way to stop him before someone close to him becomes the next one to die.
The Lincoln Lawyer
7.3/10
A lawyer conducts business from the back of his Lincoln town car while representing a high-profile client in Beverly Hills.
Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
7.3/10
When two brothers organize the robbery of their parents' jewelry store, the job goes horribly wrong, triggering a series of events that send them and their family hurtling towards a shattering climax.
War, Inc.
5.5/10
War Inc. is set in the future, when the fictional desert country of Turaqistan is torn by a riot after a private corporation, Tamerlane, owned by the former Vice President of the United States, has taken over the whole country. Brand Hauser, a hit man who suppresses his emotions by gobbling down hot sauce, is hired by the corporation's head to kill the CEO of their competitors.
Salvation Boulevard
5.3/10
Set in the world of mega-churches in which a former Deadhead-turned-born again-Christian finds himself on the run from fundamentalist members of his mega-church who will do anything to protect their larger-than-life pastor.
In the Bedroom
7.4/10
Summertime on the coast of Maine, "In the Bedroom" centers on the inner dynamics of a family in transition. Matt Fowler is a doctor practicing in his native Maine and is married to New York born Ruth Fowler, a music teacher. His son is involved in a love affair with a local single mother. As the beauty of Maine's brief and fleeting summer comes to an end, these characters find themselves in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.
Danika
5.5/10
The story follows Danika, a woman whose fears for her children are manifested in premonitions of death and disaster.
Inescapable
5.1/10
Twenty-five years ago Adib, a promising young officer in the Syrian military police, suddenly left Damascus under suspicious circumstances. Abandoning the love of his life Fatima, he made his way to Canada and wiped the slate clean. When his daughter Muna suddenly disappears in Damascus, his past threatens to violently catch up to him. Teaming up with a Canadian emissary, Adib must now confront the turmoil he thought he left behind in order to find Muna.
Equinox
5.6/10
Henry Petosa and Freddy Ace are twins who were separated being babies, and they do not know each other. Henry was adopted by a honest man, while Freddy becomes a gangster. Henry is very shy and has a lot of mental troubles. The film melts the two stories by a young writer who discovers that they were sons of an european noble and they own a large inheritance.
King of the Jungle
5.8/10
Seymore is a young man with the mind of a child. He loves three things in life: basketball, sneaking out for cigarettes, and his mother. But all life's simple pleasures are brutally torn from him when he witnesses his mother gunned down by a neighborhood punk. Now Seymore must overcome the child within as he rises up to fight for some kind of justice. It's a fight that will take him out into the streets where there are few friends and many enemies -- and one of them is a killer who wants him silenced.
