Professor Dennis Burke (Peter Coyote) wrote a sizzling erotic novel called Red Letters 20 years ago--but since then, his wife died from a protracted illness, and he's been fired from a job because of an affair with a student. So he's grateful to be given a second chance at a small California college where he lectures on Hawthorne... only all his students are more interested in Burke's writing than Hawthorne's. Burke starts receiving letters for the former resident of his apartment, letters that are from a woman in prison named Lydia (Nastassja Kinski of Your Friends and Neighbors) with a 30-year sentence for murder. Burke writes back, and their correspondence takes a turn for the intimate when she asks him to visit her. Burke isn't sure what he's getting into, and his life is only further complicated when the daughter of the college dean (Fairuza Balk, The Craft) starts making advances. Suddenly Lydia has escaped, his best friend (Jeremy Piven, Very Bad Things) is arrested for hacking into the prison computer system, and the dean suspects Burke of trifling with his daughter. Red Letters has all the makings of a classic Hitchcock film: a hapless hero who thinks he's smarter than he is, an unpredictable femme fatale, snaky plot twists, and an all-around excellent cast (also including Ernie Hudson from Ghostbusters and Udo Kier from My Own Private Idaho and The Kingdom). The movie loses focus at the very end, but until then it's a smart, well-written, subtle, and unpredictable film that actually gives its characters some depth and grit. Even the more implausible moments are fun and engaging. Well worth checking out. --Bret Fetzer