Archive for July, 2008
Man with the Golden Arm, The
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| Plot Summary: | Frankie Machine is a skilled card dealer and one-time heroin addict. When he returns home from jail, he struggles to find a new livelihood and to avoid slipping back into addiction. |
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El Greco
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| Plot Summary: | El Greco is a Greek film about the life of the Greek painter Dom’enicos Theotok’opoulos (El Greco). It was produced in 2007, directed by Yannis Smaragdis and written by Jackie Pavlenko and Dimitris Siatopoulos (book). A dramatization of the life of 16th century Greek painter, Dom’enicos Theotok’opoulos, who, in search of freedom and love, sets off from Crete and goes to Venice and finally Toledo. |
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Flash Point
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| Plot Summary: | Ma Jun, a cop known for dispensing justice during arrests, teams with Hua Sheng, who’s undercover, to try to bring down three merciless Vietnamese brothers running a smuggling ring in the months before the mainland’s takeover of Hong Kong. The eldest, Xian Wei Cha (called Zah), is arrested in an operation that exposes Sheng and almost gets him killed. His girlfriend, Qiu Di, who’s been unaware of Sheng’s profession, wants to see him quit. Jun pursues the gang tirelessly, sometimes ignoring police protocols. Zah’s trial approaches, witnesses are in danger, and a showdown is inevitable. |
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Basketball Diaries, The
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| Taglines: | 1: Every punk on the block says it’s not going to happen to them… but it does. 2: The true story of the death of innocence and the birth of an artist |
| Plot Summary: | Film adaptation of street tough Jim Carroll’s epistle about his kaleidoscopic free fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction. As a member of a seemingly unbeatable high school basketball squad, Jim’s life centers around the basketball court and the court becomes a metaphor for the world in his mind. A best friend who is dying of leukemia, a coach (”Swifty”) who takes unacceptable liberties with the boys on his team, teenage sexual angst, and an unhealthy appetite for heroin — all of these begin to encroach on young Jim’s dream of becoming a basketball star. Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from his mother’s mounting concern for her son. He can’t go home and his only escape from the reality of the streets is heroin for which he steals, robs and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie, an older neighborhood friend with whom Jim “picked up a game” now and then, is he able to begin the long journey back to sanity. |
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Ferryman, The
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| Taglines: | 1: Everybody pays. 2: Everyone must pay |
| Plot Summary: | The story of a group of twenty-something’s who charter a boat to Fiji for the trip of a lifetime, before stumbling upon an evil that demands vengeance at any cost. |
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Ricochet
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| Taglines: | 1: He’s a cop accused of murder. And the only man who knows he’s innocent is the killer who framed him. 2: This is one case that’s going to be settled out of court. |
| Plot Summary: | Rookie Los Angeles cop Nick Styles is at a Los Angeles street fair, where hit man Earl Talbot Blake pulls a double cross on some drug dealers, killing four men. Minutes later, Nick shoots Blake in the knee, and Blake is grabbed by Nick’s partner and best friend Larry Doyle. Nick becomes the focus of the media, thanks to an amateur cameraman’s footage of Nick disarming Blake. Over the next few years, Nick’s career takes off: he’s offered a job in the district attorney’s office, and his hip media style keeps him in the public eye. Nick marries a woman named Alice and they go on to have two daughters named Lisa and Monica. While Blake is in prison, he vows revenge on Nick. When Blake comes up for parole, he orchestrates a bloody escape — which includes faking his own death. Blake doesn’t want Nick dead. He just wants Nick to suffer in spades. He wants to ruin Nick’s life as completely as possible, and then have Nick sent to prison for murder so Nick will know how Blake feels. Blake begins his vendetta by killing city councilman U. B. Farris and planting evidence to make everyone think Nick and Farris are running an underage pornography ring. Blake then kidnaps Nick, forces him to take drugs and have sex with a prostitute, videotapes the whole thing, and then releases Nick. Nick tells everyone that it was Blake who kidnapped him, but everyone refuses to believe Nick because everyone thinks Blake is dead. That night, Blake breaks into Nick’s house, and makes a threatening videotape with Lisa, Monica, and an ax in it, but Blake didn’t actually do anything to Lisa and Monica. Nick is then suspended from the DA’s office, with everyone thinking that Nick is mentally ill because he keeps saying that Blake is still alive. Blake then begins the final phase of his vendetta — he kills Larry and frames Nick for it. Blake also links Nick to misappropriation of public funds, specifically, the funds he’s supposed to be raising for a children’s center in a building at the base of the Watts tower. Nick is forced to turn to his childhood friend, gang leader Odessa, for help in clearing his name and stopping Blake once and for all. |
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K-PAX
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| Taglines: | 1: Change the way you look at the world. |
| Plot Summary: | Prot is a patient at a mental hospital who claims to be from a far away planet. His psychiatrist tries to help him, only to begin to doubt his own explanations. |
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Machine Girl, The
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| Plot Summary: | The Machine Girl is about a teenager named Ami who sets out for revenge on a gang of bullies who tortured her little brother to death. She winds up losing an arm along the way, and replaces it with a high-powered gun, `a la Rose McGowan in Grindhouse. But she doesn’t stop at one limb; Ami continues to lose body parts and replace them with more weapons. |
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Replacement Killers, The
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| Taglines: | 1: Conscience has no place in the heart of an assassin. 2: Kill or be replaced. 3: When people need to disappear, they come to see Meg. When they’re about to go, they never see John coming. |
| Plot Summary: | John Lee is a hitman who works for Chinese crime lord, Terence Wei. It seems that Joh is obligated to Mr. Wei and so far has done everything he was told to do. Now Mr. Wei wants John to get revenge on a police detective who killed his son. John was about to carry out the job but for some reason can’t do it. When Mr. Wei hears of this, he sends for some replacements. John now has to return to China to help his mother and sister whom Mr. Wei will now target because of his disobedience, but first he needs a passport. He needs find someone who can give him a passport who is not beholden to Mr. Wei. He is told of Meg Coburn, a small time documents forger. John goes to see her and was in the process of making his passport when some Wei’s people come in shooting. While John gets away, Meg is caught by the police but is released by the cop whom Mr. Wei has a beef with. John goes to her and still needing a passport, forces to go with him. Mr. Wei’s people finds them and was about to take care of them but John managed to escape. So now the two of them are not only hunted by Mr. Wei but also the police. |
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True Romance
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| Taglines: | 1: Not since Bonnie and Clyde have two people been so good at being bad. 2: Stealing, Cheating, Killing. Who said romance is dead? |
| Plot Summary: | Clarence Worley, a penniless hipster in Detroit with a love for Elvis meets a mysterious hooker paid to meet him named Alabama on his birthday in a theater at night. Falling in love, he makes it his mission to dispose of her past, namely her violent pimp, Drexl Spivey. Defeating him and unknowingly taking a vast fortune of Cocaine, the two fight to sell the white gold in Los Angeles as Drexl’s associates fight to reclaim it in a bloody romantic thriller full to the brim with style. |
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