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3 Movies
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June 2021 | 2 views
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Towelhead
2008
Against the backdrop of the first Gulf War, Jasira Maroun is 13, physically well developed but naïve and unable to say no. As puberty arrives, her mother sends her from Syracuse to Houston to her curt, up-tight, Lebanese-born father. Over the next few months, Jasira must navigate her father's strict indifference, her discovery of sexual pleasure, the casual racism of a neighbor boy and her classmates, the sexual advances of the boy's father, the proffered friendship of a pregnant neighbor, and her attraction to Thomas, an African-American classmate whom her father forbids her to see. Things happen to her, but can she take responsibility and control, or is tragedy inevitable?
movies
The Squid and the Whale
2006
In 1986, In Brooklyn, New York, the dysfunctional family of pseudo intellectuals composed by the university professor Bernard and the prominent writer Joan split. Bernard is a selfish, cheap and jealous decadent writer that rationalizes every attitude in his family and life and does not accept "philistines" - people that do not read books or watch movies, while the unfaithful Joan is growing as a writer and has no problems with "philistines". Their sons, the teenager Walt and the boy Frank, feel the separation and take side: Walt stays with Bernard, and Frank with Joan, and both are affected with abnormal behaviors. Frank drinks booze and smears with sperm the books in the library and a locker in the dress room of his school. The messed-up and insecure Walt uses Roger Water's song "Hey You" in a festival as if it was of his own, and breaks up with his girlfriend Sophie. Meanwhile Joan has an affair with Frank's tennis teacher Ivan and Bernard with his student Lili.
movies
Junebug
2007
Successful Carolinian George Johnsten meets Chicago art gallery owner Madeleine at an electoral benefit art auction- love at first sight. Madeleine decides to meet a Southern original artist, so George seizes the opportunity to come along and present her to his North Carolina parents Eugene and Peg, drop-out brother Johny and his high-pregnant wife Ashley. Confronting the outsider soon opens a can of worms as emotions revive or emerge, like admiration and jealousy.
movies
Igby Goes Down
2002
Seventeen year old Jason Slocumb, Jr. - Igby to most that know him - comes from east coast old money, the second son of self-absorbed and controlling Mimi Slocumb and medically-diagnosed schizophrenic Jason Slocum, Sr., the latter who has for several years been institutionalized in a Maryland psychiatric facility. While Igby's economics-studying Columbia-attending older brother Ollie Slocum has embraced and aspires to continue their wealthy life, Igby has rebelled against it, considering his brother a fascist (although he could soften that label to Republican). Because of Jason's situation, Mimi has largely left the role of male role model for Ollie and Igby to their godfather, D.H. Banes. Igby's rebellion has led to him being kicked out of one prep school after another, the latest, a military academy, from which Igby escapes before he can graduate. As such, Mimi and D.H. arrange for Igby to live in New York with Ollie for the summer while working for D.H. renovating some of his properties, before Mimi arranges for yet another strict school for the fall so that Igby can at least graduate. Igby is largely able to hide out for most of the summer with the help of Rachel, D.H.'s younger heroin addict mistress, and Sookie, a slightly older waitress with who he falls in love. An issue with Sookie and the aftermath of a joint mission with Ollie leads to Igby having a clearer picture of what his immediate future will look like.
movies
Chelsea Walls
2002
In New York's storied Chelsea Hotel, a novelist, a dancer, a painter, a poet, an aged jazz singer, and a young troubadour sort out their personal and artistic lives within walls haunted by the likes of Dylan Thomas, O. Henry, and Sarah Bernhardt. A boozy novelist balances wife, mistress, and stories. A dancer who's a waitress in the basement club chooses between a Hollywood jerk and a local painter. A youth from Minnesota who composes and sings may be the next Bob Dylan. A poet decides to give her feckless boyfriend another chance, even as her eyes tell us she knows what's ahead. An old jazz artist wants to place a bet and share his love for Lady Day. These walls do seem to talk.
movies
Somewhere
2011
Hollywood actor Johnny Marco, nested in his luxury hotel of choice, is a stimulated man. Drinking, parties and women keep a creeping boredom under wraps in between jobs. He is the occasional father of a bright girl, Cleo, who may be spoiled but doesn't act it. When Cleo's mother drops her off and leaves town, Johnny brings her along for the ride, but can he fit an 11-year-old girl into his privileged lifestyle?
movies
The Ballad of Jack and Rose
2005
1986. Jack Slavin, an engineer by trade, and his mid-teen daughter Rose Slavin live in virtual isolation on what was once a commune that Jack and a group of others built in 1968 on sparsely populated Marsh Island off the U.S. east coast. Rose's mother abandoned them when Rose was five. Jack has passed to Rose a sense of ecological preservation, placing them at odds with Marty Rance, who is building a housing complex on the island on a wetlands. They are able to live this life on the commune property in their ecological bliss due to a sizable inheritance, Jack who will occasionally take out his checkbook in order to solve whatever problem he may be facing. Jack also took Rose out of school when she was eleven as he didn't believe in what the traditional school system was teaching. Their quiet life together is threatened by the fact that Jack has a heart condition which will probably kill him sooner than later. Wanting to ensure that Rose is taken care of after his passing, Jack makes the unilateral decision to ask Kathleen, a woman who he has been dating for four months, to move in, along with her two mismatched sons, half-brothers Rodney and Thaddius who don't much like each other. Jack tries to pass Kathleen and her sons to Rose as "an experiment" and the three of them solely as "guests", rather than the reality of them truly moving in. Kathleen, who had never met Rose before, agreed in her savior complex and in truly loving Jack, knowing fully the reasons for he asking her. These changes deeply affect Rose, who has had Jack all to herself for the better part of her life - she who threatens to commit suicide after Jack dies - and comes at a key point in her own life as she is just starting to explore her sexuality.
movies
Half Nelson
2006
Young Caucasian Dan Dunne teaches history and coaches the girls basketball team at a Brooklyn high school populated primarily by black and Hispanic students. To the chagrin of his superiors, Dan bucks the outlined curriculum of historical facts in favor of the philosophy of historical events, generally discussing the concept of dialectics. As such, he captures the imagination of his students, at least in the classroom. Outside of the classroom, Dan's life is in shambles. He has a distant but cordial relationship with his family. He uses illicit drugs rampantly. Although his former girlfriend Rachel was able to clean up her drug habit, Dan believes that rehab will not work for him. Due to a combination of these issues, he treats women poorly. Thirteen-year-old Drey is a student in his class and a player on his basketball team. Drey has her own problems. Her parents are divorced, with her father a virtually non-existent figure in her life and her EMT mother generally absent as she is always working to provide for Drey. Her older brother Mike is incarcerated for selling drugs for a local dealer named Frank. Mike took the fall for Frank, who in turn protects Drey whether she wants to be associated with him or not. Dan and Drey's relationship changes when Drey catches Dan, believing he is alone, smoking crack in the girl's locker room bathroom. He is totally stoned. Their resulting friendship, which is seen as inappropriate by the few who know, is based on each being unable to deal with their own life, but feeling like they can be at least a minor salvation in the other's life.
movies
Kids
1995
Disturbing, dark, low-budget independent film about teen-agers in New York City. The story focuses on Telly (Leo Fitzpatrick), a teen who has a goal to de-flower as many virgins as he can. When one of his old encounters discovers that she is H.I.V.-positive, after only one encounter with a guy, Telly remains undaunted.
movies
Tape
2002
Twenty-eight year olds Jon and Vince, friends from high school, meet in Vince's seedy motel room in Lansing, Michigan. Jon had invited Vince to town from his current residence of Oakland to help celebrate the fact of his latest movie, independently shot, having a screening at the local film festival the following day, the first public screening of one of his movies. While Jon seems to have grown up in having this career path and a nice room in an upscale hotel provided by the festival, Vince, who, in preparing for the evening has already had a few beer by the time Jon arrives, hasn't, he who deals drugs for a living with no change on the horizon, and his girlfriend, who was supposed to accompany him to Lansing, having broken up with him, indirectly because of his immaturity. This divergence quickly becomes an issue of contention between the two. But as Vince's behavior is seemingly more and more substance affected, he having broken out the weed and coke, his intention with Jon may be clearer than it appears on the surface, it having to do with an issue from high school which always seems to emerge in some respect every time they meet. That issue begins to hit home for Jon with a specific action by Vince. But everything may take a turn onto its head with the arrival onto the scene of a third - Amy - also a friend from high school involved in that issue ten years ago, she, now an Assistant D.A. in Lansing, who Vince had invited without Jon's knowledge and who Jon has not seen since high school.
movies
The United States of Leland
2005
As a detached kid spends time in juvenile hall for the unspeakable murder of a special needs kid, a writer and the people around him try to comprehend and cope with his reasoning for commiting this murder from the writings in a classroom book from his juvenile class, where he tries to let people know "the why".
movies
Me and You and Everyone We Know
2005
'Me and You and Everyone We Know' is a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating contemporary world. Christine Jesperson is a lonely artist and "Eldercab" driver who uses her fantastical artistic visions to draw her aspirations and objects of desire closer to her. Richard Swersey, a newly-single shoe salesman and father of two boys, is prepared for amazing things to happen, but when he meets the captivating Christine, he panics. Life is not so oblique for Richard's six-year-old Robby, who is having a risqué Internet romance with a stranger, or Robby's 14-year-old brother Peter, who becomes the guinea pig for neighborhood girls practicing for their future of romance and marriage.
movies
Storytelling
2001
Storytelling is comprised of two separate stories set against the sadly comical terrain of college and high school, past and present. Following the paths of its young hopeful/ troubled characters, it explores issues of sex, race, celebrity and exploitation
movies
Happiness
1999
A woman breaks up with her boyfriend, he thinks it's because he's fat. A man is unable to tell her next door neighbor he finds her sexually attractive. An old couple wants to split up, but they don't want to get a divorce. A therapist masturbates to teen magazines. An 11 year old kid is insecure about the fact that he hasn't cum yet. Office workers try to recall the face of a coworker who recently died. A woman is sure she has everything she could ever want. The lives of these individuals intertwine as they go about their lives in their own unique ways, engaging in acts society as a whole might find disturbing in a desperate search for human connection.
movies
Manic
2003
Lyle Jensen is subject to sudden and violent outbursts, and he is committed to the juvenile wing of the Northwood Mental Institution. Several other youths are there with a variety of serious problems. Lyle interacts with other patients and staff on a human, and sometimes not so human level. The psychological problems of the patients also forms the fabric by which we see what's right with them, and what's wrong with the society that affects them.
movies
What's Eating Gilbert Grape
1994
What's Eating Gibert Grape is a beautifully shot movie of tenderness, caring and self-awareness that is set amongst the fictional working class one street town Endora. Centred around the Grape family Ellen and Amy and their two brothers Arnie and Gilbert, who, along with their morbidly obese widowed mother Bonnie Grape are striving to survive and coexist with the absence of a father figure, low wage work and seventeen-year-old Arnie's severe mental condition. It is in this awkward and extremely one sided affair that the unfortunate Gilbert has to constantly, while working for the town's slowly dying convenience store, take care of his younger brother Arnie. Gilbert's life, his future, is thwarted he knows this, but it is in this guardian angel that his love and bond for Arnie cannot, and will not, be let go. That is until the free spirit of Becky arrives in town, and with her grandmother are stranded for the week while waiting for parts for their vehicle. This realization unties new feelings, new thoughts and new hope for the put upon Gibert, something new is eating Gilbert Grape.
movies
Magnolia
2000
24 hours in L.A.; it's raining cats and dogs. Two parallel and intercut stories dramatize men about to die: both are estranged from a grown child, both want to make contact, and neither child wants anything to do with dad. Earl Partridge's son is a charismatic misogynist; Jimmy Gator's daughter is a cokehead and waif. A mild and caring nurse intercedes for Earl, reaching the son; a prayerful and upright beat cop meets the daughter, is attracted to her, and leads her toward a new calm. Meanwhile, guilt consumes Earl's young wife, while two whiz kids, one grown and a loser and the other young and pressured, face their situations. The weather, too, is quirky.
movies
Rachel Getting Married
2008
Kym Buchman has been in drug rehab for nine months, during which time she has been clean. She is released temporarily from the facility to attend her sister Rachel Buchman's wedding. During her release, Kym is staying at the family home, where the wedding is taking place. As such, it is like Grand Central Station for the duration of Kym's stay, which may not be the most conducive situation for her in constantly being exposed to the watching eyes of those who know and don't yet know her, but know of her situation. The reunion with her family members starts off well enough, but issues around Kym's release from rehab quickly surface. Kym and Rachel's father, Paul Buchman, wants to make sure that Kym is all right at all times, which to Kym feels instead like he doesn't trust her. Rachel slowly begins to resent Kym's situation taking over what is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, some of which is directed by Kym, some of which isn't. One person present but largely not included in the last minute wedding planning work is Kym and Rachel's mother, Abby, from who Paul is divorced. The two have since married other people. Outwardly, Abby has been nurturing of Kym throughout her life. However, what is one of the key moments in Kym's drug induced life, and in their collective family's lives, may profoundly affect the wedding. Beyond how Kym's presence affects the wedding, the goings-on of the family during Kym's short stay may either bring them closer together or tear them apart.
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Amélie, The Graduate, The Wife
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