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I tre volti della paura | Note: this synopsis is for the orginal Italian release with the segments in this certain order.Boris Karloff introduces three horror tales of the macabre and the supernatural known as the 'Three Faces of Fear'.THE TELEPHONERosy (Michele Mercier) is an attractive, high-priced Parisian call-girl who returns to her spacious, basement apartment after an evening out when she immediately gets beset by a series of strange phone calls. The caller soon identified himself as Frank, her ex-pimp who has recently escaped from prison. Rosy is terrified for it was her testimony that landed the man in jail. Looking for solace, Rosy phones her lesbian lover Mary (Lynda Alfonsi). The two women have been estranged for some time, but Rosy is certain that she is the only one who can help her. Mary agrees to come over that night. Seconds later, Frank calls again, promising that no matter who she calls for protection, he will have his revenge. Unknown to Rosy, Mary is the caller impersonating Frank. Marry arrives at Rosy's apartment soon after, and does her best to calm Rosy's nerves. She gives the panic-struck woman a tranquillizer and puts her to bed.Later that night as Rosy sleeps, Mary gets up out of bed, and pens a note of confession: she was the one making the strange phone calls when she learned of Franks escape from prison. Knowing that Rosy would call on her for help, she explains that she felt it was her way of coming back into her life after their breakup. While she is busy writing, she fails to notice an intruder in the apartment. This time it is Frank, for real. He creeps up behind Mary and strangles her to death with one of Rosys nylon stockings. The sound of the struggle awaken Rosy and she gasps in fright. The murderous pimp realizes that he just killed the wrong woman, and slowly makes his way to Rosy's bed. However, earlier that night, Rosy had placed a butcher knife under her pillow at Mary's suggestion. Rosy seizes the knife and stabs Frank with it as he's beginning to strangle her. Rosy drops the knife and breaks down in hysteria, surrounded by the two corpses of her former lovers.THE WURDALAKIn 19th Century Russia, Vladimir D'Urfe is a young nobleman on a long trip. During the course of his journey, he finds a beheaded corpse with a knife plunged into its heart. He withdraws the blade and takes it as a souvenir.Later that night, Vladimir stops at a small rural cottage to ask for shelter. He notices several daggers hanging up on one of the walls, and a vacant space that happens to fit the one he has discovered. Vladimir is surprised by the entrance of Giorgio (Glauco Onorato), who explains that the knife belongs to his father, who has not been seen for five days. Giorgio offers a room to the young count, and subsequently introduces him to the rest of the family: his wife (Rika Dialina), their young son Ivan, Giorgio's younger brother Pietro (Massimo Righi), and sister Sdenka (Susy Anderson). It subsequently transpires that they are eagerly anticipating the arrival of their father, Gorcha, as well as the reason for his absence: he has gone to do battle with the outlaw and dreaded wurdalak Ali Beg. Vladimir is confused by the term, and Sdenka explains that a wurdalak is a walking cadaver who feeds on the blood of the living, preferably close friends and family members. Giorgio and Pietro are certain that the corpse Vladimir had discovered is that of Ali Beg, but also realize that there is a strong possibility that their father has been infected by the blood curse too. They warn the count to leave, but he decides to stay and await the old mans return.At the stroke of midnight, Gorcha (Boris Karloff) returns to the cottage. His sour demeanor and unkempt appearance bode the worse, and the two brothers are torn: they realize that it is their duty to kill Gorcha before he feeds on the family, but their love for him makes it difficult to reach a decision. Later that night, both Ivan and Pietro are attacked by Gorcha who drains them of blood, and then flees the cottage. Giorgio stakes and beheads Pietro to prevent him from reviving as a wurdalak. But he is prevented from doing so to Ivan when his wife threatens to commit suicide. Reluntantly, he agrees to bury the child without taking the necessary precautions.That same night, the child rises from his grave and begs to be invited into the cottage. The mother runs to her son's aid, stabbing Giorgio when he attempts to stop her, only to be greeted at the front door by Gorcha. The old man bits and infects his daughter-in-law, who then does the same for her husband. Vladimir and Sdenka flee from the cottage and go on the run and hide out in the ruins of an abandoned cathedral as dawn breaks. Vladimir is optimistic that a long and happy life lies with them. But Sdenka is reluctant to relinquish her family ties. She believes that she is meant to stay with the family.Sdenka's fears about her family are confirmed when that evening, Gorcha and her siblings show up at the abandoned Abby. As Vladimir sleeps, Sdenka is lured into their loving arms where they bite to death. Awakened by her screams, Vladimir rushes to her aid, but the family has already taken her home, forcing the lover to follow suite. The young nobleman finds her, lying motionless on her bed. Sdenka awakens, and a distinct change is visible on her face. No longer caring, Vladimir embraces her, and she bites and infects him too.THE DROP OF WATERIn Victorian London, England, Nurse Helen Chester (Jacqueline Pierreux) is called to a large house to prepare the corpse of an elderly medium for her burial. As she dressed the body, she notices an elaborate diamond ring on its finger. Tempted by greed, Nurse Chester steals it. As she does, a glass tips over, and drops of water begin to splash on the floor. She is also assailed by a fly, no doubt attracted by the odor of the body. Unsettled but pleased by her acquisition, she finishes the job and returns home to her small East End flat.After returning home, Nurse Chester is assailed by strange events. The buzzing fly returns and continues to pester her. Then the lights in her apartment go out, and the sounds of the dripping water continues with maddening regularity. She sees the old womans corpse lying on her bed, and coming towards her. The terrified woman begs for forgiveness, but she ultimately strangles herself, imaging that the medium's hands are gripping her throat.The next morning, the concierge (Harriet White Medin) discovers Nurse Chester's body and calls the police. The investigator on the scene (Gustavo de Nardo) quickly concludes that its a simple case and that Nurse Chester "died of fright". The pathologist arrives on the scene to examine the body before it's taken away and he notes that the only sign of violence is a small bruise on her left finger, mostly likely caused when someone pried a ring from her finger. As the doctor makes this observation, the concierge appears distressed, as she has apparently took the ring from the dead Nurse Chester, and is further distracted by the sound of a fly swooping about in the air....Boris Karloff makes a final appearance as Gorcha riding on his horse as he concludes the three tales of fear and tells the viewers to be careful while walking home at night for ghosts and vampires have no fear. The image pulls back to actually reveal him sitting on a prop fake horse with a camera crew and various crewmen moving branches around to simulate the scene of riding through the forest from the Wurdalak segment. | cult, horror, gothic, murder, atmospheric | tt0057603 |
Dungeons & Dragons: The Book of Vile Darkness | Two thousand years ago, Nhagruul the Foul, a sorcerer who reveled in corrupting the innocent and the spread of despair, neared the end of his mortal days and was dismayed. Consumed by hatred for the living, Nhagruul sold his soul to the demon Lords of the abyss so that his malign spirit would survive. In an excruciating ritual, Nhagrulls skin was flayed into pages, his bones hammered into a cover, and his diseased blood became the ink to pen a book most vile. Creatures vile and depraved rose from every pit and unclean barrow to partake in the fever of destruction. The kingdoms of Karkoth were consumed by this plague of evil until an order of holy warriors arose from the ashes. The Knights of the New Sun swore an oath to resurrect hope in the land. The purity of their hearts was so great that Pelor, the God of Light, gave the Knights powerful amulets with which to channel his power. Transcendent with divine might, the Knights of the New Sun pierced the shadow that had darkened the land for twelve hundred years and cast it asunder. But not all were awed by their glory. The disciples of Nhagruul disassembled the book and bribed three greedy souls to hide the pieces until they could be retrieved. The ink was discovered and destroyed but, despite years of searching, the cover and pages were never found. Peace ruled the land for centuries and the Knights got lost in the light of their own glory. As memory of the awful events faded so did the power of servants of Pelor. They unwittingly abandoned themselves in the incorrect belief that the Book of Vile Darkness could never again be made whole.Now, the remaining pieces have been discovered, and an ancient evil is attempting to bring them together and restore the relic and the evil it brought. But at the same time a potential new paladin has been named to the Knights of the New Sun to attempt to renew their power to fight this evil. But, to do so, he may need to go against all that he has held dear, risking more that just his own soul in his quest to destroy the evil that surrounds him at every turn. | violence | tt1733125 |
The Shop Around the Corner | Matuschek's, a gift store in Budapest, is the workplace of Alfred Kralik (James Stewart) and the newly hi Ed
Klara Novak (Margaret Sullavan). At work they constantly irritate each other, but this daily aggravation is tempered by the fact that each has a secret pen pal with which they trade long soul-searching letters. Romantic correspondence is sent back and forth, and while Alfred and Klara trade barbs at work, they dream of someday meeting their sensitive, caring and unknown pen pal.Christmas is fast approaching, and the store is busy. Alfred had been with the store for some time, and has always been treated well by Mr. Matuschek (Frank Morgan), but lately his attitude has changed. Alfred is at a loss, and Matuschek avoids any explanation, finally telling Alfred that it would be best if he left. Stunned, Alfred accepts his last paycheck and says goodbye to everyone, including Klara. For once they are civil to each other.A long awaited meeting of the secret pen pals was planned for that night, and Alfred having just lost his job has no desire to go. Finding he can't fight his curiosity, he wanders to the restaurant where they'd agreed to meet and peeks in the window with his fellow employee. Of course, Klara is there waiting for him, with the chosen book and wearing a red carnation they'd agreed to use as a signal. Realizing that he'd been wrong about her all along, and that his irritation with her was actually masking his attraction, he finally enters and goes over to her table, but does not reveal his true reason for being there although he is aware she will be hurt that her pen pal doesn't show up. Alfred, hurt by her rudeness, finally leaves, knowing that she will wait all night for someone who is no longer coming.Meanwhile, back at the store, Mr. Matuschek has a late-night meeting with a private detective. He knows that his wife has been having an affair with one of his employees, and was convinced it was his trusted friend, Alfred. The detective however tells Matuschek it is in fact another employee and, heart-broken over his wife's infidelity he retires to his office. The delivery boy, returning late, enters and prevents Matuschek shooting himself with a pistol. Collapsing in grief and shame, Matuschekis rushed to the hospital.The next day Alfred visits Mr. Matuschek in his sick bed, where he asks for Alfred's forgiveness and puts him back to work, now as manager of the store. The delivery boy is rewarded with a raise to a store clerk. Klara arrives at work late, obviously heartbroken after the failure of her correspondent to materialize last night. When she finds Alfred in the manager's office she doesn't believe him and when she discovers it is true she faints in the middle of his office. Later, as she is resting at home, Alfred pays her a visit, and while he is there her aunt brings her another letter from her secret pen pal that explains his not being at the meeting because he saw her there with Alfred. Relieved about the misunderstanding she swears to Alfred she'll be back at work in the morning. Alfred is obviously working on a plan to reveal himself to Klara.Christmas Eve is here, and everyone works through the day. Mr. Matuschek has nearly recovered from his sickness and stops by to see how things are going, and when the final tally is made, the store has had its best sales day since 1928. Delighted, he hands out bonuses to all, and takes the new stock boy out for Christmas dinner. Alfred and Klara are getting ready to leave, and she has another date with her mystery pen pal, but Alfred delays her with a few questions. She's never yet seen him and doesn't even know his name but is convince end she will be engaged when she comes back to work. He tells her that the mysterious pen pal stopped by to see him earlier, and he is in fact fat, bald, older and unemployed and quite willing to live off Klara's income.
Alfred reveals himself when he puts a red carnation in his lapel and suddenly eveything becomes clear to her. | romantic | tt0033045 |
Mr. Holland's Opus | Glenn Holland, not a morning person by anyone's standards, is woken up by his wife Iris early one bright September morning in 1964. Glenn has taken a job as a music teacher at the newly renamed John F. Kennedy High School. He intends his job to be a sabbatical from being a touring musician, during which he hopes to have more "free time" to compose. However, he soon finds that his job as a teacher is more time-consuming than he first thought.As he arrives at the school for the first time, he meets Vice Principal Wolters, who comments on his Corvair, the model of car the Ralph Nader wrote a book about. Inside the building, he meets Principal Helen Jacobs. Having got off to an awkward start with both of them, he goes to the music room and meets his students for the first time. The students are dull, apathetic, and mostly terrible musicians. At lunchtime, he meets the football coach, Bill Meister, and strikes up a friendship with him. At the end of his stressful first day, Glenn and Iris talk about their future. If everything goes according to plan, between his paychecks and what she made with her photography, he should be able to quit in four years and go back to his music, including composing.Glenn notices one dedicated but inept clarinet player, Gertrude Lang, and starts working with her individually. He continues attempting to teach the class about music and continues working on his music at home as time passes. Grading papers gradually replaces working on his own music during his home time, much to his chagrin. After several months, Glenn grows exasperated when it seems that none of his students have learned anything from his classes. Gertrude, despite diligent practice, does not improve her clarinet-playing. Glenn's exasperation is further compounded when the Principal Jacobs chastises him for not focusing properly on his students. She has noticed that he is even happier to leave at the end of each day than most of the students. Later, Glenn expounds his frustration to Iris, who then informs him that she's pregnant. Glenn is dumbstruck, and his muteness upsets Iris. To comfort her, he tells her a story about how he discovered John Coltrane (his favorite musician) records as a teenager, the point being he could get used to this turn of affairs.After some soul-searching, Glenn decides to try some unconventional methods of teaching music appreciation, including the use of 'Rock and Roll' to interest students, demonstrating to them the similarities between Bach's "Minuet in G" and rock-and-roll in the form of the Toys' "Lovers Concerto". For the first time, the students are interested in the class, and Glenn appears much happier as he relates this to Iris as they assemble a crib. Their apartment is getting more and more crowded, and Glenn suggests that they get a house. Iris is overjoyed, even though it means using their savings and Glenn sacrificing his summer vacation, which he intended to use to work on his composing, in order to make extra money teaching Driver's Ed. Glenn does right by his family but he knows he can forget about getting out of the teaching gig for the foreseeable future.Continuing his new, unorthodox teaching methods, he finally gets Gertrude, who was on the verge of giving up, to have a breakthrough and become a more skilled clarinet player. She rediscovers her joy of playing, and the now-competent band go on to play at the 1965 graduation. Summer vacation begins, and Glenn follows through on his plan to teach Driver's Ed, having a series of near-death experiences at the hands of new drivers. Glenn and Iris move into their new house. Soon, we see the Driver's Ed car once again, except this time it is Glenn himself driving like a maniac, breaking every traffic law - so that he could get to the hospital to see his newborn son, Coltrane ("Cole") Holland.Glenn's unorthodox teaching methods do not go unnoticed by Principal Jacobs, or Vice-Principal Wolters. They, along with the conservative School Board and the parents of the community, are hostile to rock-and-roll. Glenn is able to convince the principal that he believes strongly that teaching the students about all music, including rock-and-roll, will help them appreciate it all the more. The principal and vice principal also hand him a new assignment, to get a marching band together for the football team. Glenn is at a loss with this concept, until his Bill Meister agrees to help, in exchange for Glenn putting one of his football players, Louis Russ, in the band to allow him to earn an extra curricular activity credit, which he needs in order to stay eligible for the sports teams. Louis knows absolutely nothing about music, but takes up drums. He has trouble keeping time and always finds himself out of place with the rest of the band.Later, Glenn and Bill are chatting while playing chess. Bill, a bachelor, wants to know about Glenn's stories of debauchery as a traveling musician, but Glenn doesn't want to talk about the past, as he is a different person in a different time. Glenn instead tells Bill he is pessimistic about Louis Russ. Bill encourages him to keep trying. Much as he worked with Gertrude earlier, Glenn starts working one-on-one with Louis, helping to get a feel for the tempo of music. After some hard work, Louis gets it, and later, he marches with the band in the local parade, much to the delight of his family.Immediately behind the Kennedy band in the parade is a fire engine, and its deafeningly loud horn catches everyone by surprise. Iris looks into Cole's stroller to check on him, but the noise hasn't awakened Cole - the boy is deaf. The revelation drives a wedge between Glenn and his son, as it seems that his son cannot understand what he does. A more somber Glenn teaches his students about Beethoven, the deaf composer.Time passes, and we see a montage of events from the late '60s, as Glenn picks away as his composition a little at a time and watches Iris work with Cole. We stop again in the early '70s, with Glenn still directing his high school band. Cole is old enough to enter school. Because of her mounting frustration with her inability to communicate with Cole, she insists on sending him to a special school for the deaf, whatever the cost. The three of them visit the school. Glenn winces at the cost, but they enroll Cole and set about to learn sign language themselves, though Iris puts more effort into it than Glenn.Apathetic students still go through Glenn's classes, and one of them, named Stadler, is stoned. Glenn is chewing him out when Glenn receives bad news. He tells Stadler to meet him on Saturday. On that day, they appear at a funeral. Louis Russ has come home from Vietnam after being killed in action. Coach Meister is there, and he and Glenn mourn. At the end of that academic year, Bill reveals that he finally has a steady girl-friend, and Principal Jacobs retires from the high school, praising Glenn for what he has done.We see another montage of events, this time in the 1970s. Glenn continues teaching Driver's Ed in the summer. We see the class of 1980 being welcomed back, suggesting that it is now September 1979. Glenn and Bill Meister team up to help the Drama Department, when it is rumored that funding may be pulled. Glenn and Bill tell Wolters, now the principal, have an idea to be certain the school will make money rather than lose it; it will be a musical revue of Gershwin classics. During auditions for the musical revue, Glenn becomes entranced and interested in a talented young singer named Rowena Morgan. At home, the teenage Cole comes home and tells Glenn about the science fair, which Glenn missed. Iris is fluent at sign language now, but Glenn is still only fair. Iris reproaches him for spending so much time with the school projects and the students while neglecting his own son. Glenn is frustrated, realizing that his own musical composing has been on the back burner for 15 years now.Rowena visits Glenn at a diner, where he has gotten into the habit of going to get out of the house and have someplace quiet to work. Unknown to Iris, Glenn writes a small piece that he titles "Rowena's Theme," and takes an interest when Rowena states that she wants to leave town and go to New York to sing professionally. Glenn's life at home is still strained. Iris agrees to come to the school play on Saturday, because she had a meeting with Cole's teachers on opening night (Friday).The school revue arrives at last, and is a big hit, playing to a packed house. In the audience we see Coach Meister wearing a ring (he married the woman we saw earlier), and Sarah, the drama teacher, shows Principal Wolters something on a new invention, a handheld calculator (presumably, showing him how much gate money made it into the school coffers, as Wolters looks impressed). After the revue, Rowena comes to see Glenn in the auditorium, and she tells him she intends to pursue her dream of singing by going to New York the very next night, after the second and last performance of the revue. Glenn is taken aback. Rowena hints that she'd like Glenn to come with her. Glenn goes home and looks at his photo album, looking at pictures of his family and pictures of his old life as a traveling musician, now half a lifetime in the past. He is tempted to leave everything behind and go with Rowena to restore his old life as a musician. However, he realizes he is no longer the same person as he was then. He visits Rowena at the bus stop and sees her off, giving her the names of someone in New York who will help her find lodging. Glenn watches her depart, and goes home, content in his love for Iris.The timeline then shifts to late 1980, when John Lennon is killed. Glenn goes home and finds Cole working on Glenn's old Corvair. When Cole asks what is wrong, Glenn tries to explain, but then gives up, feeling that his son wouldn't understand John Lennon or his music. This infuriates Cole who (through Iris), explains that he does care about Glenn and knows about John Lennon, but that Glenn does not seem to be at all interested in communicating with him. Cole berates his father for putting so much effort in to teaching his students and very little towards him, calling him an asshole in sign language as he stalks off. Glenn then makes an effort, and even provides a concert at the high school, which also features lights and other items to enhance the show for deaf members of the school where Cole attends. Glenn, having become somewhat more proficient in sign language, even does an interpretation of Lennon's song 'Beautiful Boy,' dedicated to Cole. Later, Glenn discovers Cole listening to records by sitting on the speakers and feeling the vibrations through his body, and they can start healing the rift between them, even as Glenn's composition continues to gather dust.Time passes. It's now 1995. Glenn goes to see Principal Wolters, who announces that Art, Music and Drama have been cut from the school curriculum, and Glenn would be out of a job shortly. Glenn, who has become a cynical old man, tells Wolters that to cut the fine arts would lead to a generation of students who would be proficient at reading and writing and math (maybe) but would have nothing to read or write about. Wolters offers to write Glenn a reference, but Glenn, who is now 60 years old, fully recognizes the futility of the gesture. His working days are over and he knows it. Then he looks up at the picture on the wall of the long-departed former Principal Jacobs. He says Jacobs would have fought the budget cuts, and he will too. Glenn pleads to the school board to reconsider, but they refuse.At home, Iris reads a letter from the now-grown Cole. He has become a teacher himself, and was considering an offer from a university for the deaf in Washington, D.C. He also has taken Glenn's old car, the Corvair that we saw at the beginning and that Cole was working on in his teens, and jokingly writes that he will never give it back. Despondent, Glenn walks through the school on his last day, and he talks to Coach Bill, whose job as football coach is safe, though he can't be far from retirement himself. Glenn figures that he will bring in some money teaching piano lessons on the side, but he's unprepared to be forced into early retirement.On Glenn's final day at the school, Cole shows up driving the Corvair. School's out for him, too. Glenn is surprised when Iris and Cole lead him to the school auditorium, where they have organized a surprise going-away celebration for him. He sees many of his former students in the audience, including Stadler, the pothead from years before. Arriving next is Gertrude Lang, the clarinetist who Glenn helped in the 60s, who has since become the state's governor. Gertrude thanks Glenn for his dedication, and Glenn is very moved. He is moved to tears when she gives him a baton and asks him to conduct his own composition, which she had got hold of. The curtains open and a band, filled with more of Glenn's former students, is assembled and ready to play. Governor Lang picks up her clarinet and takes her place among them, and they play, for the first time, the musical Opus that Glenn had been picking away at for three decades. | inspiring, romantic, stupid, feel-good | tt0113862 |
Scarface | In May 1980, a Cuban man named Tony Montana (Al Pacino) claims asylum, in Florida, USA, and is in search of the "American Dream" after departing Cuba in the Mariel boatlift of 1980. When questioned by three tough-talking INS officials, they notice a tattoo on Tony's left arm of a black heart with a pitchfork through it, which identifies him as a hitman, and detain him in a camp called 'Freedomtown' with other Cubans, including Tony's best friend and former Cuban Army buddy Manolo "Manny Ray" Ribiera (Steven Bauer), under the local I-95 expressway while the government evaluates their visa petitions.After 30 days of governmental dithering and camp rumors, Manny receives an offer from the Cuban Mafia which he quickly relays to Tony. If they kill Emilio Rebenga (Roberto Contreras) a former aide to Fidel Castro who is now detained in Freedomtown, they will receive green cards. Tony agrees, and kills Rebenga during a riot at Freedomtown. The murder of Rebenga was requested by Frank López, a wealthy, politically astute man who deals cars and trades in cocaine, as Rebenga had tortured López's brother to death while still in Cuba many years earlier.After getting their Green Cards, Tony Montana and Manny Ray find work as dishwashers in a corner sandwich/taco shop. Some weeks later, a López henchman and underboss, Omar Suárez (F. Murray Abraham), the man who contacted Manny for the Rebenga hit job, offers Tony and Manny a low-risk job of unloading marijuana from a boat from Mexico to arrive in Miami the following night for $500 each. Tony insults Suárez by turning down the job over the little money they will receive, and demands at least $1,000 for the work. After an altercation, Suárez sets Tony up on another job to purchase two kilograms of cocaine worth around $25,000 a piece from a Colombian dealer, named Hector The Toad, a medium to high-risk job for which Tony and Manny will receive $5,000 for their work.That weekend, Tony, Manny, and two other Marielitos in his crew whom they met in Freedomtown, Angel Fernández (Pepe Serna), and Chi Chi (Ángel Salazar) then set out to meet "Hector the Toad" (Al Israel) at a seedy motel on the boulevard in Miami Beach. While Manny and Chi Chi wait in the car on the street, Tony and Angel go up to the hotel room to meet with Hector. The meeting does not go smoothly, as Tony grows irritated with Hector, who is slow to give him the cocaine in exchange for money. Suddenly, Tony and Angel are double-crossed by the Colombian. It becomes apparent that Hector does not intend to sell Tony the cocaine he has; he only wants to steal the money Tony has been given to purchase the product. To convince Tony to give over the cash, Hector dismembers Angel in a shower stall with a chainsaw. After Angel is dead, Tony, about to suffer the same fate, is saved by Chi Chi and Manny who arrive in the nick of time to gun down Hector's henchmen. Manny receives a minor bullet wound in his shoulder when his Uzi sub-machine gun jams. Hector escapes but Tony vengefully confronts him in the street and shoots him dead in the middle of the crowded Ocean Drive (the now famous Miami South Beach boulevard). Tony and his crew then get away with both the cocaine and the money before the police arrive.The following night, Tony and Manny meet López (Robert Loggia) at his house for the first time where Tony impresses Lopez with not only the return of his cash but with a gift of the cocaine, a prize from the botched rip off. Frank immediately hires Tony and his crew into his criminal hierarchy, a representative of a Cuban mafia. But during this initial get together Tony also meets Lopez's lady, the blond and beautiful Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer), who will eventually become the source of tension between the two men. Taking Tony and Manny out to a local nightclub, called The Babylon Club where Frank frequently attends, Tony and Manny see first-hand the high standard of living they have come to acquire. Though Frank actually warns against these excesses, Tony is seduced by them regardless. Thus, Tony Montana begins his rise through the ranks of the Miami cocaine underworld.Three months later. Tony Montana attempts to make amends by meeting with his estranged family. It is implied that Tony's father, a former U.S. Navy sailor, abandoned the family when Tony was little. Since then, his mother (Miriam Colon) and younger 19-year-old sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) have been living in Miami. Tony shows up at his mother's and Gina's house one evening, fashionably dressed, and offers them $1,000 in cash for financial support. Gina is overjoyed to see her older brother whom they have not seen for five years. But Tony's mother has only scorn for him since he turned his back on them many years ago for the quick and easy life of crime back in Cuba, and wants nothing to do with Tony, and she is too full of pride to accept his money despite being financially stricken. But Gina, who idolizes her brother, follows him outside where he slips her the money secretly. Gina tells Tony that she wants in on the flashy life that he has going for him. Tony's love for Gina is clearly genuine for she's the only person that he trusts, and is also very protective of her. Afterwords, Manny makes a comment to Tony about how attractive Gina is, but Tony angrily warns him to avoid courting her.Several months later, Tony is sent to Bolivia to help Omar set up a new distribution deal with Bolivian kingpin Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), since Frank is having legal troubles that preclude him from leaving the country. Though Tony was supposed to let Omar do all the talking, Omar proves to be a poor negotiator, prompting Tony to step in and save the deal. They seem to negotiate a deal that, on the surface seems favorable to both sides, but Omar insists that Frank would not approve. Sosa then sides with Omar on this and suggests that Omar use his phone to call Frank. A few minutes later, Sosa hands Tony binoculars, and he sees two menacing assassins, Alberto the Shadow (Mark Margolis) and the Skull (Geno Silva), execute Omar by hanging him by the neck from an airborne helicopter. Sosa reveals that Alberto recognized Omar as once being an informant for the police several years ago, and he has a zero tolerance for disloyalty. Tony insists that he never goes back on his word, and that he never trusted Omar. Sosa agrees to bring Tony on board with him as his North American distributor of cocaine and other drugs. But upon their agreement, Sosa sternly warns Tony never to betray or double-cross him in any way.Upon his return to Florida, Tony is chewed out by Frank for overstepping his authority as well as hearing about Omar's death. Tony explains to Frank that for a price of $18 million to pay Sosa for the manufacturing and transportation costs, they will receive 2,000 kilograms of cocaine from Bolivia for nationwide sale and distribution which will earn them $75 million over a period of one year. Frank is worried because he does not have the many millions to pay Sosa for the cocaine, but Tony says that he is in tight with Sosa and he has established a "credit line" with him as well as work out a payment plan where they will pay Sosa $5 million up front and the rest in monthly installments. Plus, in case Frank comes up short a few million, Tony will earn the money needed through his own street contacts. Frank angrily tells Tony that he did not negotiate a good deal, for Sosa merely tricked him into thinking he did. Tony replies that it's time for them to "think big," and to expand the cartel for nationwide distribution of cocaine. With them as the main North American distributors and wholesalers of the Sosa cartel, they will make millions and become the biggest cartel in the continent. Frank warns Tony that Sosa cannot be trusted and that he will sooner or later turn against them for any slight deviation or compromise of his business. Frank orders Tony to stall his deal with Sosa for the time being. Frank then promptly tells Tony that ambitious drug dealers, such at himself, who want too much and crave money, power and attention, do not last long in the business. Tony leaves shrugging with indifference and strikes out on his own.(Note: Frank López's two warnings about Tony's greed and Sosa's violence will be later proven true.)After this incident, Tony then seeks out Elvira to whom he makes an unexpected marriage proposal. She is shaken by this, but agrees to think about it. Frank López is none too happy when he hears about this and decides to take out Tony.At the Babylon nightclub that evening, Tony is approached and shaken down by a Miami police detective, named Mel Bernstein (Harris Yulin). He proposes to "tax" Tony on his transactions in return for police protection and information. Tony is distracted by the sight of Gina dancing with a local drug dealer. He follows the two to a restroom stall where he berates Gina for her promiscuous conduct. He asks Manny to take her home. On the way Gina admits she is attracted to Manny. Manny wards her off, mindful of Tony's extreme protectiveness.Back at the nightclub, Tony is attacked by two gunmen but manages to escape, killing them both despite being wounded by a gunshot to his left shoulder. Suspecting Frank sent Bernstein and the hitmen, Tony asks one of his bodyguards, Nick The Pig, to call Frank after Tony arrives at Frank's office at 3:00 a.m. that very night and inform him the hit failed. Tony, Manny and Chi Chi visit Frank at his car dealership back office, who is with Det. Bernstein. Nick calls Frank, who confirms his involvement by playing the call off as Elvira telling him she'll be late home. When it becomes apparent that Bernstein (who is armed) will not help him, Frank begs for Tony's forgiveness, saying that he can have Elvira and ten million dollars in exchange for sparing his life. Tony will have none of it, and Manny coldly executes Frank. Bernstein insists that he could be a valuable ally for Tony, but Tony disagrees, and kills him too.His problems apparently solved, Tony begins a profitable relationship with Sosa, marries Elvira, buys a new mansion complete with surveillance cameras and numerous luxury items, and Tony even sets Gina up in business with her own beauty salon. Manny and Gina soon begin a romantic relationship, but they keep it secret from Tony who had firmly stated to Gina that he does not want her dating anybody.As Tony's business grows, so does his cocaine addiction and paranoia, and he begins to spiral out of control... the beginning of the end. His wife, who becomes further addicted to cocaine, becomes bored and emotionally distant. Tony's banker informs him that laundering the increasing flow of drug money has become increasingly difficult, so he will be charging higher fees, up to 10%. A Jewish mob boss, Mel Seidelbaum (Ted Beniades), contacts Manny, offering his assistance. However, as they are cleaning out the money, Seidelbaum reveals himself to be an undercover cop and arrests Tony. After posting a $5 million in bail, Tony's corrupt lawyer, Sheffield, tells him that although he may get him cleared of the corruption and money laundering charges, Tony will probably have to serve at least three years in prison for tax evasion. Manny suggests that he take it, as the American prison system is nowhere near as harsh as its Cuban counterpart, and the right legal loopholes could trim the sentence down to six months. However, the strung-out Tony yells that he would rather die than spend a single day in jail.After hearing about Tony's arrest, Sosa, not wanting to lose his main distributor, steps in to intervene by offering Tony a way out of going to prison. He calls Tony back to Bolivia where he introduces him to his cocaine "board of directors" a group that includes a sugar baron, Bolivia's military chief, and a mysterious American named Charles Goodson (Gregg Henry). We assume he is a corrupt CIA officer because Sosa guarantees that the IRS will not be able to send Tony to jail. But this help comes at a price. A Bolivian journalist is attempting to expose the ongoing corruption in the Bolivian government involvement in drug trafficking, and his crusade is beginning to hurt Sosa and his partners. Sosa will be sending Alberto to New York assassinate the journalist, but he needs Tony and his crew to provide some extra muscle. Tony is clearly disturbed by the assassination since it is against his custom to kill a man whom he sees as a civilian, plus Tony has never killed anybody who didn't wrong him personally. But seeing no other options, Tony reluctantly agrees to help Sosa with the hit.In the meantime, Tony's marriage with Elvira finally ends when after a bitter altercation at a local restaurant, she finally expresses her contempt for him and the lives he had led her on, and walks out of the restaurant, and out of his life. Tony, punch-drunk on cocaine, tells the restaurant's other patrons that his existence is necessary since society needs a man like him to call a criminal. Tony also informs Manny to look after things while he travels to New York on business (but he doesn't tell him about the Sosa assassination deal.)Tony, with his henchmen, Chi Chi and Reuben, and Alberto travel to New York City and Alberto places a bomb under the journalist's car in with the intention of detonating it outside the UN building before the journalist addresses the General Assembly and exposes Sosa's cartel. But Tony has second thoughts when the journalist unexpectedly picks up his wife and children. Tony, saying that the team was only supposed to kill only the journalist, shoots Alberto to prevent the journalist's family from being killed. When authorities later discover the unexploded bomb underneath the journalist's car, they realize that an execution had been planned and increase the amount of security protecting the journalist. Sosa is now the primary suspect and Sosa vows to get even with Tony.Returning to Miami, Tony discovers that Gina and Manny (who opposed the trip to New York) have disappeared. Tony has long harbored an apparent unnatural obsession for his sister and is overly protective of her for reasons that he may not understand himself. Tony visits his mother again where she angrily tells him about Gina's descent into an immoral life and accuses him of corrupting her with his flashy lifestyle. After getting Gina's home address from Mrs. Montana, who doesn't know who else lives there, Tony goes to the house in nearby Palm Grove. Much to Tony's surprise, Manny unexpectedly opens the door in his bathrobe. Tony then sees Gina in a night gown at the top of the stairs. Enraged that another man has obviously slept with his sister, Tony shoots Manny dead. Hysterical, Gina reveals to Tony that they had just been married and were going to surprise him. Tony, riddled with guilt, has Gina taken back to his mansion.In revenge for Tony's failure to kill the journalist, who has now exposed Sosa and his partners to the world as drug lords, Sosa sends a Latino mercenary hit squad (the size of a large platoon), to Tony's mansion to kill him that very evening. Sitting at his desk snorting from an enormous pile of cocaine, Tony realizes and regrets what he has done to his best friend. When Tony is contemplating his actions, Sosa's mercenaries breach the main gate at Tony's estate and quietly begin to kill all the guards around the mansion. At the same time, a distraught Gina, wearing only an unbuttoned sleep shirt and armed with a revolver, enters Tony's office to confront him with the truth about his feelings for her. She now realizes that Tony loves her in an unnatural way and demands, at gunpoint, that he make love to her. She begins to shoot at him while demanding he take her. A Sosa assassin hiding on the balcony, thinking Gina is shooting at him, leaps in and riddles her with bullets. An enraged Tony throws the man off the balcony and kills him with his sub-machine gun creating a storm of chaos at the mansion. At this point, the mercenaries, robbed of the element of surprise by the gunshots, swarm in to attack Tony's mansion from all directions.As all his men are being killed, Tony, still delirious from the cocaine, leans over Gina's dead body begging for forgiveness, at the same time the mercs break into the mansion, Chi Chi opens fire with an Uzi as he falls back and ends up banging on the door to Tony's office (it has been locked from the inside by Gina who was planning to kill Tony). Unfortunately, Tony does not seem to hear him. Chi Chi is shot in the back and Tony sees it on the security cameras.As the hit men prepare to storm his office, Tony finally snaps out of his drug-induced state, arms himself with an AR-15 assault rifle with an under-mounted M203 grenade launcher and blows down the door. A huge climatic gun battle begins as Tony takes position atop the grand staircase and guns down dozens of Sosa's men who try to storm the balcony. Tony is hit a number of times by return fire, but he keeps shooting. With most of Sosa's men dead, Tony, strung-out on drugs, defiantly yells out at the assassins, not realizing that the Skull has sneaked into the room behind him. The Skull shoots Tony in the back with a 12-Gauge shotgun. Tony falls off the balcony and into a reflecting pool at the base of the grand staircase. In the final shot, as the Skull and the few surviving assassins look on, Tony Montana lies dead... face down in the reflecting pool which is located below a large brass globe that says: THE WORLD IS YOURS. | cruelty, murder, dramatic, cult, violence, atmospheric, action, romantic, revenge, sadist | tt0086250 |
A Single Man | George Falconer (Colin Firth) approaches a car accident in the middle of a snow-white scenery. There is a bloodied man there and he kisses him. He wakes up: he was dreaming about the moment when his partner of 16 years, Jim (Mathew Goode), died--though he was not there with him because Jim was visiting his disapproving family on his own. George remembers the phone ringing on that fateful day, when Jim's cousin told him about the fatal accident, and how George was not welcome to attend the funeral, because of the family's homophobia (common for the period and later). George remembers breaking down to Charley (Julianne Moore) that day, his best friend from his life in London, who had also relocated to LA; once briefly sexually attached to George before he was completely honest with himself, she may still feel attracted to him.George showers and dresses. It's November 30, 1962, the eve of the Cuban missile crisis. Though British, he is now a professor of English at UCLA. He is depressed, never having recovered from his loss; and when he leaves for work, he packs a gun in his briefcase.He tells his cleaning lady Alva (Paulette Lamori) that she has always been wonderful - in spite of her having forgotten to take out the bread from the fridge. George hugs her, which leaves her utterly confused.On campus, George notices a couple of students, chain-smoking Lois (Nicole Steinwedell) and a boy. One of the secretaries (Keri Lynn Pratt) tells him that she has given his address to some nice new student; it turns out to be this boy, Kenny Potter (Nicholas Hoult), who talks to him after class about the speech George has just given out in the classroom concerning minorities and fear. Kenny discusses recreational drug use with Kenny who tells him that he had never heard George express himself so openly in class as he had that day. He buys George a pencil sharpener as a token of gratitude for George's talking with him.George phones Charley, who is dressing for the dinner they have planned at her home. George gets into his car, and picks his gun after having cleaned up his office. However, Kenny appears once again, and invites him to go for a drink, observing George's depression and having noticed that he has cleaned out the desk in his office. George tells him it will have to be some other time. He goes to the bank to pick up various things from his safe deposit box, and when looking at a photo of his deceased lover, recalls a conversation with him on the beach.After buying some bullets, he goes to a convenience store. There, Carlos (Jon Kortajarena) bumps onto him, breaking the bottle of Scotch he has just bought. George buys a new bottle of Scotch and they talk. They smoke a few cigarettes and drink a bottle of gin together. George leaves, refusing Carlos' offer of company, saying that this is a serious day for him and that he's trying to get over an old love.At home, he puts on a record and remembers a conversation with Jim while each one was reading a different book on a couch. He pretends shooting himself as practice for later that night, but in a semi-comic scene, can't find the best position in which to accomplish it. Charley calls to remind him of their dinner plans, which he grudgingly attends after leaving a note and some money for Alva. They dance and talk about London, life, Charley's ex-husband's abandonment, and she offends George by suggesting that they might have had a "normal" life together if he hadn't been a "poof." Charley says George doesn't look well, reminding him of the heart attack he suffered near the time of Jim's death. Charley tries to convince George to spend the night at her home, but he leaves.The scene flashes back to 1946 when Jim and George had met when at a bar. Jim was on leave from the Army, right after the second world war. Returning to1962, we see George returning to the same bar, near his home; now a quiet place where he asks for a Scotch.Kenny has followed him there. They talk and then go to the beach and swim naked. They go to George's place. As George's forehead is bleeding, Kenny tends to it, and sees in the medicine's cabinet a nude photo of Jim. George sees Kenny strip off his wet clothes, but does nothing. Kenny says that he and Lois are not romantically involved. Not unlike George and Charley in the distant past, Kenny explains that they had a brief sexual liason. Kenny and George do not have sex, and Kenny stays on the couch, given the very late hour.George wakes in a few hours, and finds his gun under Kenny's covers and removes it, locking it up as Kenny sleeps. When he returns to bed, George dies of a heart attack, seeing the image of Jim kissing his forehead. | romantic, queer, flashback | tt1315981 |
Baise-moi | Baise-moi tells the story of Nadine and Manu who go on a violent spree against a society in which they feel marginalized. Nadine is a part-time sex worker, and Manu a slacker who does anything—including occasional porn film acting—to get by in her small town in southern France.
One day, Manu and her friend, a drug addict, are accosted in the park by three men, who take them to a garage and gang-rape them. While her friend struggles, screams, and fights against the rapists, Manu lies still with a detached look, which troubles the man raping her, who soon gives up. When her friend asks Manu how she could act so detached, she replies that she "can't prevent anyone from penetrating her pussy", so she didn't leave anything precious in there. Manu then returns to her brother's house, and does not tell him what has happened, but noticing bruises on her neck, he realizes. He gets out a gun and asks Manu who was responsible, but when she refuses to tell him, he calls her a "slut" and implies that she actually enjoyed being raped. In response, picking up the discarded pistol, Manu shoots him in the head.
Meanwhile, Nadine returns home and has an argument with her roommate, whom she strangles and kills, before leaving with their rent money. Nadine suffers another emotional setback when she meets her best friend, a drug dealer, in another town, but he is shot and killed while out obtaining drugs with a prescription she forged for him.
Later that night, having missed the last train, Nadine meets Manu at the railway station. Manu says she has a car, if Nadine will drive for her. They soon realize that they share common feelings of anger, and embark on a violent and sexually charged road trip together.
In need of money, the girls hold up a shop and also kill a woman at a cash machine. In a stolen car, they are pulled over for a random check by police, whom they kill. Another woman, who was also being checked and saw the murders, flees with them. The women stay over at their new friend's house, whose brother provides the address and details of an architect with whom he has had trouble. The women trick their way into the architect's house and kill him. Finally, after this spree of murder and sexual activity, the two women enter a swingers' club. One of the patrons makes a racist comment to Manu. The women kill most of the patrons there, and use a gun to anally penetrate the racist man, finally shooting him. The pair discuss what they have done, and agree that it has all been pointless because nothing has changed in them.
During their spree, the duo's crimes are reported by the press, and become a point of fascination for the entire country, with some people actually supporting them, and others afraid of them. When Manu enters a roadside tire shop to get some coffee, she is shot by the shop owner, who is then shot by Nadine outside. Nadine takes Manu's body to a forest and burns it, before driving to a beach. With tears in her eyes, Nadine puts the gun to her head, intending to commit suicide, but gets arrested by the police before she can do so. | gothic, cruelty, violence, cult, revenge, sadist | tt0249380 |
Flightplan | Kyle Pratt (Jodie Foster) is a propulsion engineer based in Berlin, Germany. Her husband David (John Benjamin Hickey) died from falling off the roof of an avionic manufacturing building, and now Kyle and her six year-old daughter Julia (Marlene Lawston) are flying home to Long Island to bury him and stay with Kyle's parents. They fly aboard a passenger aircraft, an Elgin 474, which Kyle helped design. After falling asleep for a few hours, Kyle wakes to find that Julia is missing. After trying to remain calm at first, she begins to panic, and Captain Marcus Rich (Sean Bean) is forced to conduct a search. Kyle walks the aisles, questioning people, but none of her fellow passengers remember having seen her daughter. One of the flight attendants calls in to the airport they just departed from and, shockingly, the gate attendant says that they have no record of Julia boarding the flight. In addition, according to the passenger manifest, Julia's seat is registered empty. When Kyle checks for Julia's boarding pass, it is missing.Marcus refuses to allow the cargo hold to be searched because the searchers could be hurt if the plane shifted due to turbulence. Both Marcus and the other crew members suspect that Kyle has become unhinged by her husband's recent death, and has imagined bringing her daughter aboard. One flight attendant Stephanie (Kate Beahan) is exceptionally unsympathetic. Faced with the crew's increasing skepticism regarding her daughter's existence, Kyle becomes more and more desperate. Because of her increasingly erratic, panicked behavior, air marshal Gene Carson (Peter Sarsgaard) is ordered by Marcus to guard and handcuff her.Later on, Marcus receives a wire from the hospital in Berlin. It says that Julia was with her father when he fell off the roof, and she also died of internal injuries. Kyle furiously denies that, consistently claiming that she brought Julia aboard. The crew now believes she is delusional and she is brought back to her seat by Air Marshal Carson. A therapist (Greta Scacchi) on board tries to console her, causing Kyle for a moment to doubt her own sanity until she notices that a heart Julia had drawn earlier on the window next to her seat is real. Kyle is emboldened and convinces the therapist to let her use the bathroom. With her handcuffs now removed, she climbs into the upper compartment and sabotages the aircraft's electronics, deploying the oxygen masks and interrupting lighting. Some passengers brawl with the red herring Arab passengers on board. She uses the chaos to take an elevator to the lower freight deck. She desperately searches for Julia and finally opens her husband's casket to which she emotionally breaks down. Carson finds her and escorts her back.Kyle makes a final plea to Carson that she needs to search the plane upon landing. Carson considers for a moment, then "goes to speak to the captain," against flight attendant Stephanie's command (they are landing), leaving the audience to momentarily believe he is sympathetic. Instead, he sneaks back into the freight deck to remove two small explosives and a detonator concealed in David's casket. He then climbs down to a part of the avionics section, revealing Julia is sleeping (presumably drugged) with her coat and backpack that no one could find. He attaches the explosives to the side of the platform and arms them. At this point, it is revealed that Carson, Stephanie, and the coroner in Berlin (Christian Berkel) are the antagonists and part of a conspiracy. Carson tells the captain that Kyle is a hijacker and is threatening to blow up the aircraft with explosives hidden in the un-X-rayed casket unless the airline transfers $50,000,000 into a bank account. It is revealed that the conspirators killed Kyle's husband and abducted Julia in order to frame Kyle. Carson tells an unnerved Stephanie that he intends to blow up the aircraft's avionics section, killing the unconscious Julia, and leave Kyle dead with the detonator in her hand.After making an emergency landing at Goose Bay Airport in Goose Bay, Labrador, the passengers exit the aircraft as the tarmac is surrounded by U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents (though the airport is properly Royal Canadian Mounted Police jurisdiction). As the captain is leaving, Kyle runs to speak to him with Carson in tow. The captain demands she give up her charade, revealing Carson's deception. Quickly playing the role of hijacker, Kyle demands that Carson stay on board and the crew disembark.As soon as the plane's door closes, Kyle knocks Carson unconscious with a fire extinguisher, handcuffs him to a rail, and takes the detonator from his pocket. Stephanie comes out of hiding and Kyle screams "she's in avionics isn't she?" Carson quickly regains consciousness and fires at Kyle with a concealed gun, sending her running. He chases after Kyle shooting, until she locks herself in the cockpit. He reveals his conspiracy to talk her out. She opens a hatch door to the upper level and throws out a binder to fool him. Carson hears the upstairs thud and leaves. Kyle exits and encounters a guilt-ridden Stephanie slapping her palm with a large flashlight. Kyle talks her down and punches her out. Stephanie panics and flees the plane, abandoning Carson who looks on.Kyle during this time searches avionics and finally finds the unconscious Julia. Carson soon follows, and while searching, tells her how he gagged and dumped her daughter into the food bin. He disparages the people aboard who would never care enough to notice. Carson points his gun to where Julia lay before, but they're not there. He turns around and sees Kyle carrying Julia, escaping through a small door with the detonator in hand. Carson shoots at her as she closes the door. She detonates the explosives, killing Carson. The compartment she and Julia hid in was non-combustible, which keeps them safe. Kyle, carrying Julia, exits via a cargo door. Everyone watches in shock and amazement as Kyle carries her daughter out onto the tarmac.Later in the passenger waiting section of the airport, Marcus apologizes to a seated Kyle holding Julia in her arms. Stephanie is led away by FBI agents and more agents approach Kyle, asking her to identify the morgue director in Berlin who has been detained. She carries Julia still unconscious through the crowd of passengers, silently redeeming herself. One of the Arab passengers (Michael Irby) helps pick up her bag, a symbolic act of respect and forgiveness. Before loading her daughter into a van to take them away, Julia wakes up and sleepily asks "Are we there yet?" as they drive away.
In this movie appears Christian Berkel who will later play the role of Fritz Shimon Haber in Haber. | mystery, suspenseful, action, murder, flashback | tt0408790 |
Little Caesar | Small-time Italian-American criminals Caesar Enrico "Rico" Bandello (Edward G. Robinson) and his friend Joe Massara (Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.) move from New York to Chicago to seek their fortunes. Rico joins the gang of Sam Vettori (Stanley Fields), while Joe wants to be a dancer. Olga (Glenda Farrell) becomes his dance partner and girlfriend at the local taxi dance club.Joe tries to drift away from the gang and its activities including running several speakeasys and illegal gambling casinos, but Rico (whom the gang now refers to by his nickname 'Little Caesar') makes him participate in the robbery of the nightclub where he works. Despite orders from underworld overlord "Big Boy" (Sidney Blackmer) to all his men to avoid bloodshed, Rico guns down crusading police crime commissioner Alvin McClure during the robbery, with Joe as an aghast witness.Rico accuses Sam of becoming soft and seizes control of his organization. Rival boss "Little Arnie" Storch (Maurice Black) tries to have Rico killed, but Rico is only grazed by a bullet during a drive-by shooting. Rico and his gunmen pay Little Arnie a visit, after which Arnie hastily departs for Detroit. The Big Boy eventually gives Rico control of all of Chicago's Northside.Some months later, Rico becomes concerned that Joe knows too much about him. He warns Joe that he must forget about Olga, and join him in a life of crime. Rico threatens to kill both Joe and Olga unless he accedes, but Joe refuses to give in. Olga calls Police Sergeant Flaherty and tells him Joe is ready to talk, just before Rico and his henchman Otero (George E. Stone) come calling. Rico finds, to his surprise, that he is unable to take his friend's life. When Otero tries to do the job himself, Rico wrestles the gun away from him, though not before Joe is wounded. Hearing the shot, Flaherty and another cop give chase and kill Otero. With the information provided by Joe, Flaherty proceeds to crush Rico's organization.Desperate and alone, Rico retreats to the gutter from which he sprang. A few weeks later, while hiding in a flophouse, he becomes enraged when he learns that Flaherty has called him a coward in the newspaper. He foolishly telephones the cop to announce he is coming for him. The call is traced to the phone booth where Rico is. He runs from the police and hides behind a large billboard. Refusing to surrender, Flaherty personally shoots at the billboard with a tommy gun. Ironically, the billboard shows an advertisement featuring dancers Joe and Olga. The police walk around the billboard to find Rico dying on the ground who with his last breath mutters, "Mother of mercy... is this the end of Rico?" | violence | tt0021079 |
Savages | The movie begins with a video being shot of men with their hands tied behind their backs. An enforcer, who we learn later is Lado (Benicio Del Toro) wears a skull Lucha libre mask and runs a chainsaw.Next, there is a shot of an attractive young blonde woman named 'O' (short for Ophelia, played by Blake Lively) as she narrates in a voice-over. The love of her life is two men: Ben (Aaron Johnson) and Chon (Taylor Kitsch). To her, Ben is like warm wood, the idealistic Buddhist; Chon is steel, the baddhist. O is in a polyamorous relationship with both men, and the three live together in Laguna Beach, California in a luxurious cliff-side house for which Ben paid with cash. Ben and Chon are high school buddies. Ben went to Berkeley and majored in business and botany. Chon was a Navy Seal with tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. One day, lounging on the beach, Ben asks Chon where you can get the best weed. Chon replies Afghanistan, and during a tour there, smuggles out hashish/marijuana seeds from which Ben grows in a greenhouse, using his scientific knowledge, cannabis with a THC yield of 33%, "the best in the world." They met O when they hired her to help with managing the greenhouse. Ben is the businessman who runs the production and distribution and handles 99% of the business, while Chon handles the 1% (enforcement). Ben's philosophy is to provide what people want, but Chon is the realist in seeing the money made from marijuana. Ben does a lot of humanitarian work, and sells to marijuana clubs and dispensaries, for medical usage, but most of the money is made from selling on the street, where it goes for about $6,000 a pound.After making love to O, Chon sees on his computer an e-mail. The e-mail has a video of Lado kicking around the decapitated heads and reads: "These guys were stupid. Be smarter We need to talk." O and Chon greet Ben returning from a volunteerism trip to Africa. Chon and Ben discuss the business. Ben wants to give up the business to the Mexican cartel as he wants to go into philanthropic ventures such as making $10 solar panels, and he admits he's afraid of the cartel. But Chon argues that selling would show weakness, and once they do this, the cartel would usurp their whole lives.We see Lado and his 'gardening crew' carry out a hit. Lado accosts a middleman (Shea Whigham) in his home. The middleman pleads forgiveness and promises an even better deal than paying up. He calls El Azul (Joaquin Cosio) (Spanish for The Blue), a cartel head honcho, to connect him with Lado, but Lado shoots the middleman and has a teenage cartel-member-in-training, Esteban, shoot the middleman's wife, while El Azul is on the phone, enraging him. The gardening crew smuggles the bodies out of the house in trash bins. We learn that El Azul is a former inside man with the Baja cartel, the cartel Lado works for. The head of the Baja cartel, Elena Sanchez (Salma Hayek), had a falling-out with El Azul, and now El Azul is encroaching on the Baja cartel's territory, threatening to take over her position.Meanwhile, Ben and Chon meet with Dennis (John Travolta), a corrupt DEA agent on Ben and Chon's payroll. Dennis tells them about the Baja cartel: they want Ben and Chon's market to fill a market they don't have. Dennis urges them to take the deal instead of decapitation; he reminds them that times are changing and they need to adapt. Dennis is sympathetic to them because his wife has cancer and Ben provides him with cannabis to ease the effects of her chemotherapy.Ben and Chon go to a hotel room and meet with Alex (Demian Bichir), the representative for Elena. The meeting is secretly video-recorded by Lado, with the video feed shown to Elena in her Tijuana compound.Alex lays out the deal: a contract of three years of working together, during which the cartel will learn Ben's horticulture methods while providing vast distribution networks and the operation in a safe haven on an Indian reservation that the cartel owns. (The Indian reservations are considered out of U.S. jurisdiction.) During the meeting, Chon badmouths the cartel's products by saying "I think, basically, you want us to eat your shit and call it caviar." Ben and Chon step out into balcony to discuss. We see that a formidable security apparatus, a team of Chon's ex-Navy Seal friends, who have sniper wares trained on the hotel room, backing them. Chon had planned to take out Alex and his men, but Ben talks him out of it. Ben and Chon reach a decision. They will turn over their business to the Cartel, but not join them. The cartel is not happy. (Apparently, no one says 'no' to the Baja cartel.)Fearing the consequences of their decision, Ben meets with his money guy, Spin (Emile Hirsch), an ex-Goldman Sachs banker who launders and invests the marijuana company's money. Ben wants to set up funds to disappear for three years in Indonesia. Ben, Chon, and O have dinner and discuss the plan for their new lives. Unbeknownst to them, they are being watched in the restaurant by Lado's crew. The three celebrate by getting high in their beach house and having a threesome. Lado sits in the car, spying on them. He calls Elena to update her on the situation. Elena says she needs Ben and Chon to join her for their expertise. Hearing about their living situation, she found their weakness: O.The next day, the three prepare to leave for Indonesia. O wants to do a last minute shopping trip and Chon assigns someone from the security team for her. O is driving to South Coast Plaza (an upscale mall in Orange County), but one of Lado's men intercepts the bodyguard and kills him. They tail O. In one scene, O is shopping next to a girl who is talking on a cellphone, answering her mom's questions about college life. Her mom turns out to be Elena.Returning home but not finding O, Ben and Chon hear a chime indicating a Skype call, and to their horror, see a live web feed of the kidnapped O. Elena, her voice masked, reprimands the boys for not complying with the deal. To redress the insult of the cartel's product during the meeting, Elena has Chon put a gun into his mouth, indicating she will tell Lado to cut off two of O's fingers otherwise. She almost gets Chon to pull the trigger but stops him at the last minute, telling him this will clean up his mouth.Elena tells Ben and Chon to deliver 300 pounds of their marijuana in five hours to show compliance. They get the product and race to Chula Vista. They arrive just in time despite being almost pulled over (and Chon almost having to kill the highway patrolman). Lado and his men take their car. Ben and Chon drive back in Lado's truck, which contains the suitcase of money (they paid in full, Ben and Chon note) and a cell phone. Elena calls, her voice unmasked, and tells them that she will hold O hostage for one year to make sure they comply with all of her demands. Chon argues with Ben that they have to fight to get O back -- the cartel members are savages who will kill them anyway. But Ben just wants peace and O back.Ben and Chon meet again with Dennis, who tells them about the conflict between Elena and El Azul. Chon strong-arms Dennis into getting data on Elena and the Baja cartel from the DEA. He is able to get 60 days of financial transactions, encoded onto two credit cards. Dennis also tells them that two of Elena's sons and her daughter (Magdalena), are dead. Back in their company HQ, Ben and Chon have Spin and his experts look into the financial data on the computer. From it, they trace Elena's financial routes. They figure out that one of her real-estate holdings, a trailer house, is a drop off point for the cartel's business. Ben decides on a plan to pay to get O back. He and Elena negotiate to a $13 million ransom. They decide to hijack the drop to get the cash for O's ransom, and make it look like El Azul hit the cartel.The hijacking gets underway. Wearing masks, Chon and his team of ex-Navy Seals blow up the front car in a convoy with IEDs. When the men from the trailer retaliate, an ex-Navy Seal member takes them out with RPG rockets. Chon forces the men out of the car carrying the cash by putting a grenade in the gas tank. He takes the briefcase from a man scrambling out of the car. Ben is horrified by the killings. One of the cartel members is about to shoot Ben, but Chon shoots the member in the back, spraying blood on Ben's mask. They take the money and get away. Alex and Lado arrive to assess the damage, which is 3 million dollars gone and seven men dead. Lado urges Alex not to inform Elena of the loss because he wants to recover the money and rectify the situation himself and because he fears Elena.Ben and Chon get a message to have Ben meet with Alex and Lado. Alex and Lado interrogate Ben to find out their whereabouts during the hijacking but Ben plays it cool. He insinuates that it could be Lado's men. After Ben leaves, Alex decides Ben and Chon don't have the balls for the attack. He suspects El Azul but Lado isn't so sure.We see O at the shack where they are holding her. She is being watched over by Esteban. Her living conditions are bad: one of her legs is chained to a chair, she has a bucket for bathroom and sleeps on a spring bed in a cage. She pleads into the surveillance camera and gets to talk to Elena, and begs her for some concessions. Elena asks O how long she has been using. Since 8th grade, O says, not that her mother cared. Later we see Lado feeding O a steak, and later, giving O a drug fix, and her getting high. O is also given access to a laptop to send a fabricated email to her mother so she won't file a missing persons report on O. Afterwards, Lado tells Esteban, don't look at me like that (because we see later in the movie Lado shows O a cellphone video of him raping her while she was high).Elena's daughter, Magdalena (Sandra Echevarria) is seen having sex when she is interrupted by a phone call. Her mother is on the line, informing her that she is coming to California to visit. Elena gets on a private plane to the Indian reservation in order to avoid U.S. customs. Lado will follow her later, bringing O with him. Before boarding the plane, Lado tells Esteban that he's proven too sensitive to handle the work and proceeds to shoot and kill him.Upon arrival inCalifornia, Lado brings O to Elena. Elena immediately informs Lado that she knows about the hijacking, and chastises him for not telling her. She threatens Lado, telling him to recover the money and he informs her that he didn't tell her because he was trying to get proof that Ben and Chon were behind the hijacking.Ben has Spin fabricate documents and hack into Alex's bank accounts to frame Alex as the mole to El Azul. Ben confronts Lado with Alex's dossier in an effort to take the heat off of him and Chon. To save himself, Lado visits El Azul and makes a deal to work with him.At a posh spa, Elena and O have dinner during which we learn that Elena inherited the business after her husband was killed. Her twin sons and brothers are also killed, leaving two children who resent her and do not want her in their lives (her daughter and a third son). Elena tells O she likes her, but won't hesitate to kill Ben and Chon. When O remarks that only she can 'get Ben and Chon together,' Elena scoffs, telling O that her love story has a serious problem: Ben and Chon must love each other more than O because otherwise, they wouldn't share her.Later, Lado brings Ben and Chon to see Alex being whipped. The torture is video-fed to Elena who forces O to watch once he 'confesses.' Under the threat of his family being harmed, Alex confesses to working with El Azul. He begs Elena for forgiveness, citing the names of her husband and children. Lado douses Alex with gasoline and anoints Ben to be the executioner. To go through with the falsehood, Ben ignites Alex on fire. O watches in horror.The next morning, Ben and Chon walk along the beach where they discuss the night's events. Chon tries to justify what Ben did by referring to the Dalai Lama, but Ben brushes it off. Instead, he tells Chon that during Alex's plea to Elena, Alex swore on Magda's life; meaning that Elena's daughter is alive, and that Dennis knew this and hid it from him and Chon. They make a plan that will work even faster than accumulating the money for ransom: kidnap Elena's daughter and trade her for O.Lado pays Dennis a visit at his home. It turns out Lado also has Dennis on the payroll. Lado questions Dennis on the culprits behind the hijacking and Dennis assures him it was Azul. Lado informs Dennis that it can't be Azul because he's working with him now instead of Elena. Under threat, Dennis reveals that the hijackers are Ben and Chon, but that they are going to give the $3 million to Elena and not Lado. To head off Elena, Dennis tells Lado to kidnap Magda and sell her to Ben and Chon. Dennis is incredulous to learn that Elena is on U.S. soil.Dennis meets with Ben and Chon, who chew him out for giving them away to Lado. The boys offer Dennis the $3 million they stole in exchange for Magdalena's address. They kill her bodyguard, who is sitting outside her dorm in his car, then move inside, tying up her boyfriend and kidnapping her. Wearing masks as a show, they Skype with Elena and show a shivering Magda, tied up and stuffed in an ice box. Elena meekly agrees to their demands. At the end of the talk, O informs Elena that she knew her boys would come for her. Elena slaps O, then screams at everyone to get out. She drops to the ground, rips off her wig, and breaks down.Lado and his boys take O into another room, where she is chained to a chair. Lado makes everyone else leave the room, then he shows her the video he took when he raped her while she was drugged. She spits in his face, but he enjoys it, wiping himself off on her hair.Elena's SUV and Ben and Chon's SUV meet in an open field with their hostages. On the mountain ridges, each group has their sniper team in position. Elena steps into the open with O and releases her. O runs to Ben. Ben and Chon release Magda to Elena, who is told by her daughter that she will never speak to her again. Before Elena returns to her car, she asks Chon who the rat is. Chon smiles and nods toward Lado, who blows back a kiss. Elena turns around to shoot Lado, but Lado draws his gun and shoots her first. O, who was handed a gun by Ben, makes her way to Elena and wants to kill her, but relents when she sees Elena is already dying. Elena begs O to help Magda escape. O glares at Magda briefly before hustling her to safety.A massive shootout is underway. Each group's sniper team shoots at each other, taking out some members of each team. Chon kills Elena's bodyguards and Ben and Chon converge on Lado, hiding behind the SUV. Ben shoots Lado three times in the back, but Lado turns around to shoot Ben in the throat. Lado sprawls on the ground, severely wounded. O shoots Lado dead for revenge, and erases his phone. O rushes to Ben, seeing his wound is lethal. As O cradles Ben, Chon pulls out a syringe and injects Ben, O, and then himself with drug overdoses. They die in a triple suicide. "That's the perfect ending," O narrates while looking into the sky as she dies.But wait... Rewind, as O mentions that this was just how she imagined it.What really happened, as O narrates, "was more of a fuck-up than a shootout." After Elena steps out into the open and releases O, Lado retreats to the car and drives away. A helicopter and DEA agents led by Dennis swoop in to arrest Elena. The DEA agents disarm the sniper teams and arrest everyone (including Ben, Chon, and O).O narrates as we see a montage: Dennis is grandstanding on TV about Elena's arrest and the progress on the war on drugs (Indian grounds are still U.S. grounds he says); Elena goes to prison for 30 years, while Ben and Chon, who have enough information to put Dennis away, are released after a few weeks in a holding cell after Dennis said that they were confidential informants. Lado and El Azul form a new cartel to take over the vacuum left by Elena.After their release, O says that she, Ben, and Chon all vanished. Montages are shown of them living new lives in Indonesia, Africa, and other parts of the world. A few scenes show that they continue to remain in touch and get together, but most of the scenes strongly imply that for the most part, they've all gone their separate ways-- as O narrates, perhaps it's true that three people can't all be equally in love. She says that one day, perhaps they'll return to their pot business in Laguna, but for now, they live simple, even primitive lives, like 'beautiful savages.' | revenge, neo noir, murder, violence, flashback | tt1615065 |
Mitt liv som hund | The action takes place in the years 1958-1959 in Sweden. Troubled 12 year-old Ingemar (Anton Glanzelius) gets into all sorts of trouble, which bothers his mother (Anki Lidén); Ingemar does not know that his mother is in fact terminally ill. When he and his older brother become too much for her, they are split up and sent to live with relatives. Ingemar ends up with his maternal uncle Gunnar (Tomas von Brömssen) and his wife Ulla (Kicki Rundgren) in a small rural town in Småland. Gunnar and Ingemar bond over Povel Ramel's recording of "Far, jag kan inte få upp min kokosnöt".
In the town he encounters a variety of characters. Saga (Melinda Kinnaman), an assertive tomboy his own age, likes him, and shows it by beating him in a boxing match. Among the more eccentric residents is Fransson (Magnus Rask), a man who continually fixes the roof of his house, and Mr. Arvidsson (Didrik Gustavsson), an old man living downstairs who gets Ingemar to read to him from a lingerie catalog.
Later, Ingemar is reunited with his family, but his mother soon takes a turn for the worse and is hospitalized. He and his brother go to stay with their uncle Sandberg (Leif Ericson) in the city, but his wife thinks the boy is mentally disturbed. After his mother passes away, he is sent back to Småland.
Mr. Arvidsson has died in the interim; Gunnar and Ulla now share the house with a large Greek family. Gunnar welcomes him and consoles him as best he can, but the house is so crowded, he has Ingemar live with Mrs. Arvidsson in another house. Meanwhile, Ingemar becomes the object of contention between Saga and another girl. When they start fighting over him, he grabs onto Saga's leg and starts barking like a dog. She becomes upset by his strange behavior and gets him into the boxing ring. During the bout, out of spite, she tells him that his beloved dog (which he had thought was in a kennel) was actually euthanized. This, along with his mother's death, is too much for him and he locks himself inside Gunnar's one-room "summer house" in the backyard. While secluded here, Ingemar reflects on the death of his mother, the loss of his dog and a changing world. Ingemar uses the experiences of others and of his own personal loss to reconcile a life which is sometimes tough.
Throughout the film, Ingemar tells himself over and over that it could have been worse, reciting several examples, such as a man who took a shortcut onto the field during a track meet and was killed by a javelin and the story of the dog Laika several times, the first creature sent into orbit by the Russians (without any way to get her back down).
The film ends with the radio broadcast of a famous heavyweight championship boxing match, between Swede Ingemar Johansson and American Floyd Patterson. When Johansson wins, the whole town erupts with joy, but the now-reconciled Ingemar and Saga are fast asleep together on a couch. | cult, prank | tt0089606 |
The Brood | At the Somafree Institute, Dr. Hal Raglan humiliates his patient Mike by saying: "you're just a weak person. You must have got that from your mother. It probably would have been better for you if you had been born a girl!" On the dimly lit stage, Raglan demands a demonstration of anger, and Mike reveals angry red blotches covering his torso. The audience gasps. Raglan announces that this is psychoplasmcis; the physical manifestation of mental rage by the appearance of the welts on one's body.Meanwhile, Frank Carveth collects his nine-year-old daughter Candy from a 'Private Guest Room'. Candy wears a red coat with fur trim and hood. Bathing her, Frank finds bruises and scratches on her back. He drives to the Somafree Institute to confront Raglan and demands to see his wife Nola, whom has been committed there. Raglan refuses. Frank accuses Nola of abusing their daughter and says he will stop Candy's next visit. Raglan threatens legal action if Frank withholds a vital part of Nola's treatment. Frank then goes to his lawyer, Al Resnikoff, who tells him that Nola has a stronger legal position despite the fact that she is committed to a mental hospital. Frank says that he will do what he has to. He takes Candy to her maternal grandmother, Juliana, who seems highly strung out.Back at the institute, Raglan goes into Nola's room (play-acting as Candy) and he asks her why she hurt her daughter Candice. Raglan/Candice says: "Mummies don't hurt their own children". Nola sobs that they do. She tells Raglan that her own mother was "fucked up and bad". Raglan encourages her anger by telling her: "Go all the way through it, right to the end."That evening at Juliana's house, she investigates a noise in the kitchen. Food, juice, glasses and dishes are thrown all over the floor. She is bludgeoned by what appears to be a small child wearing a red hooded raincoat with fur trim. As Candy watches from behind a door, small claw-like hands leaves bloodstains on the banisters. The next morning at his workplace, Frank is informed of Juliana's murder. Police psychologist Dr. Birkin tells Frank so encourage Candy to remember what happened, a breakdown is possible if she doesn't remember. "These things tend to express themselves in one way or another" says Dr. Birkin.At the institute, Raglan speaks to Nola as her father. She quickly gets very angry saying: "You shouldn't have walked way when she hit me." Red welts appear on Nola's forehead as she speaks.At the local airport, Frank and Candy meet Barton Kelly, Nola's estranged father, who has come for his ex-wife's funeral. On Resnikoff's advice, Frank visits Jan Hartog, an ex-Somafree patient taking legal action against Dr. Raglan. Uncovering a row of tumors on his neck, Hartog says bitterly: "Raglan encourages my body to revolt against me. And it did. I have a small revolution on my hands and I'm not putting it down very successfully."Back at the institute, a drunk Barton Kelly arrives and is furious when Raglan will not allow him to see Nola. Meanwhile, Frank arrives at Candy's school where her teacher, Ruth Mayer, sits with her. Candy invites Ruth to dinner at her house. That evening, Ruth arrives and has dinner with Frank and Candy. A little later, Barton calls Frank from Juliana's house, saying he needs Frank's help to see Nola. Frank leaves Ruth babysitting Candy, who picks up a book to read which is titled 'The Shape Of Rage'. Raglan's book on Psychoplasmics.At Juliana's house, Barton is alone when the same small figure wearing the hooded red raincoat emerges from under his bed and batters him to a very gory death with a pair of paperweights. Frank arrives a few minutes later and finds the body. The strange-looking "child" jumps on him like some aggressive animal, clawing at him until it suddenly falls off his back to the floor and seemingly dies. Frank picks up the phone to call the police. Back at Frank's house, Ruth Mayer answers a phone call from Nola calling from the institute, who then goes in a berserk rage when Ruth answers the phone and suspects that she is having an affair with her husband.At the police station, Frank gives his statement and then meets the pathologist who performed the autopsy on the mysterious 'child creature' that attacked him where the doctor tells him that the creature died simply because: "it ran out of gas". Or more likely "its batteries expired". The pathologist points out that the creature has strange eyes, no sexual organs, and no navel. "This creature has never really been born... at least not the way human beings are born" says the pathologist.Raglan (as Ruth Mayer) speaks to Nola, Raglan/Ruth says that Frank will divorce Nola and marry her. The jealous Nola screams to leave Frank alone. When Frank gets home from the police station, Ruth leaves in a hurry. He finds Candy cowering in a corner of her bedroom after a nightmare. He tells her that the 'thing' is dead.The next morning, Raglan reads about Barton Kelly's murder. Taking a gun from his desk, he instructs his assistant, Chris, to get all the patients out of the institute. Meanwhile, Frank visits the hospital where Mike is now a fellow patient of Hartog's and is told that Nola is in fact the only patient at Somafree. Mike becomes angry about being dumped by his "daddy", his face becomes one giant red sore.Frank takes Candy to school. In Ruth Mayer's art class, two 'children creatures' in pastel coats with hoods pick up wooden hammers and beat Ruth mercilessly to a gory death. Alerted by a boy's cries for help, Frank enters the classroom to find Ruth dead, and Candy gone.At the institute, Raglan wakes Nola. She relates a dream that Candy was coming back to her, and says she doesn't feel threatened by Ruth Mayer any more. At the same time, Candy is being led along a snowy highway by the two creatures.That evening, Mike turns up on Frank's doorstep raving about: "the disturbed kids in the work shed. The ones your wife's taking care of." Frank drives to the Somafree Institute where outside Raglan pulls a gun on him, saying they'll kill him if he tries to take Candy away from them. In a long monologue, Raglan tells Frank that the child creatures that have been doing all the killing are Nola's children. "Nola is not their surrogate mother, she's their real mother." They are the Brood; the parthenogenesis 'children' of Nola's rage. Over the past year-and-a-half Nola's psychoplasmics have manifested into these children which carry out her bidding whenever she's in an angry mood. Raglan tells Frank that Candy is locked up in the attic where the Brood are being kept, and that if he wants Candy back, Frank must go to Nola to convince her that he wants Candy back to live with him. If he can do that, the Brood will be neutral so Raglan can go into the attic and take Candy, if not... the Brood will attack as long as Nola is in a rage.While Raglan waits outside the attic door where the Brood are being kept, Frank goes to Nola's room. He finds Nola rocking back and forth, wearing a white robe bathed in light. Nola wakes from her trance-like state and seems happy that he has come to see her. Frank says that he wants to be back with her. (Note: throughout the entire movie, Nola is only shown from the chest up which is apparently to hide something). At this point, Nola throws back her white robe, revealing an umbilical cord and external sac on her abdomen. The years of the welts that have appeared on her chest have merged together to create this womb outside her body as an incubator for the Brood that she produces. Frank recoils in horror and disgust.In the attic, Raglan quietly enters where all the sleeping Brood lie in their bunk beds. He finds Candy in one and picks her up to carry her out. Just then, the Brood stirs, sensing Nola's mounting anger.In Nola's room, she tears open the sac, removing a bloody 'infant' which she licks clean, as an animal might after having given birth. Frank's true feelings towards all this become apparent to Nola and her rage erupts.In the attic, the Brood finally become active, leaping on Raglan, who manages to shoot a few of them, but he gets overwhelmed and beaten to death by the Brood. In Nola's room, she angrily tells Frank that she would see Candy die then let him take her away. Upstairs, the Brood then turn their attention to the petrified Candy who runs and locks herself in the closet room in the attic, but they break through the door to grab at her. Frank attacks Nola and strangles her to death with his bare hands to save Candy when he hears the noises coming from the attic. When Nola stops breathing, all is suddenly silent.Frank goes upstairs to the attic to find all the Brood dead outside the room where Candy locked herself in, realizing that the Brood died without their mother's connection. Raglan is also dead nearby having been beaten to death and lying next to a few of the Brood he managed to kill before being overwhelmed. Candy is quivering in a corner of the room and Frank enters picks her up and tells her that he is taking her home. As Frank drives home with Candy, she seems to have withdrawn into a state of shock and cannot speak. Frank doesn't notice two raised lumps on her left arm... signs of her inner rage. The welts suggests that eventually like mother, like daughter... | cult, psychedelic, murder, violence | tt0078908 |
Cassandra's Dream | Brothers Terry (Colin Farrell) and Ian (Ewan McGregor), who live in South London, were raised by a weak father Brian (John Benfield) who runs a restaurant, and a strong mother Dorothy (Clare Higgins) who taught her sons to look up to their uncle Howard (Tom Wilkinson), a successful plastic surgeon and businessman.
The brothers buy a sailboat at an oddly low price, despite its near pristine condition. They name it Cassandra's Dream, after a greyhound that won Terry the money to buy the boat. Knowing nothing of Greek mythology, they are unaware of the ominous antecedents of this name—the ancient prophetess Cassandra, whose prophecies of doom went unheeded by those around her.
While driving home from a day's sailing in a borrowed car, Ian crosses paths with beautiful actress Angela Stark (Hayley Atwell), with whom he becomes infatuated.
Terry has a gambling addiction that sinks him deeper in debt. Ian wishes to invest in hotels in California to finance a new life with Angela. To overcome their financial issues, they ask Howard for help. He agrees to help them, but asks for a favor in return: they must murder someone for him. Howard faces imprisonment for unspecified crimes and his future is threatened by Martin Burns (Phil Davis), a former business partner who plans to testify against him. Howard asks his nephews to get rid of Burns, and in return he will reward them financially. After initial reluctance, the brothers agree.
They make two zip guns, untraceable and easily destroyed. Lying in wait in Burns' home, their plan is foiled when Burns arrives with a woman. Their resolve shaken, they leave and agree to commit the murder the next day.
The next day, they succeed in carrying out the murder and later destroy the guns. Ian is content to move on as if nothing happened, but Terry is consumed by guilt and begins abusing alcohol and other drugs. His behavior frightens his fiancée (Sally Hawkins), who tells Ian about the situation and that Terry believes he has killed someone. After Terry confides that he wants to turn himself in to the police, Ian goes to Howard for advice. They agree there is no alternative but to get rid of Terry. Ian plans to poison Terry during an outing on the boat. Ian can't bring himself to kill his own brother, and attacks him in a fit of rage. In the chaos, Terry knocks Ian down the steps into the cabin, killing him.
The boat is later discovered adrift by the police, and the audience learns that Terry snapped and drowned himself after killing his brother. The last shot is of Cassandra's Dream, still in beautiful condition despite the tragedies it set in motion. | tragedy, dramatic, murder | tt0795493 |
The Last Emperor | Arrival.
A train pulls into a station in North China.
It's 1950.
Soldiers are everywhere.
The train is a prisoner transport and all who depart from it are war criminals.The prisoners are hustled into the station building to wait.
After a short while, four prisoners suddenly get up, congregate across the room, and worshipfully prostrate themselves before a well dressed, bespectacled man (John Lone).
The venerated man looks around uncomfortably.
Guards lead the four worshipers away.
The man retreats to a bathroom and locks the door behind him.
After filling a sink with hot water he slits his wrists and plunges them into the water.A short time later the prison governor (Ruocheng Ying) goes to the bathroom door.
Finding it locked the governor pounds on the door, repeatedly shouting, "Open the door!"
Inside the bathroom, the venerated man, prisoner, war criminal, watches his blood cloud the water in the sink.
The man's name is Pu Yi.
He is the last emperor of China.The Emperor of China, 1908.
The sound of the governor's pounding and shouting transports Pu Yi's thoughts to a time, 42 years earlier, when mounted soldiers similarly demanded entry to his family's estate.
By command of the Empress Dowager Cixi, three year-old Pu Yi (Richard Vuu) has been ordered to the Forbidden City, the seat of power and abode of Chinese emperors.
As the boy sobs, Pu Yi's mother (Dong Liang) hands him over to his nurse, Ar Mo (Jade Go), saying, "My son is your son."When the procession arrives in the Forbidden City, Pu Yi and his father (Basil Pao) are given audience before the dying Empress Dowager.
Her last official act is to proclaim the boy to be the successor of the previous emperor, who has died that very day.
"Little Pu Yi. I have decided that you will be the new Lord of Ten Thousand Years. You will be the Son of Heaven."
With those words, the Empress Dowager dies.
Pu Yi turns to his father and asks if they are going home.
Without reply, his father prostrates himself before his son.Shortly, Pu Yi is seated on the imperial throne in the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
He is being invested.
As the imperial seal is imprinted on the proclamation, Pu Yi bolts out of the hall and into the huge courtyard beyond.
Thousands of government officials and household servants are arrayed in ranks in the courtyard and in the square beyond.
To rhythmic chants and commands, they all kowtow to the new emperor in a seemingly endless series of prostrations.
When they are done and silence finally arrives, the sound of a cricket reaches Pu Yi's ears.
The High Tutor (Victor Wong), makes the cricket a gift: "Ah. See? He is kowtowing to Your Majesty. Now he can be the emperor's cricket."Later, the boy emperor is attended by court eunuchs.
They bathe him and entertain him while the imperial physician (Zhendong Dong) checks his stool.
Ar Mo arrives and Pu Yi flies into her arms exclaiming, "I want to go home!"
That night Pu Yi and Ar Mo are in bed together.
She sings him a lullaby.Failed Suicide.
The remembrance of Ar Mo's lullaby is interrupted by the prison governor.
He is slapping Pu Yi's face.
"Where am I?" the adult Pu Yi asks from where he lies on the bathroom floor.
"In the People's Republic of China," the governor curtly replies.
Pu Yi's suicide attempt has failed.The prisoners are trucked to the Bureau of Public Security Detention Center in Fushun.
They are given supplies and the rules of conduct.
As Pu Yi sits on the plank bed in his cell later that day, his brother, Pu Chieh (Guang Fan), arrives.Brothers, 1914.
The sight of his brother launches Pu Yi into another recollection.
In it, eight year-old Pu Yi (Tsou Tijger) is paid a visit by his family.
Though he has not seen them since his coronation, Pu Yi doesn't seem very interested and must be prompted by the High Tutor.
As seven year-old Pu Chieh (Henry Kyi) kowtows to his brother, Pu Yi callously steps over him and, calling for Ar Mo to accompany him, approaches his mother's curtained sedan chair.
Perfunctorily, he inquires of her health and, when the curtains part, admits that he does not remember her face.
Their father ignores Pu Chieh's shout of "Papa!" and abruptly departs.
Pu Chieh is being left in the Forbidden City to serve as companion to his brother.Pu Chieh tells his imperial brother that if he comes home Pu Yi can play with his three sisters and two friends but Pu Yi says that he never leaves the palace.
Then the emperor shows his brother a game that he does play.
It's follow the leader as, at a run, the two boys lead the imperial entourage in circles.
Pu Yi next takes his brother to a lake where, while Pu Chieh dawdles, Pu Yi casually stokes Ar Mo's breast and then suckles it in plain view and to no apparent surprise or disapproval.
Later, the two boys have a trifling dispute that leads to a revelation.
The dispute is over whether Pu Chieh is wearing a color of yellow that is reserved for the emperor.
When Pu Chieh tells his brother that he's not the emperor anymore, that there's a new emperor, Pu Yi tries to disprove his claim by commanding a eunuch called Big Foot (Liangbin Zhang) to drink a bowl of green ink.
After considerable pause and with much apprehension Big Foot drinks the ink, but Pu Chieh doesn't accept that as proof and persists.
He leads his brother to the top of a newly constructed wall built to divide the northern residential section from the rest of the Forbidden City.
Pu Chieh points to a man riding in a car below claiming, "He's the president of the republic."Pu Yi is shaken.
When he descends to street level, he asks the High Tutor if he is still emperor.
The High Tutor replies, "You will always be the emperor inside the Forbidden City, but not outside.
Outside", Pu Yi is informed, "China is now a republic, with a president."Seeking solace, Pu Yi searches for Ar Mo but she is gone.
He is told that she has been sent away to promote a more healthful environment.Prison Orientation.
Pu Yi and Pu Chieh, prisoners number 981 and 920 respectively, together with hundreds of other war criminals are assembled in the prison yard.
The prison governor briefs them.
They are expected to face the truth by writing autobiographies in which they confess their crimes.In his office following the orientation, the prison governor unwraps a parcel to reveal a book titled Twilight in the Forbidden City, written by Reginald F. Johnston.
He turns to a section near the middle of the book and begins reading.Education, 1919.
Reginald Johnston (Peter O'Toole) enters into the emperor's service as tutor during the turmoil of the 1919 May Fourth student movement.
Years of deferential laxity have left fifteen year-old Pu Yi (Tao Wu) ignorant, naive, and more than a little arrogant.
Johnston immediately sees that to have influence he must be the emperor's friend, not his vassal.
For his part, Pu Yi uses Johnston as his only source for genuine information about conditions outside the Forbidden City.
Johnston gives Pu Yi a bicycle upon which the emperor attempts an escape.
When that fails, Pu Yi tries a rooftop escape and fails again.
When Johnston determines that the lad needs spectacles, he must threaten to publicize the pathetic facts of the emperor's captivity to coerce the Lord Chamberlain into allowing the emperor to wear them.Marriage, 1922.
The government decides that Pu Yi is to be married.
He is shown a series of pictures of teenaged princesses from which he presumably can reject - it is only the government that will select the empress.
Pu Yi, however, chooses to have a secondary consort, and in the matter of a second wife, he can do the choosing.
He chooses twelve year-old Wen Hsiu (Jun Wu).After the wedding ceremony, he is seated on a bed with Wan Jung (Joan Chen), the empress that has been selected for him.
He removes the kai t'ou that covers her face to discover that despite being so old - she's two years his senior - she's gorgeous.
As Wan Jung covers Pu Yi's face with kisses, attendants begin removing the royal wedding clothes but Pu Yi stops them.
Wan Jung asks whether he would prefer them to be a modern couple.
When he doesn't respond, she takes his silence for assent.
They shake hands, say goodnight, and Pu Yi leaves.Testimony.
The prison governor has apparently stopped reading.
Pu Yi is taken from his cell to a wainscoted room where he is to confess his crimes.
He is told to first write his name.
Since he has been given only chalk and the floor is slate, he writes his name on the floor.
His interrogator (Ric Young) establishes the ground rules and then begins by asking Pu Yi why he thinks he's there.
From Pu Yi's response and his autobiography one might think him an innocent bystander to China's recent history.
The interrogator figuratively throws both Pu Yi's response and his autobiography back into his face.
He demands serious confession.
A scribe (Hongchang Yang) is ready to take Pu Yi's testimony.
The prison governor has entered and sits at the rear of the interrogation room.Trivial Confession, 1923.
Pu Yi begins his confession.
He recalls sitting on a golden armchair espousing reforms.
He cuts off his queue, the woven ponytail that signifies Manchu domination, the cutting of which was, until recently, treasonous.
He then replaces the Lord Chamberlain and proposes an audit of the imperial storerooms.
That night the eunuchs burn the storerooms to prevent discovery of their thefts.
The next day, Pu Yi expels the eunuchs with the help of republican troops.Inadequate.
Pu Yi finishes his trivial "confession" staring at his name on the floor.
The prison governor asks about the Japanese.
They all passionately want to know about the Japanese.
How and when did Pu Yi's friendship with the Japanese begin?Expulsion from the Forbidden City, 1924.
Pu Yi continues his testimony.
The imperial family is playing tennis in a courtyard.
Shots are heard in the distance.
Suddenly, the courtyard is filled with troops of the warlord Feng Yuxiang.
One of Feng's captains (Xu Tongrui) gives the imperials one hour to leave the Forbidden City.
They are to go into guarded exile at Pu Yi's ancestral estate.
Johnston suggests that he could arrange asylum in the British Embassy.As Pu Yi leaves what for him has been a gold encrusted prison for the first time in sixteen years, he's quiet and strangely apprehensive.
The imperial family departs my motorcar as the five-color republican flag is raised over the Forbidden City.Explanations.
The interrogator points out that they didn't go to the British Embassy, but to the Japanese Embassy.
Pu Yi explains that the Japanese were prepared to help, that they have an emperor nearly his age, and that, since he is Manchurian, many Chinese consider him to be an alien.
He presents these facts to explain why the imperial family went to live in the Japanese Concession in Tientsin.
He further explains that he was not in the pay of the Japanese, that he had to pay his own way in Tientsin by selling family treasure, and that he dreamed of going to the West.The Playboy, 1927.
Pu Yi relates the casual good times in Tientsin.
It was a cosmopolitan city with a large international community.
At a dance party, a tuxedo-clad Pu Yi briefly sings Am I Blue? flanked by a jazz band that bizarrely wears blackface.
He finishes the song and rejoins the dancers.
The grown up Wen Hsiu (Vivian Wu), his secondary consort, dances with an American while Masahiko Amakasu (Ryuichi Sakamoto), Pu Yi's Japanese patron and co-conspirator, looks on.While they dance, Pu Yi and Wan Jung discuss where they want to live.
She favors Monaco but he prefers San Francisco.
She asks if they're really going this time.The American dancing with Wen Hsiu sees the imperial couple and asks who they are.
Wen Hsiu identifies them as Henry and Elizabeth - Pu Yi and Wan Jung have taken Western names.As they drive to their residence in the Japanese legation after the party, Wen Hsiu announces that she wants a divorce.
Henry chides her saying that no one can divorce him.
Shortly after they arrive at the residence Wen Hsiu leaves never to return.Later that night Eastern Jewel (Maggie Han) arrives.
In her bedroom, she and Elizabeth engage in small talk and then Eastern Jewel produces an opium pipe.
As she prepares the pipe, she casually explains that she works as a spy for the Japanese Special Service Bureau.
Elizabeth naively confides in Eastern Jewel.
She shares her worries about Henry and his relationship with the Japanese.
Henry has sent his brother, Pu Chieh, to a military academy in Tokyo, and Amakasu speaks incessantly to Henry about Manchuria.
Elizabeth doesn't trust Amakasu and she doesn't trust the Japanese.Henry appears and greets Eastern Jewel as "cousin."
He is still upset by Wen Hsiu's departure.
Eastern Jewel stokes the fires of Henry's discontent by informing him of the recent desecration of the tombs of their Manchu ancestors by Kuomintang troops.
Henry is left speechless.Questions.
The interrogator grills Pu Yi about whether he collaborated with the Japanese in their transformation of Manchuria into the puppet state, Manchukuo.
He points out that Pu Yi arrived in Manchuria within a month of the Japanese conquest.
When Pu Yi insists that he was kidnapped, the prison governor intercedes.
The governor asks if Pu Yi remembers Mr. Johnston.Farewell, 1931.
Pu Yi tries evasion by relating the day that Johnston left China to return to England.
After their farewells, Henry Pu Yi watches from the car as Johnston walks to the gangplank of the waiting ship.
A small Chinese orchestra plays Auld Lang Syne on traditional Chinese instruments.Contradictions.
The prison governor dismisses Pu Yi's evasion.
He counters Pu Yi's claim of kidnap by reading aloud contradictory quotations from Johnston's book.
Pu Yi calls Johnston a liar and points out that his old tutor had left China years before the putative kidnapping.
At a nod from the interrogator, the scribe goes to the back of the interrogation room and opens the door to admit Pu Yi's former valet, who is also a prisoner.
The interrogator resumes by pointing out that, in his autobiography, the valet had written that he packed Pu Yi's luggage the day before his master's "kidnapping."
Holding up the two conflicting accounts the interrogator exclaims, "These two stories don't fit, do they?"
When the valet tries to make excuses, the interrogator angrily throws the books at them.Opportunity, 1932.
Pu Yi privately recalls the true events surrounding his "kidnapping."
Though it is obvious to Elizabeth that the Japanese are using him, Henry asserts his hereditary right to rule Manchuria.
He must find a way to use the Japanese.
"There can be no Manchukuo without me," he asserts.
Even when faced by protest from his faithful old High Tutor, Henry proves that he's still an arrogant spoiled brat by bringing up every petty complaint that he has been harboring against the Chinese.
"China has turned its back on me," he rages.
He plans to take his opportunity to rule, no matter the circumstances or the consequences.
Pu Yi is in the hot embrace of megalomania.Time and Truth.
The prison governor leaves Pu Yi and his former valet looking at a 1934 copy of Time Magazine that displays a military portrait of Pu Yi on its cover with the words "Emperor Pu Yi" below.The Emperor of Manchukuo, 1934.
The sight of his picture on the cover of the magazine carries Pu Yi back to Manchuria.
The Japanese have decided that, having served as Head of State for the past two years, Henry Pu Yi is now to be emperor of Manchukuo.Henry arrives at his outdoor coronation wearing the traditional robes of the Qing Dynasty.
With Japanese officials looking on, he bows to the four points of the compass.
Then, as the imperial seal is pressed to the instrument of coronation, Eastern Jewel congratulates Elizabeth.
"You're an empress again," she brightly exclaims.
She then enthusiastically confides to Elizabeth that she wants to bomb Shanghai.
"I hate China," she tells the newly restored empress.
"I hate you," Elizabeth replies sullenly.
From the sidelines, Amakasu snaps photos.At the coronation ball that evening, Amakasu supervises the filming of the festivities.
Elizabeth and Eastern Jewel arrive stoned on opium.
The Japanese Army High Command is also present.
General Ishikari (Hideo Takamatsu) congratulates Henry on behalf of the Japanese Emperor.
During this ceremony Elizabeth hides out on the second floor balcony.
Amakasu turns his camera from the military pomp to film Elizabeth.
He stares at her with stony eyes, then follows her with the camera as she descends to the main floor.While the orchestra plays a Strauss waltz, Elizabeth does not join the dancers.
Instead, she sits at the end of the hall and eats daffodils from a flower arrangement.
She stares vacantly as she stuffs the poisonous flowers into her mouth.
Nearby, Henry's brother, Pu Chieh, introduces his Japanese wife, Princess Hiro Saga, to various dignitaries.
Pu Chieh is wearing a full-dress Japanese uniform.
His wife is pregnant.When Henry is told of his wife's eccentric activities, he leaves a meeting with the High Command and confronts her.
Elizabeth tells her puffed up husband that he's blind to the reality of his situation: that Amakasu is the most powerful man in Manchukuo, to which Pu Yi scoffs.
When she asks why he doesn't make love to her anymore, Henry says that it is because she has become an opium addict.
She tries to tell him how easily opium can be obtained in Manchukuo but Henry doesn't want to hear it.
She then asks to have a child.
"You must have an heir."
Henry changes the subject by bringing up their invitation to Tokyo.
He tells her that he's decided to go alone.
When she says that she would never go to Japan, Henry angrily tells her to go to her room.
As she leaves, she sarcastically raises a toast to the new emperor.
"Ten thousand years to His Majesty the Emperor!"
Henry abruptly stands in the face of her affront, but as the toast is picked up by the assembled guests a smile crosses his face.Elizabeth saunters out of the ballroom as the toasting continues.
She's followed by Eastern Jewel.
Back in Elizabeth's bedroom, Eastern Jewel passes the opium pipe to her.
Then, as Elizabeth stares dejectedly, Eastern Jewel rolls down Elizabeth's stockings and proceeds to nibble on her toes.
Elizabeth again tells Eastern Jewel that she hates her.
Unsaid is that she hates all Chinese who collaborate with the Japanese.
Unsaid is that she hates herself for putting up with the sham existence that her life has become.Servitude.
Back in the prison, the governor spies on Pu Yi as the former emperor bullies his cellmates.
They had served him in the Forbidden City and they continue to serve him in prison.
The governor orders Pu Yi to be moved to a different cell, one that will humble Pu Yi.In the new cell that he is to share with five other convicts, Pu Yi is sternly told what chores he is expected to do.
He will be disallowed any privileged position here.
Pu Yi turns to the door and summons a guard.
"I've never been separated from my family," he says.
"You'd better get used to it," the guard replies.
When he turns back to look at his cellmates, he recognizes them.
They were all government officials in Manchukuo.Welcome Home, 1935.
The sight of his cellmates carries Pu Yi back to Manchuria once again.
He is returning from Tokyo.
Dressed in military uniform, he reviews his troops when he is introduced to Colonel Yoshioka (Fumihiko Ikeda).
Behind the colonel stands Mr. Amakasu.
The colonel has disarmed the imperial guards.
He informs Henry that there have been many changes made while he was away.Henry pushes the colonel aside and enters his palace.
He asks for his Prime Minister and is informed that the Prime Minister has resigned and has moved to a monastery far away.
When Henry asks who it is that is telling him, the man identifies himself as Chang Chinghui (Shu Chen), Minister of Defense.Flanked by the flags of Japan and Manchukuo, Emperor Henry Pu Yi leads a meeting of his council.
To his right sit his Japanese advisers, facing the flag of Japan.
To his left sit his cabinet, facing the flag of Manchukuo.
Before him awaiting his signature lies an edict that would appoint Chang Chinghui as the new Prime Minister.
He refuses to sign and instead launches into an idealistic speech about mutual respect, equality, and independence.
Upon mention of the name "Manchuria," Amakasu on the Japanese side so violently stands up that his chair jumps back.
As Henry attempts to continue, the rest of the Japanese side stand up.
They turn and stiffly march out of the council chamber.
Then, as the Emperor of Manchukuo once again tries to continue, Chang Chinghui abruptly stands up followed by the rest of the Manchukuo side.
They turn their backs on their emperor and fall in line behind the Japanese, marching briskly out of the room.
Henry's government has been undermined by the Japanese while he was visiting Tokyo.
Henry is left addressing an empty council chamber.
As his voice trails off and he slowly sits down, the emotion drains from Henry's face as a new, old realization strikes him.
He is back in a new Forbidden City of his own making.At the state dinner following the disastrous council meeting, Elizabeth informs her husband that she's pregnant and that the father is Manchurian.
Just then, Colonel Yoshioka and Mr. Amakasu enter.
Yoshioka carries the edict that Henry refused to sign in the council chamber.
Henry once again refuses to sign it.
Amakasu insists that Manchukuo must, by rights, pay the cost of its occupation, that Japan's beneficent protection is not extended out of a sense of charity.
Henry evades the issue by walking across the room to stand behind his wife's chair.
He announces that he is to have an heir.
Amakasu looks at him impassively.
He tells Henry that the Japanese are aware of the situation.
He writes on a scrap of paper and replies, "This is the name of the father."
With the paper in hand, Yoshioka faces Elizabeth across the table.
He tosses the paper on the table in front of her while loudly proclaiming, "His name is Chang. He is your driver."
As Amakasu scolds the defeated emperor, Henry signs the instrument that appoints Chang Chinghui as Prime Minister.
Elizabeth stands as Amakasu picks up the document.
Turning to face her, Amakasu triumphantly proclaims that "The Japanese are the only divine race on Earth."
She turns away and begins to leave as he continues.
"We will take China, Hong Kong, Indochina, Siam, Malaya, Singapore, and India!"
Amakasu pursues Elizabeth across the room shouting, "Asia belongs to us!"The scene changes to a close up of Chang (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa) as he waxes the emperor's car.
He stops when he feels a gun put to the back of his head.
The gun fires.Regrets.
In the prison yard, the governor lectures Pu Yi on the technique of silently urinating into a bucket so as not to wake his cellmates.
Pu Yi turns to look at his former valet, silently beseeching him for support.
The man responds by angrily leaving the yard exclaiming, "You still think I'm a servant, don't you?"When he's back in his cell, Pu Yi denies that anything has changed.
"You are all pretending."
His cell leader tells him to shut up, that they are working for a new China.
As the cell leader summons a guard, Pu Yi is struck by the man's sincerity.
He sits on the side of his bed repeatedly muttering, "I let it happen."The Puppet, 1935.
Elizabeth gives birth but the doctor (Jiechen Dong) murders the baby by fatal injection.
Meanwhile, in an office emblazoned with heroic murals, Amakasu supervises as Henry signs an edict making Japanese the official language in schools.
After the signing, the doctor enters and tells Henry that the baby was born dead.
Regarding Elizabeth, he prescribes a clinic stay "somewhere warm."
Eastern Jewel enters and informs Henry that Elizabeth has already left.Henry runs to catch the departing Elizabeth but, in a reprise of attempted escapes from the Forbidden City, soldiers close the gates upon his approach.
From a second floor balcony, Amakasu and Eastern Jewel watch the pathetic Henry walk back to the palace.
They hold hands, fingers entwined.Consequences.
The prisoners are in the prison auditorium.
A newsreel showing diving Japanese fighter bombers is being aired.
It begins with the words "With Manchukuo now firmly in their grasp, the Japanese soon controlled most of North China."
The newsreel continues to chronicle the Sino-Japanese war commencing in 1937 and the atrocities committed by Japanese forces.
When Pu Yi sees his image in the newsreel, he rises from his seat and remains standing, staring agog as the film goes on to show the piled bodies of the victims of Japanese biological experiments conducted in Manchukuo followed by scenes of opium processing and consumption.Capture, 1945.
The sound of Japanese Emperor Hirohito's surrender broadcast in the newsreel takes Pu Yi back in time once again.
Eastern Jewel sits beside a radio.
She listens to Hirohito's surrender broadcast as in a trance, but she lurches at the crack of a gunshot.
Amakasu has shot himself in the left temple.
Head down, Amakasu's blood spreads across his desk.The Manchukuo palace is being evacuated when Elizabeth returns from exile.
She has gone quite mad.
She spits in the faces of the Japanese soldiers.
When she reaches Henry she pauses and stares at her husband as though she can't quite figure out who he is.
She twitches uncontrollably and then shuffles on aided by her nurse.Henry is being hustled along by Colonel Yoshioka who wants to beat his way out of Manchuria ahead of Russian soldiers, but Henry delays.
He turns and follows Elizabeth.
He watches as she spits on Amakasu's corpse.
Then, with eyes glistening, he follows her as she ambles to her bedroom.
She pauses at the bedroom door allowing him to approach and then, without looking directly at him, she shivers and goes through the door.
Inside, she turns and vacantly gazes at Henry as she closes the door.
Henry is left standing outside the door, shattered.
At the end of the hallway, Yoshioka is adamant. "Now!" he shouts.As the hanger doors are opening, the twin-engine escape plane is warming up.
Colonel Yoshioka, Henry, and Henry's principal ministers are aboard.
Yoshioka hears distant shooting and looks out through the windscreen to see Russian paratroopers floating down to earth.
They have been captured.Responsibility.
The prison governor leaves his office and enters the compound.
The prisoners are scattered throughout the compound playing ping-pong, except for Pu Yi.
Pu Yi is tending his flower garden.
As he works the soil, the governor stops and faces him.
The governor castigates Pu Yi for admitting to crimes that he couldn't possibly have known about, the biological experiments, for example.
When asked why he signed every accusation hurled against him, Pu Yi breaks his silence and matter-of-factly replies, "I was responsible for everything."
"You are responsible for what you do!" the governor honestly counters.
He continues.
"All your life you thought you were better than everyone else. Now you think you are the worst of all!"
Referring to his suicide attempt in the railroad station, using words fraught with past implications, Pu Yi says, "You saved my life to make me a puppet in your own play."
He puts down a watering can, turns, and intently addresses the governor.
"You saved me because I am useful to you."
Stunned that Pu Yi has come so far without fully appreciating the worth of an ordinary life, the governor asks, "Is that so terrible, to be useful?"Reformed, 1959.
The prisoners are arrayed as a chorus, singing.
They finish the song and sit down.
A motion picture cameraman is filming.
The prison governor is on the stage at a microphone.
Pu Yi's name is called.
As he walks toward the stage, Pu Yi hears a prison official read the proclamation that releases him from prison.
He is handed the proclamation and, as the governor shakes his hand, he hears the governor say, "You see? I will end up living in prison longer than you."
They smile warmly to each other as their handclasp lingers.Freedom, 1967.
Pu Yi leaves the Beijing Botanical Gardens where he works as a gardener.
He has been free these past seven years for the first time in his life.
He smiles a lot.
On his bicycle ride home he stops at an open air market.
His brother, Pu Chieh, is there.
Up the street a large group of young people approach as a parade.
They carry banners and pictures of Chairman Mao.
A twelve piece accordion band leads the way.
The young people are chanting and waving little red books.
They are Red Guard.
In their midst, a group of dunce hatted, revisionist lackeys are being herded along.
Among them is Pu Yi's former prison governor!
Pu Yi goes up to him.
He tells the nearest Red Guard that there must be a mistake, that this is a good man.
The guardsman tells Pu Yi to fuck off.
"But what has he done?" Pu Yi asks.
"He's been accused," the young man replies.
The guardsman turns to face the governor.
"Confess your crime," he commands.
"I have nothing to confess," the former prison governor replies.
Pu Yi's former keeper is then repeatedly forced to kowtow.Pu Yi tries to talk to the Red Guard but they frog march him to the side of the street and push him to the ground.
As Pu Yi lies on the asphalt, the lackeys are hustled ahead.
Their former place on the street is now occupied by a flag waver and a troop of schoolgirls.
The schoolgirls march around in a choreographed display while singing a stirring patriotic song.Pu Yi leaves the street and visits the Forbidden City.
It is near closing time.
Shadows stretch across the courtyard in front of the Hall of Supreme Harmony.
He enters the building in which he held court so very long ago.
Magically, he is alone.
He looks up at his former throne, then steps over the decorative rope that demarcates the line beyond which the public is not to go.
"Stop!" a small boy cries.
"You are not allowed in there!" the boy shouts as he runs toward Pu Yi.
When the boy asks who he is, Pu Yi replies, "I was the emperor of China."
When asked to prove it, Pu Yi climbs the steps to the throne and recovers a cricket cage.
He hands it to the boy.
The boy descends the steps and pops the top off the cricket cage.
He then turns back as though to ask Pu Yi what it is, but Pu Yi is not there.
He has disappeared.
The boy runs back up the stairs, looks around, and then stares at the cricket cage he holds.
An elderly cricket crawls out and onto the boy's shirt.Heritage, today.
A tour guide playing a synthesized version of Yankee Doodle Dandy leads a horde of American tourists into the throne room.
She explains that this is the room where emperors of China were crowned.
"The last emperor to be crowned here was Aisin Gioro Pu Yi," she announces. "He was three years old. He died in 1967."Ed. Notes:
The film makers slightly altered the time line of Pu Yi's early life.
Re, The Emperor of China, 1908: Pu Yi was only two years of age when he was invested.
Re, Brothers, 1914: The wall, from which Pu Chieh points to the president of China and which is clearly under construction, was actually constructed in 1912, thus, Pu Yi would have been only six years of age and his brother would have been five.
Re, Education, 1919: Pu Yi would have been only thirteen years of age and his brother would have been twelve.
Wan Jung was nicknamed Elizabeth at the American missionary school in Tientsin which she attended as a girl.
Pu Yi was jocularly nicknamed Henry, after Henry VIII and as suggested by Pu Yi's relationship to Elizabeth, by Reginald Johnston.
Pu Yi's Manchu clan name was Aisin Gioro (Gold Clan) but he would not have been called Aisin Gioro Pu Yi as clan names are not used in that manner.
Pu Yi's name is also often spelled "Puyi".
Pu Chieh's name is also often spelled "Pujie".
After leaving Pu Yi's service in 1924, Reginald Johnston became commissioner of the British Weihaiwei lease located at the end of the strategic Shandong Peninsula until that prefecture was returned to China in the autumn of 1930.
Eastern Jewel (Dongzhen) was the courtesy name for Yu Aixinjueluo (or Xianyu) of the Manchu Aisin Gioro.
She was a Qing princess and a distant relative of Pu Yi.
She was raised in Japan where she was called Yoshiko Kawashima.
(Sources: Numerous Wikipedia articles from both English and Chinese sites and the Encyclopedia Britannica.) | murder | tt0093389 |
My Life So Far | The film tells the story of how the Pettigrew family, living in their family estate Kiloran House in Scotland, deal with changes brought by the end of World War I, told through the point of view of one of the Pettigrew children, Fraser (Robert Norman).
The family is headed by the maternal grandmother MacIntosh (Rosemary Harris), affectionately known as "Gamma", whose decisions are to be obeyed without question. Gamma's son Morris (Malcolm McDowell) left home to build a career for himself and succeed as a well-to-do businessman; while her younger daughter Moira (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) followed the traditional route - she fell in love with Edward Pettigrew (Colin Firth), gave up a promising chance at becoming an opera singer, settled down at her family estate and raised a large family.
Edward is a typical country gentry of his time - owns a minor business (turning sphagnum moss into medical dressings), a pious man and defender of traditional values (gives a speech at every Sunday service), loves and listens only to Beethoven and has a passion for inventions and mechanical improvements all over the estate. All of which are laughed at by Morris, who lives in London but comes back to visit often, as he is competing with Edward to inherit the estate after Gamma passes away; the two can barely conceal their loathing for each other.
Edward does not appreciate and resists waves of new changes in the world, but the harder he tries, the more things fall apart. Morris and his beautiful and charming French fiancee Heloise (Irène Jacob) introduce jazz to the children ("the sound of the devil speaking" according to Edward). An emergency landing brings the eldest daughter Elspeth's (Kelly Macdonald) first suitor - French show pilot Gabriel Chenoux (Tchéky Karyo). Fraser discovers grandfather MacIntosh's book collection in the attic, and as an act of rebellion against Edward, sets out to read them all. Without guidance, he misunderstands the definition of "prostitution", and believing it to be a business term, suggests to all guests at Morris and Heloise's engagement party that Moira, Heloise and Gamma should go into prostitution to enhance the moss business. Worst of all, Edward finds himself drawn to Heloise, and makes a pass at her prior to the wedding.
While passing out food during a curling game held in her husband's honor, Gamma falls through the ice into the lake. Although she is pulled up immediately, she dies of pneumonia soon after. Gamma's will leaves the estate to Edward, leading to the ultimate altercation between Edward and Morris at her wake. Edward boasts that Morris has lost more than the estate to him, causing Moira to finally confront him and tell him that she has been aware of his affair with Heloise all along.
It takes months before Edward's efforts finally win back Moira, and the family settles back into its old routine. On a Sunday morning, all Pettigrews are heading to church, except Fraser. Edward finds him relaxing in a chaise longue in the library, a cognac glass filled with milk in one hand and a lit cigar in the other, swaying his head and body to a gramophone recording of Louis Armstrong's "On the Sunny Side of the Street" (a secret gift from Heloise). Instead of being thrown into a fit of rage, he smiles and closes the door, leaving Fraser to enjoy himself. | flashback, autobiographical, home movie | tt0120899 |
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 | Hours after the end of the previous game and the death of the traitorous General Shepard, the remnants of Task Force 141 (TF141) Captain John Price (Billy Murray), John Soap MacTavish (Kevin McKidd) and Prices pilot/informant Nikolai have fled Afghanistan to a safe house belonging to Nikolai's allies. Soap is critically wounded and the whole team is wanted for war crimes they didn't commit. Shortly after they arrive, forces under the command of Ultranationalist terrorist Vladimir Makarov (Roman Varshavsky) attack to try to kill them. Nikolais best soldier, a man named Yuri (Brian Bloom) , joins the team and helps Price and Nikolai evacuate the team to safetyMeanwhile, in New York City, a Delta Force unit named Team Metal is activated. The team is led by a squad leader code-named "Sandman" (William Fichtner) and Sgt. Derek "Frost" Westbrook . They are tasked with taking out as Russian jammer tower on the roof of the New York Stock Exchange which is preventing American air attacks. The team fights it's way through the city, into the trading floor and up onto the roof where they destroy the tower. They are evacuated from the roof by a Blackhawk gunship and they fight their way to safety, destroying several Mi-24 Hind gunships along the way. The American Air Force then establishes air superiority over the city. Next, Team Metal rendezvous with a team of Navy SEALS to infiltrate a Russian Oscar II submarine being used as a command vessel. They force it to surface and take control of the boat. Sandman and Frost use the sub's weapons against the Russian fleet in the harbor and then escape the vessel. These twin American victories, together with victories in the Washington DC area (from the previous game) prompt the Russians to evacuate the United StatesTwo months later, Russian President Boris Vorshevsky proposes a ceasefire. He heads to a summit meeting with the American Vice President in Hamburg, Germany. This action enrages the hardliners in his government and they side with Makarov. The President's plane is hijacked on the way to the summit by Makarov's forces and the President is captured. Makarov demands that Vorshevsky give him the nuclear launch codes, which he refuses.Makarovs actions prompt TF141 to take action. Yuri's intelligence reported that Makarov was moving some cargo from Sierra Leone to Europe. Makarov was using a local militia as security and building his weapons in Africa. TF141, consisting of Price, a recovered Soap and Yuri sneak into the village. They investigate the factory, only to find it abandoned. The militia then attacks, both with technical and Mortar teams. TF141 neutralizes the enemies and heads to the militia HQ, a local church. They are able to eliminate all the enemies there but they just miss the shipment. Information at the militia headquarters reveals that Makarov was smuggling WMDs using a company called Fregata EnterprisesWestern intelligence learns that one of Makarov's shipments is headed to London. A SAS team led by Sgt. Wallcroft and Sgt. Marcus Burns tries to intercept the shipment, first at the docks and then in a harrowing chase through the London Underground. They are able to catch up to the truck, only to learn it was a decoy. A mile or so away, an American tourist family are on their way to see Big Ben. As the child runs up to the corner, a white truck come stops at the curb and two men run away from the vehicle. Moments late the chemical weapons bomb in the truck exploded. All caught on the tourist camcorder. This would be just one of a series of chemical attacks in Western capitals that day with the intent of crippling Western response to Russian aggression. When the smoke cleared, it was determined that thousands had died in a terrorist attack even worse than 9-11. Taking advantage of the chaos, the Russian army attacked Western Europe, occupying much of the continentNATO responds by sending a force to liberate Hamburg. Task Force Metal was sent along with them to do another mission--rescue the American Vice President, who was being held by Makarovs forces. Frost and the rest of Team Metal fight alongside the invasion force and push their way into the city. At that point Frost joins a tank crew and takes the vehicle into a parking garage fighting all the way. At the end the team get out onto the streets, searching for the Vice President convoy. They find it a few blocks away, with no one there. They head into another building where they rescue the Vice President.Price contacts his former commander, MacMillan, now in command of the SAS. MacMillan gives Price intel on the attacks, namely that Makarov's African contact, a Somali warlord named Waraabe was responsible for providing the chemical weapons and he was at his compound in Bosasso, Somalia. Price and his team head into Waraabe's compound just ahead of a huge sandstorm. The team enters the compound engaging the warlord's forces. Nikolai gives Yuri remote command of a mini-gun on the chopper. He uses it to cut down many of the enemy forces. Price Soap and Yuri fight their way into Waraabe's headquarters. They breach the door to his office and take out the guards, capturing Waraabe.Price and the team put on their gas masks and Price threatens Waraabe with the gas. He makes Waraaabe reveal his contact, an arms dealer named Volk, the man behind Fregatta Enterprises. Price then kills Waraabe for his role in killing so many thousands of people. When the team tries to leave, they are attacked by the rest of the militia. With the sandstorm bearing down, they push forward to the landing zone. The sandstorm comes too fast and the chopper goes down. The team fights their way to the crash site to rescue Nikolai. The storm reduces visibility to a few feet. The team makes it to the crash site and they flee to a vehicle to escape the compoundArmed with this information, Price contacts Sandman and tells him about Volk. Team Metal then heads to Paris to link up with French Intelligence. Team Metal and the French forces fought through the streets of Paris, still filled with clouds of toxic gas. They used a couple of airstrikes to take out the vehicles in their way and made it to the catacombs under the city. The joint team slipped through the passageways until they found Volk's headquarters. Volk fled when the team arrived with Frost in hot pursuit. They emerged onto the streets and Volk fled away in his car. The team got into their vehicle and chased Volk. They caught up to Volk and ran his car off the road, capturing him.Because the city was a war zone, Team Metal needed to fight their way to the landing zone so they could escape with their prisoner. The team moved for several blocks only to be blocked by an armor column. They are given air support by an AC-130 gunship which clears their way to the US Embassy. The team is pinned down by an implanted machine gun nest, but Frost moves to the flanks and takes out the enemy with a sniper rifle. The team fights on and then make a mad dash through the city getting support from the gunship until they reached the Eiffel Tower. There, they fought a pitched battle with the enemy. With the help of air support the team was able to clear the way to the landing zone. The Tower fell during the battleVolk revealed the whole conspiracy under questioning. He revealed that Makarov was holding a war council with his allies in a hotel in Prague, Czech Republic. Sandman gave the intel to Price who was already in Prague. Price intended to assassinate Makarov at the meeting. Yuri and Soap slipped into the city. Because the city was under Russian lockdown, they needed extreme stealth. They got into the center of the city, but couldn't get to their target because of the enemy forces. At that point, local Resistance fighters launched a diversionary attack (it was arranged by Price and his ally Kamarov). The team fought their way through the city and got to their target, a church overlooking the hotel where the meeting was scheduled.Hours later, Price was at the hotel and Yuri and Soap were waiting across the street in the church with sniper rifles, waiting for Makarov. The convoy showed up, but Makarov wasnt there. He anticipated the attack and booby trapped both the church and hotel (he strapped the explosives to the captured Kamarov). Makarov sent a message "You shouldnt have come here, Yuri". Soap realized that Makarov and Yuri knew each other. The bombs went off Price managed to escape, but when the bomb went off in the church, Soap and Yuri fell to the ground. Soap was badly injured.Yuri and Price fought their way to the safehouse in a frantic attempt to get aid for the severely wounded Soap. They survived to make it to safety. They tried to save Soap, but he died. In his dying words, he gasped "Makarov knows Yuri". Price and Yuri left the room and Price punched Yuri down the nearby stairs, jamming a Desert Eagle pistol in Yuris face "Tell me how the bloody hell Makarov knows you"Yuri began his story, telling of how he and Makarov were working for Imran Zakhaev since the 1996 incident in Pripyat--near the site of the Chernobyl power plant (when Price tried to kill Zakhaev, but just wounded him) and the moment when Makarov ordered the detonation of the Nuke that destroyed a city, and killed over 30,000 American soldiers. Yuri also told of how he tried to stop Makarov's terrorist attack on the Moscow airport--he revealed the plot to Russian security services and was shot by Makarov for doing this. During the massacre he followed Makarov, despite his wounds in an attempt to stop him but he couldn't. At that point Price decides to still believe Yuri--for now.Price and Yuri go to the only other place in the area where Makarov's people are believed to be, a medieval castle. They slip into the compound, planting C4 on various parts of the building and infiltrate the command center. They continue on and slip up to the main office of the building. They learn that Makarov is still pressuring President Vorshevsky for the launch codes and that Makarov has learned where Vorshevsky's daughter Alena was being hidden in Berlin. Price and Yuri escape from the castle and send a message to Team Metal about Makarovs plans to capture Alena to force Vorshevsky to give up the codes.Team Metal and other American forces contact Alena Vorshevsky and she reveals where she is hiding and that her protection detail has been killed. Metal fights their way to the roof of a nearby building with the plan of providing cover for Team Granite, who was going to perform the rescue. Frost as his team take control of the roof and Frost used a sniper rifle to clear the adjoining rood. Team Granite arrives on the roof and moves to enter the building, while a column of Russian tanks approach the building Frost calls an A-10 strike on the column to protect the American forces. The tanks are destroyed, but Team Granite is killed by additional enemy forces in the building. Sandman then ordered Metal to go to the hotel, knowing they would have to rescue Alena themselves. They fought their way through the city, supported by a German armor column. They nearly reach the building only to have the Russians destroy another building, dropping the rubble on the team. Team Metal slips through the collapsed building and gets to the hotel where Alena was hiding. They fight through the building, climbing up to the fifth floor, only to learn Alena wasn't there anymore. Frost and Sandman climb up to the roof they rush to save Alena, but they are too late--Makarovs men took her away by chopper and Frost was badly wounded.Knowing that Vorshevsky wouldnt be able to hold out now that Makarov had his daughter, Team Metal (minus the wounded Frost) and TF 141 launch a joint rescue mission. They knew that Makarov was holding his hostages in a diamond mind in Siberia. The two teams fight their way through the building supporting the diamond mine and get to the outside. They fight their way through the construction area supported by Predator strikes until they reach the command center. They go through the building until they reach the room where Makarov's men were torturing Alena. Team metal rescues a wounded Alena, who tells them Makarov's men took her father deeper into the mine. The two teams press on deeper into the mine, where they find the team guarding President Vorshevsky. Yuri shoots the terrorist holding Vorshevsky with a sniper shot and the teams move him to the rescue chopper. The terrorists counterattack, Price and Yuri get the president into the chopper as Team Metal covers their escape. Price wanted to help them escape also, but Sandman tells him to save the President. TF141 escapes with the Presient while the mine collapses killing Team MetalAfter President Vorshevsky is rescued, the summit goes on as planned and the war comes to an end. In Moscow, Makarov's political allies are purged out of the government and Vorshevsky forms an Ultranationalist-Loyalist coalition government. As a result of their heroics in saving Vorshevsky and the revelation of General Shepard's duplicity, Task Force 141 is cleared of all charges. This clears the task force to do one last mission--Kill Makarov. They discover that Makarov and his remaining forces have set up shop in Dubai. Price and Yuri arrive in Dubai and head to Makarov's HQ--the Hotel Oasis. Equipped with Juggernaut suits they storm into the hotel lobby, taking out Makarov's guards as they go. They head up in the elevator only to have it attacked by a helicopter. Their armor is damaged and they have to shed it. Price and Yuri head up to the restaurant on the top floor. They fight Makarov's guards and Yuri is severely wounded as Makarov flees to the roof. Yuri implores Price to leave him and go after Makarov. Price sprints onto the roof and jumps onto Makarov's chopper just as it was leaving. Price kills the two pilots and takes the chopper. It crashes onto the roof, wounding both Price and Makarov. Makarov moves to kill Price, but Yuri clambers up onto the roof to stop him. Makarov kills Yuri, giving Price the distraction he needed. Price wraps the cable around Makarov's neck and hangs him. Price then has a victory cigar as he watches Makarovs corpse hang in front of him | good versus evil | tt1937113 |
Fish Tank | We open with Mia (Katie Jarvis), a 15 year old youngster, hunched over and trying to get her breath back in an empty apartment. She stands, looking exhausted. She is in an empty room over looking the Essex council estate where she lives. She calls Keeley and gets through to voice mail. She leaves a message. Admitting to being angry, she apologizes for something she said. She orders her friend to ring her back.She leaves the abandoned block and begins throwing small stones at a high window. An angry male appears and tells Mia to leave because Keeley isn't here. Mia shouts abuse at the man. She walks away towards a small grass patch in the middle of the estate where a group of teenage females are dancing seductively, much to the amusement of four teenage boys standing and gawking nearby. We see Keeley, Mia's friend dancing among the group. She pulls daggers at Mia, along with all the other girls. Mia sits and watches, smirking at the desperateness of the whole situation. The boys trying to get the girls to notice them and the girls taking it in turns to dance, obviously thriving off the boys attention. One of the girls becomes tired with Mia's sarcastic glares and shouts over to her. Mia instantly reacts with violence and storms over and headbutts the girl. The girl stumbles away with a bloody nose. Mia and the rest of the group hurl abuse at each other until Mia walks away, exclaiming "If you want more then you know where I am."Wandering out of the estate, Mia comes across a deprived looking horse chained to a caravan in the middle of a fenced off concrete block. She looks around for any signs of life and enters the area. She notices the chains on the animal and picks up a big rock. She begins hitting the chain hard, hoping to free the horse. A young man (Harry Treadaway) appears out of the caravan and shouts. He's holding a baseball bat and Mia flees.
She returns home, a small apartment block back in the estate, and kneels down to stroke her dog, until her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing) sneaks up behind her and pushes her to the floor, violently. The police have been looking for you. She barks. "You broke that girls nose, didn't you?" Mia shouts that she didn't start it but her mum doesn't believe her. They have a brief scrap as Mia tries to get past towards the stairs. "I don't know what's wrong with you." Her mum says as Mia runs towards her room. "You're what's wrong with me." Mia shouts back before slamming her door shut. She lies on her bed for a while and we see an old picture of Mia and Keeley before their argument.Mia sneaks downstairs to avoid any confrontation with her mum. She escapes successfully.
We see her pay an older looking boy to buy her a bottle of cider. She takes the cider to the abandoned apartment block where we saw her first. She plugs her music device into some speakers and begins hip-hop dancing. We cut from the sunset over the estate to Mia's dancing for a while. It becomes clear that dancing is something that Mia enjoys as well being an escape from her deprived life.A time lapse of a few hours occurs and we see Mia leaning over the balcony of the empty apartment with her cider. She takes long swigs and watches 3 young boys play football nearby. She then notices the boy who ran after her with a baseball bat after trying to free the horse. He is with several other boys and they are walking a dog. She leaves and returns home. Back at her home, Mia walks past her younger sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths), and retrieves a hammer from a drawer. Tyler tells Mia that she will be in trouble because she was supposed to stay in. Mia leaves again anyway. We see Mia enter the site with the horse and caravan. She sneaks up and strokes the horse for a brief moment. She is calm around the horse which is a huge contrast to how she acts around other people. She then pulls the hammer out of her bag, ready to hit the chain again. However, a dog begins barking and runs for Mia. It's chained to the caravan so can't reach her but still scares her enough for her to turn and make a run for it. Only the boys are back and are behind her. They torment her and begin touching her. One of the boys rips her bag away from her. She retaliates but this only spurs the boys on. Two of the boys get a hold of Mia and it's disturbing to see where this is heading. The boy who previously ran after Mia with the baseball bat is stood watching, holding the barking dog. When it becomes apparent what his friends plan to do to Mia, he lets the dog go and it runs for the boys. This is Mia's chance to get away and she runs, leaving her bag with her music and speakers behind her.The next morning, Mia is in her kitchen. She starts dancing slowly to a song playing on a music channel on the small television on the work surface. She is interrupted by a noise coming from the kitchen door. A middle aged man (Michael Fassbender) stands, topless and smirking. She freezes and he tells her to carry on because he was enjoying it. She is embarrassed as she is only in her skimpy pajamas. He proceeds into the kitchen and begins making cups of tea. He introduces himself as a friend of her mother's. His name is Connor. They begin sarcastic banter about Mia's dancing. Mia watches him as he pours hot water and milk. He leaves the kitchen with two mugs and heads back up the stairs as Mia admires the curves of his back. She pulls his wallet out of his coat which is hung on the banister. She finds a wage slip from Wickes and also a five pound note which she quickly pockets before putting the wallet back and sitting innocently on the sofa as Connor comes back down the stairs. He puts his coat on as Tyler playfully guards the front door. She demands £2 and then she'll move and he can leave. He tickles her and demands a discount. She laughs and shouts "Fine, a pound!". He gives her a coin and she walks away. "I like you", Tyler says, "Ill kill you last". She makes a gun motion with her hand. In a playful mood, Tyler jumps on Mia. Mia stands and shouts at her sister. Tyler looks sad and lonely. Mia watches Connor through a window. He gets into his car and leaves.We hear Mia's mother play a love song on the radio in the kitchen. Dressed only in a small vest top and white underwear, Joanne is barely out of adolescence herself and is clearly happy about the previous evening's events as she dances and sings around the kitchen. Tyler and Mia watch her. She tells her daughters that she'll be having her friends round later and they need to either get out or stay in their rooms and its a no kids allowed event. Joanne clearly cares more about her friends, drinking and parties than her own daughters. Mia heads upstairs and Tyler shouts abuse at her mother as Joanne grabs her by her hair to get her out of the kitchen. Mia offers to give Tyler the child line number.We cut to Mia heading back to the caravan site with the intention of getting her bag back. She encounters the young man who ultimately saved her by letting the angry dog go. His name is Billy. He gives her her bag back and Mia asks if he let the dog go on purpose. He lies and says that the dog is strong.
We are back at Mia's apartment and she sits in Tyler's room with her sister and her sister's friend as her mother's party is kicking off downstairs. The two young friends drink out of a can and smoke as Mia sits on the window sill. They watch a reality show on a small television. Mia spots Connor walking into their apartment block. She immediately heads downstairs and opens the door to him. He says that he doesn't recognize her with clothes on and she swears at him, feigning anger but you can see that she is pleased to see him. She watches as he heads towards her mother and the two seductively dance together. Joanne storms up to Mia and nips her hard on the arm and tells her to go to her room. Instead, Mia heads into the kitchen and steals a bottle of vodka. She then heads into her mother's room upstairs and plays around with her makeup, whilst taking huge gulps of the alcohol.It's night time and Mia has passed out on her mum's bed. Connor is there, along with Joanne. She tells him to give Mia a prod to wake her up but instead, he picks her up and takes her to her bedroom. He begins taking her shoes off, along with her trousers. We don't know if this is purely fatherly instinct or something else. He tucks her in and leaves.The next morning, Mia walks downstairs in just her underwear and vest top. She drinks from the tap and her mother tells her to get some clothes on as Connor is sat at the kitchen table. Mia says that she is wearing clothes and her mother snarls that she's half naked. Tyler sits on the surface next to the sink. "Shall we get a move on?" Mia's mum says to Connor. Tyler demands to know where they are going but Joanne tries to shrug her off by saying that they are just going for a drive. Tyler says that she still wants to go with them. Connor thinks it would be nice for the girls to go too and we hear Mia's mum groan in despair at the thought of her daughters imposing on her alone time with her new lover boy. Connor tells Tyler to go and get dressed. "What about you?" He says to Mia. Joanne interrupts and says that Mia has better things to do. "Actually, I'd love to come". Mia snarls sarcastically towards her mother. She heads upstairs to get dressed.The four of them are in Connor's car and he plays music on his stereo which the girls dislike at first but then warm to and they all dance in their seats. Connor drives them to a stream where he has obviously been before as he says that he wants to show them something. He begins to take his shoes off and roll his jeans up. He makes his way into the water and Tyler and Mia's mum say that he must be mad. Mia takes her own shoes off and goes into the water after Connor as he says that he needs some help. "Trust bloody Mia". Says Joanne from the water bank.Connor instructs Mia to enter the water and walk slowly towards him. He keeps his eyes on the water in between them and places his hands underneath the surface. Mia does as she's told and walks slowly towards him. After a few tentative steps, Connor pulls a fish up from the water. All three girls gasp. Tyler is extremely excited. Connor takes the fish to the water bank and Mia follows. We see the fish dying on the grass. It becomes clear that Mia has cut her foot in the water. Connor takes his sock off and wraps it around the cut. Mia notices a tattoo on Connor's arm that says Kelly inside a heart. She asks him about it and he dismisses it as an ex girlfriend. The four head back to the car and Connor invites Mia to jump on his back to save her from walking back with no shoes on, seeing as her feet are all wet and cut. She jumps up and rests her head on his shoulder.We cut to Mia in a washroom of a pub. She washes her hands and fixes her hair. Through an open window, she hears Connor outside on the phone to somebody. "Alright, Ill pop over later". He says, sounding annoyed. She looks suspicious. We see Mia stood against Connor's car with a glass of coke in the car park of the pub. Joanne sits in the drivers seat with the door open and Tyler is on a swing nearby. Connor makes his way back to the girls, after having been on the phone and he looks irritated. Joanne asks if he's okay and he says that he is but he'll have to leave soon. Joanne says that he shouldn't have to Put up with s**t from his mum. Mia eyes him suspiciously. Connor says that he'll take the girls home and Joanne begs him to stay for another drink. She gets him to cave in by offering to pay for this round. She leaves for the pub. Connor gets into the driver's seat and plays with the stereo. He plays Get Up Offa That Thing by James Brown and says to Mia Lets see you move to this then. He gets out of the car and begins dancing, quite badly. Mia laughs at him. Tyler sings on the swing. Mia shyly begins dancing. Connor claps and urges her on. Mia starts getting into it and shows off her moves. Joanne appears with a tray of drinks and laughs at them both. Connor takes it lightheartedly and laughs too but Mia is immediately defensive as she is embarrassed to be caught having a good time with Connor. Joanne tells Mia to behave as Connor has been kind to her today. Mia dismisses this and says that she doesn't have to like Connor. He looks hurt and says that she doesn't mean it. Mia begins shouting that Connor doesn't know them after two days. She storms away and we hear Connor say But you haven't got any shoes on. It's clear that he cares about her. Back in Joanne's apartment, presumably the next morning, we find Mia sound asleep in bed.There is a soft knocking on the door downstairs. We hear Joanne greet somebody and she shouts for Mia. Joanne pops her head around Mia's door when she gets no response. There is somebody downstairs who wants to talk to you. Joanne says. Mia turns over in bed, ignoring her. Joanne picks up a dirty piece of clothing from the floor and throws it at Mia's head. She threatens to bring the guest upstairs if Mia doesn't come down. "Keep your hair on, I'm coming". Mia shouts. Joanne shakes her head in disgust at her daughter and slams her door shut. Mia looks down at the cut on her foot. It looks swollen and bloody. Mia makes her way downstairs after having gotten dressed. A woman introduces herself as Carrie. She seems nice but Mia obviously knows what this is about and doesn't warm to her. Carrie wants to have a chat with Mia. Mia asks if she can get a drink first and makes her way into the kitchen. They've got you in that special school. We hear Joanne say. We also hear Joanne softly say to Carrie, When she was born, she wouldn't stop crying for days. I swear she came out looking for trouble. Mia turns the tap on to make it sound as though she is getting herself a drink. She sees her dog eating the fish that Connor caught the day before. Carrie asks Joanne about Tyler and Joanne says that it wont be long until Tyler is just like Mia. "This place shes going to, what's it like?". Joanne asks Carrie. Mia looks panicked and quietly opens the front door and makes a run for it. We hear Joanne call after her. Mia makes it into the town centre and spots a flyer in the window of an internet cafe. Female Dancers Wanted Top Club Seeks Fresh Young Talent!Mia is in the internet cafe, looking up dance videos on the internet. She turns the computer off, packs up her headphones and takes the flyer from the window. That is when she bumps into Keeley and the rest of her new friends including the girl that Mia headbutted. "Is there a bad smell in here or what?". Says one of the girls when she spots Mia. Mia threatens to headbutt the girl again if she doesn't move out of the doorway. The girls back off although they still shout abuse at Mia as she leaves. Keeley keeps quiet. Mia is walking past the back area of a big department store. She spots somebody she knows and walks towards it. Connor is stood outside, smoking and in a security guards uniform. "How did you know I worked here?". he asks. "You said". Mia quickly responds. Although she knew because she found a wage slip in his wallet. "Thought you hated me". Connor says sarcastically. Mia responds with a funny comment and Connor laughs. He can't stay mad at her. He asks her how her foot is and she says its okay. He doesn't believe her and looks. He sees the swelling and blood and fetches a first aid kit from inside. He orders her to take her shoe off. She says that she can do it when she spots the kit but he says that he can do it better. He kneels in front of her and bandages her foot. "Do you ever wash your feet?". He asks playfully. She smiles. She puts her shoe back on and notices a group of young girls having fun and laughing nearby. Connor asks what she is up to and Mia looks lonely. She lies and says that she has stuff planned. She shows Connor the flyer from the internet cafe and Connor immediately begins urging her to go for it. "You're great". He says to her and it's clear that she isn't used to being complimented. "Don't tell mum". She says. Connor observes that the flyer says that all candidates must send in a video and he offers to let her borrow his camera. He agrees to give it to her on one condition she must smile in the video. She looks bashful and agrees. He says that hes coming over later and Mia looks happy. Connor goes back to work. Mia is back in the abandoned apartment, dancing with her headphones in. There are beer cans in the corner of the room. She practices some moves for her candidate video. She heads back home and Joanne is cooking on the hob. She tells Mia that just because she ran away, she can't get away with it and that Mia will be leaving for this special school in two weeks.Mia notices men's shoes in the living room and immediately heads upstairs to find Connor. He is changing his clothes in Joanne's room and Mia makes him jump. She asks for the camera and Connor hands it over. She begins playing with it and records him getting changed. He splashes on some aftershave and asks Mia what she thinks by leaning towards her and letting her smell him. She closes her eyes and inhales. "Fox p*ss". She jokes. He playfully grabs her and throws her across his lap. He begins spanking her and telling her that she's in for a good hiding. She swears at him and gets away. Connor smirks and says that she got away lightly this time. Joanne appears and says that tea is ready. Connor explains that he was just giving his camera to Mia. Joanne says that she'll probably break it. She'll get a good hiding if she does. Connor says. He winks and walks away with Joanne. We see Mia in the empty room in which she does her dancing. She is talking into the camera and is filming her candidate video. She recites her name and telephone number and begins dancing. Its night time and Mia is in bed watching her video on Connor's camera. She then watches the video she made of him getting changed. She pauses the video when she hears noises coming from her mum's bedroom. She walks onto the landing and hears moaning and creaking. Through a gap in Joanne's door, Mia watches Connor and her mother make love. Mia storms away and slams her bedroom door so they know that she is awake. She slams it a second time just to make sure.The next morning, Mia packs her bag in her bedroom and heads out to the post office for a stamp to post her video. She sees Billy in the post office.. She posts her video and follows him out onto the street. "Are you following me?". He jokes. They walk together and Mia asks how the horse is. He explains that it isn't what it looks like. He knows that Mia thinks that the boys starve the horse. He says that the horse is old. Mia asks where he is going because she wants to come. They head to a car scrap yard as Billy plans to steal car parts. He tells Mia to keep a look out whilst he works on a car. Mia says that she doesn't like it and she offers to get them both some money for some drink if they can leave. We cut to them both running through a car park, laughing and looking slightly tipsy. They chase each other around cars. They are inside a department store, Mia leading the way. She looks down every aisle and then finds who she is looking for. She runs and jumps on Connors back. She gets down and asks for some money. Connor asks if she is drunk. Mia walks up to Billy and tells Connor to observe how skinny he is. We need food. She begs. Connor caves and hands Mia a five pound note. Mia jumps on Billy's back and they leave the store. It's early evening and we see Mia with Billy in the empty apartment drinking beer from a can. They look at each other and we see him almost go in for a kiss but Mia looks away.
Mia returns home at night and asks her mother for some tea. "What do you think this is, a cafe?". Joanne asks. Mia looks in the fridge and fetches a yoghurt. She joins Joanne and Connor on the sofa. Tyler is asleep on the floor.Connor's eyes never leave Mia as she takes her jacket off and peels the lid off her yoghurt and licks it. He asks her if shes going out with that boy. She asks why and Connor responds by saying that he looks far too old. Mia says that hes only nineteen. Joanne tells Connor that Mia has never had a boyfriend and Mia angrily lies and says that shes just had sex with him upstairs. Connor doesn't look happy. Joanne asks Connor if he wants to go to bed and he agrees. He picks an asleep Tyler off the floor and takes her upstairs. Joanne hands Mia a letter all about her new school. Mia tears it up and throws it out of the window. Connor appears behind her and says That place might teach you some manners. Mia claims that it's got nothing to do with him and Connor nastily says that Mia needs sorting out. "You're nothing to me, so why should I listen?". Mia hisses at him. He looks hurt, retrieves Tyler's pillow from the floor and heads upstairs. Mia slumps on the sofa and falls asleep. Mia wakes the next morning and watches her mother retrieve Connors work shirts from the washing line outside. She looks happy. Mia gets a voice mail on her phone and it's somebody from the dance auditions. They offer her a personal audition the following week. We see her back in the empty apartment, with her headphones in, dancing. She seems calm. Mia is on her bed, in her pajamas, drinking out of a can. She hears the door open downstairs and she heads onto the landing where she sees Connor leading a drunk Joanne up the stairs. Mia retreats back to her room and watches as Connor puts Joanne into bed. She hears Connor head back downstairs. She follows him and finds him watching television. He looks up and says that shes up late. He asks if they are friends because she has been acting funny with him. She sits on the chair next to the sofa and drinks from a vodka bottle. "This family loves their booze". Connor comments. They talk about Mia's dance audition. She says that shes picked which song she is going to dance to. Its the one that Connor put on in the car on the day that they caught the fish. He looks really pleased and says that its his favorite song. He suggests that she dances for him now. She looks shy and says no. He says that if she's planning on auditioning in front of strangers then she should be able to dance in front of him. She gets up and puts a CD in. It's the song that she picked. She begins her routine. Connor watches intensely. Mia stops and sits next to Connor. He gestures for her to get closer and he puts his arm around her. He compliments her dancing and says "If it was up to me, you'd get the job". She cuddles him and he plays with her hair. She slowly looks up and he goes in for a kiss. He pushes her down onto the sofa and gets on top of her. He takes her pajama bottoms off and they have sex on the sofa. Afterwards, Connor sits up and looks shocked. "We need to keep this between you and me". He says. They are both out of breath and Mia looks uncomfortable. They hear a noise coming from the stairs but don't see anything. Connor says that they will talk the next day and then he heads off to bed. Mia hastily puts her pajama bottoms back on.Mia wakes up in bed the next morning to the sound of her front door slamming and her mother crying. She goes onto the landing and sees Tyler leaning up against the banister. Connor is gone is all she says. We see Joanne on her bed, crying. Mia runs down the stairs and out of the door. She runs all the way to the estate car park and just misses Connor as he drives away. She shouts after him but to no avail.The same afternoon, Mia heads into her mother's room where Joanne is lying on her bed with red, swollen eyes. Mia goes through Joanne's handbag to find her phone so that she can call Connor. "Did you know that I nearly had you aborted?". Joanne quietly asks. Mia doesn't respond. "I made an appointment and everything". Downstairs, Mia saves Connor's number into her mobile under Tyler's watchful eye. Mia makes her way out and Tyler follows. I know what you did, I'm telling mum. She says. Mia says that she doesn't care and walks away. Mia tries Connor's mobile several times only to be greeted by voice mail. She rings a directory and asks for Connor's workplace. A woman answers and says that Connor isn't working and wont be for a while. She hangs up. Mia makes her way to Tilbury, where she knows Connor lives. She walks there and asks a local how to get to Connor's road. It's a posh area and a woman walking past eyes Mia suspiciously. She spots Connor's car in a driveway and knocks on the door. Connor answers. "Jesus Christ!". he hisses quietly, as he ushers her away from his door. They walk hastily down the street together and he asks her if she thinks this is a good idea. He says he was going to call her but Mia calls him out on that one because he doesn't even have her number. "You know why I left". Connor says. You're fifteen. He adds. Mia says that it doesn't matter if you like someone. He drives Mia to the train station and asks her about the audition. He still spurs her on and says that she'll be great. He pulls up outside the station and hands her some money to get home. They have a quick kiss and he says that they'll talk later. Mia's train pulls up. Shes clearly deep in thought.
We cut to Mia walking to Connor's front door once again. She didn't get on the train. Nobody answers the door and Connor's car is nowhere to be seen.Mia slowly walks around the back of the house and jumps over the garden gate, making sure that nobody can see her. She tries the back door which is also locked. She opens a small window which leads to the kitchen and climbs through. She looks through the fridge, takes a can of beer and begins drinking. In the living room, she spots the camera that she borrowed. She sits and plays back the most recent video. It's of a young girl, around Tyler's age, stood in a garden in a pink dress. Her mother kneels beside her and the voice behind the camera is Connor's. Sing for daddy. We hear him say. The mother urges her on, kindly. Mia leans forward as the girl begins singing and it all becomes clear. Connor is married and he has a young daughter. The young girl sings Bleeding Love by Leona Lewis. "I don't care what they say, I'm in love with you". are just some of the lyrics which Mia relates to. Mia throws the camera across the room and stands. She breathes heavily as she notices all of the evidence that Connor is a father. Girls' toys in the corner of the room, small pink clothing thrown over the arm of the sofa. Not to mention to way he automatically connected with Tyler and seemed so friendly and fatherly towards her. She squats and urinates on the living room floor. We see Mia in Connors bathroom washing her face she looks up as she hears a car pull up. She runs downstairs and climbs back through the kitchen window, just as we hear the front door open. She climbs over the back fence and makes her way back to Connor's street. She sits on a wooden fence a couple of houses down from Connor's place and watches a young girl whiz up and down the street on her scooter. Mia recognizes the girl as the girl from the video. Connors daughter. In the distance, Mia sees Connor telling the young girl to stay off the road. He calls her Keira. He heads back into the house.Mia calls Keira's name as she goes past on her scooter. Keira stops and Mia says that her mother said that they can both go and get some ice cream. "Let's see who can go faster". Mia says as they both head down the street. Mia leads Keira off the road and onto a field. We hear Keira's mother shouting her name but Mia insists that her mother is just playing a game. They walk over the field and Mia becomes increasingly agitated. Keira begins to understand that they aren't getting any ice cream. Keira complains and Mia pushes her onwards. They walk through some woods and Keira exclaims that Mia is beginning to scare her. They come to a fence with a small hole and Mia picks Keira up and throws her over. Before Mia can get over herself, Keira runs. Mia calls after her but Keira keeps running. Mia gets over the fence and runs after her but Keira had a huge head start. We hear loud, running water as they come to the water's edge. Keira is running dangerously close to the water. Mia runs after her. She finally catches up with Keira on the edge of the choppy water. Mia takes hold of Keira's shoulders and shouts at her for running away. Keira begins screaming and kicking at Mia's legs. In a fit of rage, Mia picks Keira up and throws her into the water. Keira is entirely submerged. After a few seconds, she comes back to the surface, gasping for breath. It doesn't take long for Mia to pull her back onto the bank but it was a close call. Keira stands shaking as Mia hugs her, clearly feeling sorry for her actions. She leads Keira away.
It's night time. Mia and Keira walk hand in hand down Connor's street. Before they can reach the house, Mia lets go of Keira's hand. "Off you go then". She says. Keira runs home.
We see Mia walking back home, across the motorway. A car, driving far too quickly, storms to a halt next to her. It's Connor. Mia runs, knowing that he'll be furious. He catches up and slaps her around the face. Nothing is said as he walks back to his car. Mia sits on the ground in the dark.Mia is back home and on her bed the next morning. She puts on a necklace, some bracelets and a pair of large hoop earrings. She walks to her audition. She sits in the audition room, watching another girl take her turn. The girl is dressed only in a skimpy black leotard and dances slowly and seductively to a slow hip hop song. It becomes clear that the audition is for strippers. Its Mia's turn and she stands on the stage looking nervous. The two adults running the audition ask for Mia to redo her hair so that its down and not up. She does. "Much better", they say. Her music beings playing. She stands for a while, probably thinking about how much the song reminds her of Connor and then walks off the stage. She walks out of the venue, leaving her CD and her memories of Connor behind. She goes back to the caravan site and notices that the horse is no longer there. Billy is there, working on a car. They chat for a while and Mia asks about the horse. She was sick, we had to shoot her. He says, looking remorseful. Mia looks sad, sits on the floor and cries. We see a bullet hole through the window of the place where the horse slept. Billy says that he's getting the car ready for the road because he's going to Cardiff. He knows some people there. Back home, Mia packs a hold all with clothes and essentials. Tyler watches. She asks about the referral unit that Mia was meant to be going to. You can have my place Mia says. The girls head downstairs and Joanne is in the living room, slowly dancing to a song on the radio. Its clear that she has been crying. It isn't made clear if Joanne is crying because Connor has gone or if Tyler told her of Mia and Connors antics on the sofa or because she knows that Mia plans to leave. It's probably all three. A song plays on the radio and the girls dance together for a while. Joanne tells Mia to go but not in a hateful way. She speaks as though she knows Mia will have a better life away from the estate.Mia walks down the stairs of the apartment block with Tyler in tow, helping to carry her things. Tyler asks where she is going and Mia announces that she is going to Wales. Mia heads towards Billy, who has got his car working. Mia introduces Tyler to him. Tyler swears at Mia and then begins to cry. They hug. "I hate you" Tyler says, sobbing. "I hate you too" Mia says. Mia kisses the top of Tyler's head and gets into the car. The car slowly makes its way down the street and Mia looks back to see Tyler running after the car. "Don't forget to write, say hi to the Welsh for me!". she shouts. Mia faces forward ready for her new life in Wales. We see a silver heart shaped balloon fly across the estate. | suspenseful, depressing, realism | tt1232776 |
The New World | Over a shot of trees reflected in water, a girl, Pocahontas, invokes a spirit to sing the the story of our land. We see her, reaching up to the sky.After a title sequence, over which nature sounds are heard, we see a shot of Native Americans swimming underwater, Pocahontas and her brother, as others on the shore point to something. Three ships come into view, and a title tells us this is Virginia, 1607.Aboard the one of the ships we see Captain Newport giving instructions, as others look out at the new world. In the brig is Captain Smith, who catches fresh water on his face.Native Americans, including Pocahontas rush to the shore to wonder at this sight.A landing party from the ships comes ashore.Captain Smith, about to be hanged on shore, is pardoned by Captain Newport, to the dismay of Wingall.As Captain Smith explores the land alone, Captain Newport decides to stay where they are. He warns the settlers not to disturb or anger the Natives, because they may need to trade with them. He says once they are settled, they will go north to find a route to the other sea.The Natives encounter the settlers for the first time, sniffing them. The settlers show some trepidation. Pocahontas and her brother watch from a distance.In voice over, Smith says they are kind and timid. Newport, worried about a native attack, orders them English to sleep aboard their ships, and instructs them to start building a fort in the morning. Slackers, he says, will be whipped.He warns them that they are not there to pillage, but to start a new colony.As they build a fort, the Natives watch them in puzzlement, and try to communicate with them.Pocahontas and her brother dance in the fields, and, when she is alone, Smith sees her for the first time.Some of the settlers steal food from their supplies, and more is ruined by the bad weather. A man is sentenced to have his ears cut off.A Native who picks up an axe from the fort is shot and killed by a settler. Smith makes a show of putting the settler's head underwater in front of the Natives as punishment.Newport warns them that they have lost the favour of the Naturals. He also says that had they not sighted land the day they did, he would have turned back. Many of the settlers are sick, others are about to mutiny. Their supplies are low.He has spoken to Natives who say there is a city up river. He proposes to send an envoy to this city to trade. He himself will return to England, and Radcliffe will be in charge.As it is a hazardous mission, Smith, the only professional soldier in the outfit, is picked to lead it.A group of settlers, with some Natives set out up the river. In voiceover, Smith talks of making a new start, where the blessing of the earth are bestowed on all, a true commonwealth with no landlords or high rents.When they land, a Native escapes. A smaller group of three settlers and a Native continue up river.In full armour, Smith loses the Native in the high grass. He becomes disorientated in the swamp. He is shot at with two arrows. Finding it hard to fight back from a Native attack, he is captiured. The Natives examine his belongings, a compass he tries to explain what it is for. Tying his hands and blindfolding him, they take him to their village.There, in a longhouse, he meets their chief. A Native hands the chief a hand presumably belonging to one of Smith's party. The Natives and Smith talk he tells them he's from the East. The chief tells him he must go. Smith insists they cannot leave until spring. He tries to trade, showing them gunpowder.Smith, believing he is about to be killed, lies there as Pocahontas throws herself on him. The chief's brother tells him to kill him. But he says he can teach Pocahontas about the world.Smith takes part in some kind of ceremony, and is carried out of the longhouse. The chief's brother says that if they do no leave, they must drive them into the sea.As the Natives gather corn and practise their archery, Smith wanders their village. He teaches Pocahontas English. There is a growing tenderness between them.Smith talks in voiceover about how Pocahontas is the king's favourite daughter. They are seen talking, and Smith practises fighting with a group of Native males. He begins to get accepted into the group.He talks about how they are gentle, faithful and lacking in guile and trickery, no sense of possession.Smith and Pocahontas play together. One evening in the village, Pocahontas's father asks her to promise him she will remain loyal to her people, and warns her that Smith is not of of them.At the shore, Pocahontas gives Smith a feather, he touches her face and kisses her.In voiceover, he asks if we shall deny love when it visits us, and the Natives are seen putting out their fishing nets. He says there is only this, all else is unreal.Pocahontas asks mother, where do you live? In the sky? The clouds? The sea? Show me your face. Give me a sign. We rise, we rise.Smith shows Pocahontas his drawings of English towns. He dances around a fire with the other Natives.Smith and Pocahontas share a few moments together before he is led back to the English fort, where the Natives give him food, on the understanding from the King that they will leave come spring. He is told there is no sea beyond the mountains, just a land that has no end.Smith finds the fort a stark, grey place. Many of the settlers are sick, others have died. Others constantly argue over trivial things. Buildings are left unfinished.
Smith and Wingall Argue. He is told his has been found guilty in a trial. Other settlers join the argument.Wingall is shot. Smith is put in charge of the colony. He finds their crops have failed. He orders everyone to dig a well. Some of the settlers pointlessly dig for gold.Settlers gather around a fire, boiling their belts for sustenance. Another settler reports that one has died and his hands have been eaten.Smiths wishes to go back up the river, to live with Pocahontas in the wild.As winter arrives things get worse for the settlers. They are only saved when Pocahontas, against her father's wishes, brings them some fresh food. Smith and Pocahontas talk. She asks him why he hasn't come to her. He tells her not to trust him. He says she doesn't know who he is.She, in voiceover, wonders who he is.Going up river to trade with a Native, Smith spends time with Pocahontas. He asks if she wants him to go back to be with her again.Pocahontas is chided by her father for giving the settlers seeds. He realises the English do no intend to leave. She visits the fort at night. She tells Smith to make peace with the Natives. She asks him to come away with her. Here, at the fort, he is cynical about the idea. He warns her that people will find out that she came.The Natives attack the fort. The settlers fight back. During the battle, Pocahontas's brother is killed. The Natives enter the fort. For telling the settlers of the impending attack, Pocahontas is sent to live with another tribe.The settlers plan take Pocahontas from her exile, in exchange for a copper kettle, knowing they will not be attacked while she is at the fort. Smith disagrees with this plan, and is replaced as the president of the colony, and is tortured and made to work chopping wood for his disobedience.Pocahontas arrives at the settlement, and Captain Newport returns to the colony with more settlers, forcing the Natives to sue to peace.Pocahontas visits Smith while he is chopping timber, and again they spend time together in the forest.Captain Newport asks Smith if he wants to bring charges against Argall, and Smith indicates that he does not. Newport tells Smith that the King has requested Smith lead an expedition to find a passage to the Indies via the North.An English newcomer, Mary, begins to look after Pocahontas, who, we are told, has given up her name. Mary washes Pocahontas, and dresses her in English clothes and shows her how to walk in shoes. In voiceover, Pocahontas says she will find joy in all she sees.Talking to the settlers, Captain Newport tells them that Eden lies about them, and that they have shed the bondage of the old world, and should set a fresh example for humanity. He says their youth is their strength, and their inexperience their wisdom. He says they should prepare a land where man can rise to his true stature.Smith leaves instructions with his friend, Ben, that Pocahontas should be told he has drowned two months after he leaves.Pocahontas cries when he leaves. She is shown learning to read and write. Mary tells her she should forget about Smith, as he told her a pack of lies. Ben tells her he has died. She covers her face in ash, and wanders the settlement, as if she is lost and alone.The settlers burn a Native village, forcing its inhabitants to leave. Pocahontas is seen lying in the mud between two buildings. She gives water to a man in stocks.John Rolfe, a newcomer, is shown watching her. In voiceover, he talks about how when he first saw her, she was regarded as finished, broken, and that she barely noticed the others around her. He asks to spend the afternoon with her.Mary says that Pocahontas's nature can turn trouble into good, that when a branch breaks off a tree, the tree keeps reaching towards the light.Rolfe teaches Pocahontas about the months of the year, she asks him what a day is, what an hour is. She asks him why the Earth has colours.Pocahontas is baptised with the name Rebecca. She begins to work in the fields for John Rolfe. She asks him if he is kind, they embrace. Over scenes of her attempting to catch crickets, Rolfe is heard saying that she weaves things together. He asks her to marry him. She asks where they would live, he says either in Virginia or England. She hesitates, and cries, he asks why, and she tells him she supposes she must be happy.They are married by Captain Newport.She gives birth to a child, a boy, named Thomas.Time passes.John Rolfe announces that back in England, the King has requested a royal audience in Pocahontas/Rebecca's honour.Smith is shown on the desolate coast of Greenland.Outside the fort, Pocahontas/Rebecca, overhears two women talking about Smith's travels, and she realises that he is still alive.Pocahontas/Rebecca tells Rolfe that she is married to Smith. Rolfe tells her she does not know the meaning of the word.Leaving for England, Pocahontas/Rebecca speaks to her uncle on the ship, he has been sent by her father to see the God the English speak so much about, and to place a notch in sticks for every Englishman he sees.Arriving in England, people bow before Pocahontas/Rebecca. She and the other Natives have never seen a place like this before.At her audience with the King, Rolfe watches as she is presented. Pocahontas/Rebecca and the King inspect animals from the new world, including a raccoon in a cage.In the manicured grounds of an English house, Pocahontas's uncle is seen wandering in the cold, looking at the carefully sculpted gardens.Smith arrives at Rolfe's estate. Rolfe appears ready to let Pocahontas/Rebecca reunite with Smith. She tells Rolfe that he is the man she thought he was.A dishevelled Smith arrives at the Rolfe's house. Pocahontas/Rebecca meets with him. Initially she does not speak as he talks about her. She realises that she has moved on and he has not.Pocahontas/Rebecca asks Smith if he found his indies. He says he may have sailed past them.He tells her what they knew in the forest was the only truth. Pocahontas/Rebecca bows to him as they part.Pocahontas/Rebecca takes Rolfe's arm, and asks him if they can go home. He tells her they will, as soon as possible. She calls him my husband and they kiss.Pocahontas/Rebecca is shown watching Rolfe and Thomas play. In their garden, Pocahontas/Rebeccas play a game of hide and seek. In voiceover, we hear her say mother, now I know where you live.Over scenes of her playing in the garden and ill in bed, in voiceover, Rolfe is heard writing a letter to Thomas, telling her that Pocahontas/Rebecca fell ill at Gravesend, on their outward passage back to Virginia. He says that she gently reminded him that all must die, and it is enough that their child shall live.We see Pocahontas/Rebecca running through the garden, and turning cartwheels.Rolfe and Thomas are seen returning on the ship. There are shots of lakes, streams and trees in America. A leaf is shown falling from a tree.End credits. | boring, murder, cult, violence, atmospheric, haunting, romantic, sentimental | tt0402399 |
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