ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[Fran]

Composer:  Hans Zimmer

From IMDb:  A phobic con artist and his protege are on the verge of pulling off a lucrative swindle when the con artist's teenage daughter arrives unexpectedly.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y84hCWQXXiM&NR=1[/youtube]

[memento]

Composer: Burt Bacharach

Plot: A nebbish of a morgue attendant gets shunted back to the night shift where he is shackled with an obnoxious neophyte partner who dreams of the "one great idea" for success. His life takes a bizarre turn when a prostitute neighbour complains about the loss of her pimp. His partner, upon hearing the situation, suggests that they fill that opening themselves using the morgue at night as their brothel. Against his better judgement, he gets talked into the idea, only to find that it's more than his boss that has objections to this bit of entrepreneurship.

[southendmd]

Composer:  Irving Berlin

Plot:  [Radio's Wandering Minstrels] Reis and Dunn (with Betty Boop) sing the Irving Berlin song with a Bouncing Ball. In a cartoon army camp, everything rises before the soldiers.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX_uq8zoScE[/youtube]

Very cute animation. (7:30)

[Fran]

Composer: Hans Zimmer

From IMDb:  Two trains crash somewhere in Russia, one carrying a nuclear payload. A nuclear explosion follows the crash and the world is on alert. However, White House nuclear expert Dr. Julia Kelly doesn't think it was an accident. Special Forces Intelligence Officer Colonel Thomas Devoe doesn't think so either. Together, they must unravel a conspiracy that goes from Europe to New York, to stop a terrorist who has no demands....

[southendmd]

Composers:  The Beatles

Plot:  A 'typical' day in the life of the Beatles, including many of their famous songs.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0eJEX5c1sM[/youtube]

Trailer (1:52)

[memento]

Composer: Marvin Hamlisch

From IMDB: I've never quite understood why this movie has so bad a reputation. It's not Tracy and Hepburn, to be sure, but I found Dudley Moore a lot more likable in this than I usually do and Mary Steenburgen is great, I think. It should appeal to those who like Neil Simon and movies set in the Manhattan theatre world. There's some funny stuff here and there and I thought the characters were agreeable. 'Romantic Comedy' is certainly no classic for the ages but I think that people who enjoy the genre in the title should like it.

[Fran]

Composer:  James Newton Howard

From IMDb: After the death of his wife in a freak accident, Reverend Graham Hess questions his faith and even leaves the church. Six months later, he discovers a gigantic crop circle in his yard. Similar events happen all over the world. Graham's children think it's aliens, his brother thinks it's pranksters, and Graham doesn't know what to think. However, as more and more strange events occur, he realizes something big is coming, and it's probably not going to be friendly.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTgO18G5zjI[/youtube]

[southendmd]

Composer:  Zbigniew Preisner 

Plot:  Blue is one of those little movies that grows on you. The more you think about it the more you like it. That's not to say that it's not enjoyable to view; the cinematography and music are marvelous. But this is Juliette Binoche's movie. Everything revolves around her character, Julie, who, in the first scene, survives an automobile accident that claims the lives of her famous composer husband and her five-year-old daughter. Now alone the remainder of the movie delves into Julie's long emotional recovery. Not traumatic, or depressing as the subject matter may imply it is instead subtle, graceful, and beautiful.

[oilgun]

Original Music: Cheb Khaled

From IMDb: Memory and longing can make of our lives a continuous present tense in which those we've lost have dinner with us, in which we can call them from the grave whenever we wish, in which we can kill them as often as we like. And if we are the pretty, hyperactive daughter of demented (Italian? Spanish?) mother and pastis-drowned father, living in a nightmare suburban project in Marseilles among the walking driftwood and the detritus of loving humanity, in which crime is a career and rape a rite of passage, we are seven, seventeen, twenty-seven in the same moment while the hybrid sounds of Euro/Algerian/Camerounian music, chewing, cursing, laughing, fighting, sexing, loving, accompany us perpetually as in the old melodrama, except that it is so alive, funny, moving, devastating and rescuing all at once that we are enthralled and left with the happy/sad feeling of a life lived. A movie to be lived in and remembered with fondness.

[memento]

Composer: Jan A.P. Kaczmarek   

Plot: A deeply moving drama built around longtime character actor Richard Jenkins, The Visitor is a simmering drama about a college professor and recent widower, Walter Vale (Jenkins), who discovers a pair of illegal aliens who were the victims of a real-estate scam living in his New York apartment. After the mix-up is resolved, Vale invites the couple--a young, Syrian musician named Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend (Danai Gurira)--to stay with him. An unlikely friendship develops between the retiring, quiet Vale and the vibrant Tarek, and the former begins to loosen up and respond to Tarek's drumming lessons as if something in him waiting to be liberated has finally been unleashed. All goes well until Tarek is hauled in by immigration authorities and threatened with deportation. His mother, Mouna (Hiam Abbass), turns up and stays with Vale, sparking a renewed if subdued interest in courtship. However, the wheels of injustice in immigration crush all manner of hopes in post-9/11 America. Vale soon realizes that he has unexpected anger over Tarek's plight, and the positive changes to his personal life that emerged from a deep involvement with his friend and Mouna might be the only legacy he takes from this experience. Writer-director Thomas McCarthy has created a wonderfully measured story about change and renewal and put it all on the shoulders of Jenkins, a largely unheralded but masterful performer whose time for renown has surely come.