ABCs at the Movies: The Doubles Round!

[southendmd]

Plot:  A couple sitting at an Italian restaurant orders their meal. The film then switches to an animated segment about a pair of tomatoes sitting sitting in a restaurant staffed entirely by other vegetables. A dinner show begins, starring a motorcycle-riding squash who does stunts such as flattening a giant lump of dough and covering it in grated cheese. The tomatoes enjoyment turns to horror as they realize that he's making a giant pizza, and that they are about to become the next ingredient.

[Fran]

From IMDb:  A film exactly described by its title. German film director Herzog had made a bet with fledgling director Errol Morris that, if Morris made a film, Herzog would eat his shoe. Morris went on to film "Gates of Heaven," so Herzog kept his promise. While eating the boiled shoe, Herzog carries on a dialogue with the film premier audience on film, art, and life.

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ymyiRXCszc[/youtube]
5:42

[oilgun]

Complete synopsis with Spoilers: The film opens as a well dressed, barrel chested man stalks the late-night passengers of a subway train. He assaults and kills several people with a meat hammer, and a butcher's hook. He dispatches his prey wordlessly, and with an uncannily unnatural strength. He wears a ring on his finger, adorned with eight stars.

We are then introduced to Leon, a vegan photographer who heads into the city's subway system at night to take photographs. He is criticized constantly by other photographers for fleeing danger before shooting a full reel. One night, in a decision to break this trend, he saves a woman from a gang that is abusing her. The next day, he discovers this girl has gone missing. Leon is intrigued by the mystery, and begins to investigate newsreels about similar disappearances. His investigation leads him to a butcher named Mahogany, who he suspects has been killing subway passengers for as long as a hundred years.

Leon attempts to turn some of the photos he has taken of Mahogany in to the police, but they refuse to believe him, and instead cast suspicion on his own motives in photographing the victims. Leon's involvement quickly turns into a dark obsession, upsetting his waitress girlfriend Maya, who is as disbelieving of his story as the police chief. Leon takes matters into his own hands, entering the subway train at midnight, only to witness a shocking bloodbath, as the butcher kills several passengers, then hangs them on meat hooks. Passing out on the subway floor, he awakes the next morning in a slaughterhouse with strange markings carved into his chest.

A concerned Maya and her friend Jurgis, a short-order cook, begin to examine the photos Leon has been taking of Mahogany, leading them to the killer's apartment. After breaking and entering the butcher's home, Jurgis is captured, and brutally killed. Maya goes to the police, But finds that they are as unwilling to consider her story, as they were of Leon's. It is at this point that we begin to discover that the police may be involved in the cover-up of Mahogany's crimes. A police official directs the misguided Maya to a trip on the midnight train. Leon, unaware of Maya's involvement, finally decides to put an end to the butcher's crimes, and heads to the hidden subway entrance in the slaughterhouse, arming himself with the a butcher's apron, and several slaughterhouse knives.

Leon enters the train as Mahogany has completed his nightly massacre, and has cornered a helpless Maya. Leon attacks the murderer with a knife, beginning a climactic battle between the photographer and the superhuman butcher. They fight in between the swinging human meat, Leon's knives against Mahogany's meat hammer, and human body parts are ripped, thrown, and used as weapons in the shower of epic gore. Finally, Mahogany is thrown out of the train by Leon, but not long before it hits its final stop. The train has entered an underground cavern, filled with skulls and decomposing bodies. Mahogany, in a battered and bleeding state, returns, barely alive, from beneath the train, and engages in a death struggle with Leon, who finishes the job at last by impaling the psychotic butcher's skull on a blade. Mahogany grins in his dying throes, pronouncing the single word "Welcome!"

With the butcher's death, the conductor of the train enters the car, advising Leon and Maya to "Please step away from the meat." With these words, the true purpose of the underground station is revealed, as horrible reptilian creatures enter the car, consuming the meat to which they have been delivered. The conductor explains to Leon that the creatures have always existed below the city, and that the butcher's job was to keep them satisfied by feeding them every night. The conductor then forces Leon to watch as he kills Maya with one of the butcher's knives. When he is done, he picks up Leon, and with the same supernatural strength as the deceased butcher, rips out Leon's tongue, throwing him to the ground. He tells Leon that, having killed the butcher, he must take his place.

In the final scene, the police chief hands the train schedule to the new butcher, who wears a ring with eight stars. The killer walks onto the midnight train, and turns his head to reveal that he is Leon, ready to go on his nightly slaughter.

[memento]

Plot: A new crop of American farmers kicks the dirt around in this documentary about the food we eat and the people who grow it.

[oilgun]

Plot:   The wife of an oafish restaurant owner becomes bored with her husband and considers an affair with a regular patron.

[Fran]

The "N" Degrees of Titanic  Round!

A round featuring films with a connection
to James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster

[Fran]

Kate Winslet played Rose DeWitt Bukater in "Titanic" and Anne Stanton in "All the King's Men."

From Wikipedia:  "All the King's Men" is a 2006 film adaptation of the 1946 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "All the King's Men" by Robert Penn Warren. It was directed by Steven Zaillian, who also produced and scripted the film. The story is about the life of Willie Stark (played by Sean Penn), a fictional character resembling Louisiana governor Huey Long.

[southendmd]

Bill Zane (Cal in Titanic) played Joey Turks in this film, with his own hair.

[memento]

Kathy Bates played Molly Brown in Titanic and Ella Tate in this film.

Plot: This cinema version of the Sam Shepard play is set well after the mid-century. James Woods as the alcoholic farmer drives a huge beater with a rusted roof which is emblematic of the general disrepair of his farm. A lovingly tended lamb with maggots is the reverse emblem of something helpless, needy and cared for. The refrigerator is spoken to as a character, as if standing in for absent nurturing from Woods' self-centered wife. The couple have two kids who must come of age as their home is being torn apart around them and the parents pursue fantasies of "better things" offered by crook Randy Quaid. Henry Thomas as the son copes by holding on to the land and creating a poetic commentary, and the responses of his sister to the crisis become a powerful and surprising tribute to womanhood. 

[Fran]

Kathy Bates played Molly Brown in "Titanic" and Regina Jackson in "The Day the Earth Stood Still."

From IMDb:  A remake of the 1951 classic sci-fi film about an alien visitor and his giant robot counterpart who visit Earth.