my plot summaries are quoted directly from IMDB reviews and such I am lazy
1. The Big Lebowski
D: Joel Coen
S: Jeff Briges, John Goodman, Steve Buscemi
It tells the shambling story of a man named Jeff Lebowski, who calls himself The Dude. The Dude's apartment gets broken into and a thief urinates on his rug. He finds out that the criminals were not looking for him, but looking for the OTHER Jeff Lebowski, the disabled millionaire. That's all I can tell you. The rest is really too bizarre and complicated to put into words; but it's bizarre and complicated in the best ways of the words.
2. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
D: Terry Gilliam
S: Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro
An adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's novel of the same name. The film details a whacky search for the "American Dream", by Thompson and his crazed, Samoan lawyer. Fueled by the massive amount of drugs they purchased with an advance from a magazine to cover a sporting event in Vegas; they set out in the Red Shark. Encountering police, reporters, gamblers, racers, and hitchhikers; they search for some undefinable thing know only as the "American Dream" and find fear, loathing and hilarious adventures into the dementia of the modern American West.
3. Dr. Strangelove
D: Stanley Kubrick
S: Peter Sellers, George C. Scott, Slim Pickens
An insane general starts a process to nuclear holocaust that a war room of politicians and generals frantically try to stop.
4. Fight Club
D: David Fincher
S: Edward Norton, Brad Pitt, Helena Bonham Carter
A nameless, desk working man becomes consumed in his emptiness until he meets a Tyler Durden, a cunning soap salesman. The two set off to form fight clubs and eventually turn onto a path towards anarchy and the total destruction of civilization.
5. Blazing Saddles
D: Mel Brooks
S: Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Slim Pickens
The Ultimate Western Spoof. A town where everyone seems to be named Johnson is in the way of the railroad. In order to grab their land, Hedley Lemar, a politically connected nasty person, sends in his henchmen to make the town unlivable. After the sheriff is killed, the town demands a new sheriff from the Governor. Hedley convinces him to send the town the first Black sheriff in the west.
6. Dead Man
D: Jim Jarmusch
S: Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer
Dead Man is the story of a young man's journey, both physically and spiritually, into very unfamiliar terrain. William Blake travels to the extreme western frontiers of America sometime in the 2nd half of the 19th century. Lost and badly wounded, he encounters a very odd, outcast Native American, named "Nobody," who believes Blake is actually the dead English poet of the same name.
7. Kafka
D: Steven Soderbergh
S: Jeremy Irons, Theresa Russell, Ian Holm (BILBO)
Kafka, an insurance worker gets embroiled in an underground group after a co-worker is murdered. The underground group is responsible for bombings all over town, attempting to thwart a secret organization that controls the major events in society. He eventually penetrates the secret organization and must confront them. The film is not a biopic, but takes Kafka through a mishmash of plotlines of several of his stories, notably The Trial and the Castle.
8. Lord of War
D: Andrew Niccol
S: Nicholas Cage, Bridget Moynahan, Jared Leto
An arms dealer confronts the morality of his work as he is being chased by an Interpol agent.
9. The Weatherman
D: Gore Verbinski
S: Nicholas Cage, Michael Caine
Clever and insightful movie on the subject of growing-up in upper middle class America. Dave Spritz, a weatherman without meteorological qualifications in Chicago, is confronted with his own rage that life hasn't proceeded as he had planned. A talented man who finds it difficult to see his own talent because he compares himself with his Pulitzer winning, distant father is at a low ebb. Not to mention that "fans" delight in recognizing him on the street and throwing food at him. The other problems in his life, an angry ex-wife, a daughter bullied at school and a son just leaving rehab don't help.
10. O Brother Where Art Thou
D: Joel Cohen
S: George Clooney, John Turturro, Tim Blake Nelson, John Goodman, Holly Hunter
Loosely based on Homer's 'Odyssey' the movie deals with the grotesque adventures of Everett Ulysses McGill and his companions Delmar and Pete in 1930's Mississipi. Sprung from a chain gang and trying to reach Everetts home to recover the buried loot of a bank heist they are confronted by a series of strange characters. Among them sirens, a cyclops, bankrobber George 'Babyface' Nelson (very annoyed by that nickname), a campaigning Governo
r, his opponent, a KKK lynch mob, and a blind prophet, who warns the trio that "the treasure you seek shall not be the treasure you find."
sorry for the hueg post (also my vote for Slim Pickens as best actor of all time)
Last Edit: August 12, 2007, 06:34:53 am by Wash Cycle
