2006 movies
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A woman looking to fulfill her late husband’s final wish sets out on a transformative cross-country road trip in director Christopher N. Rowley’s warmhearted tale of friendship, self-discovery, and the memories that make life worth living even after the ones we love have gone. Arvilla (Jessica Lange)’s husband Joe has recently died during a trip to Borneo, and his ashes have just arrived at her home in Pocatello, ID. Though Joe had previously specified in his will that he would like his ashes scattered by his beloved wife, the well-intending Arvilla soon becomes locked in a heated battle of wills with Francine (Christine Baranski) — Joe’s well-to-do daughter from a previous marriage. Francine is determined to see her father laid to rest next to her mother in Santa Barbara, and she’s threatened to sell the house that her father and Arvilla have lived in since marrying to ensure that she gets her way. Now Arvilla has lost Joe’s will, leaving no way to confirm either what he wanted done with his remains or what Arvilla is to receive upon her husband’s death. Defeated, Arvilla sets her sights on Santa Barbara to surrender the ashes to Francine and attempt to come to terms with the loss of her husband. When Arvilla’s sassy best-friend Margene (Kathy Bates) and uptight pal Carol (Joan Allen) agree to join their recently-widowed friend on her journey and offer some much-needed moral support, the trio soon sets out in Arvilla’s vintage ‘66 Pontiac Bonneville for a journey of a lifetime.
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A teenage outcast finds an effective but dangerous way to impress his hipper classmates in this independent drama. Jonah Brand (John Patrick Amedori) is a new student at an exclusive private school, and unlike most of his classmates, Jonah is neither wealthy nor especially self-assured. Jonah’s social clumsiness is especially troubling to him given his infatuation with Sara (Lizzy Caplan), a pretty girl who travels in an elite social circle. Sara takes a shine to Jonah despite his geeky attitude, but her pals — sometime boyfriend Troy (Jonathon Trent), spoiled Erin (Jenny Wade) and emotionally abusive Lucas (D.J. Cotrona) — make it clear they have no use for him. That changes when Lucas learns Jonah has a part time job at a pharmacy, and realizes he could get them a variety of under-the-counter medications if they play their cards right. Lucas, Erin and Troy have little trouble persuading Johan to get them all the pills they want, but as their experimentation with drugs grows, they begin to take greater risks; they also discover that Jonah’s willingness to get them drugs isn’t as benevolent as it may have seemed. Also starring Daryl Hannah, Love is the Drug was the first feature film from director Elliott Lester.
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When a group of scientists and soldiers awaken in an underground laboratory with their memories wiped clean, they must struggle to find an escape route while being pursued by a terrifying horde of genetic abominations in director Mark Steven Grove’s breathless action horror yarn. Though they first seemed like innocent pawns in a sadistic game of man versus mutation, these desperate souls gradually discover just how relative innocence can be as their memories slowly come into focus. Now, of they can only escape the ripping talons and razor sharp teeth of an unknown enemy, they may just be able to find out exactly who, or what, set their mysterious ordeal into motion.
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Two police detectives must protect a beautiful call girl from mob hitmen and a crooked cop.
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008 |
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Ishai Setton’s comedy drama The Big Bad Swim concerns the people who sign up to attend a beginner adult swim class. Some of the people involved in the class include Amy (Paget Brewster), whose marriage is on the rocks; Jordan (Jess Weixler), a stripper; and the teacher Noah (Jeff Branson), who eventually experiences romantic sparks with Amy. Another subplot involves a documentary film being made about Jordan. The Big Bad Swim had its world premiere at the 2006 Tribeca Film Festival.
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An ancient secret threatens to unleash the powers of darkness on a group of modern prep school students when the sole survivor of a cursed bloodline returns to lay claim to the powers denied to him centuries ago in a supernatural teen thriller from director Renny Harlin and screenwriter J.S. Cardone. The story begins in 1692, when five families from the Ipswich Colony of Massachusetts formed a covenant of silence that would forever protect their remarkable powers. One family went too far, though, and as a result of their transgression they were forever banished from the land. Flash forward to the new millennium and the four Sons of Ipswich are now the student elite at the prestigious Spenser Academy. Bound by their sacred ancestry and sworn to silence, these four teens share a secret so remarkable that it has served to protect their families for hundreds of years. The past has a way of coming back when you least expect it though, and when the fifth Son of Ipswich returns seeking to harness the powers denied him in the past, the battle is on to ensure the safety of The Covenant and lay the one descendent who threatens to reveal their secret to rest once and for all.
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“Nailed” is a thriller about two men who break into a house looking for valuables, and find instead a man lying on a bed, covered in bandages, whose caretaker may have intentions that are less than honorable. All is not as it seems as things begin to go wrong for the thieves and the plot takes a turn for the worse, bringing the supernatural into play. Written by Briana
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What sort of man kills one of the most beloved musicians in the world, and what prompts him to pull the trigger? Filmmaker Andrew Piddington explores these questions in this fact-based drama which examines several weeks in the life of Mark David Chapman, the man who murdered John Lennon. Chapman (played by Jonas Ball) is a self-obsessed young man who has an emotionally distant relationship with his parents and a failing marriage to Gloria (Mie Omori). Unable to hold down a job, Chapman spends a lot of time at the public library, where he rereads J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye and browses though a photo book on John Lennon, and the two begin to fuse in his imagination, as he links Holden Caulfield’s grousing about “phonies” with the fame and wealth of one-time activist Lennon. Chapman hops a flight to New York City and visits the sights Caulfield talked about in the novel when not busy standing vigil outside the Dakota, the luxury apartment building Lennon calls home, with a gun in his possession. The first time Chapman crosses paths with Lennon as he’s leaving the Dakota, he asks the former Beatle to sign a copy of Double Fantasy, Lennon’s new album; several hours later, Lennon returns home and Chapman approaches him with a very different intent. The Killing of John Lennon was primarily filmed in the locations where the real-life events took place, and all of Chapman’s dialogue in the film was taken from his diaries or interviews he’s given since his arrest and imprisonment.
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Out of the Blue, New Zealand writer-director Robert Sarkies’ long-awaited follow-up to his 1999 feature debut Scarfies, recreates the events that led up to and surrounded David Gray’s November 13, 1990, mass murder of 13 locals in the town of Aramoana, New Zealand. Sarkies, however, approaches the material not as exploitation or as an action picture, but — like Terrence Malick in his 1973 true crime picture Badlands — as an understated and detached drama. Sarkies uses a contemplative and reflective approach and a small-town pace and resists gratuitousness, intersecting several tales of casualties and survivors and downplaying the brutal violence. One story involves the contentious relationship between fiftysomething Jim (Timothy Bartlett) and his mother (Lois Lawn); another has a mom, Julia Anne (Tandie Wright) informing her daughter Rewa (Jacinta Wawatai) and her beau’s children that they plan to share a house; and in a third, eccentric gun nut David Gray (Matthew Sunderland) cracks and guns down Julia’s boyfriend, Gerry (Simon Ferry), in cold blood. These only represent the first three threads in a complex narrative tapestry; the story ultimately gives way to tense hours as the locals, realizing that a predator is on the loose and will kill anyone he can find, barricade their homes and cower in fear. Cinematographer Greig Fraser gives the picture a chilly, wintry aesthetic, rich with whites and blues. The film co-stars Karl Urban; Graeme Tetley co-authored the script with Sarkies.
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First time feature filmmaker Kristijan Milic teams with writer Josip Mlakic for this screen adaptation of Mlakic’s popular novel following two tales of 20th Century bloodshed in Bosnia. Alternating between warfare in 1943 and 1993, Milic and Mlakic’s dark war drama highlights the haunting sameness of both battles by following a squadron of HVO (Bosnian Croat soldiers as the walk the same path and face the same treachery that their Domobran (defenders of the Corat Independent State) forefathers did just fifty years prior. Chief among the HVO team is sympathetic soldier Tomo - whose grandfather was the last surviving Domobran Martin. By the time soldiers in both eras make their way to the haunted cemetery, the stories converge to highlight the hopeless cycle of strife that seems poised to repeat itself ad infinitum.
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