The Departed - Directed by Martin Scorsese
In The Departed, Billy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio) is an undercover cop for the Boston Police Department and he is sent to find evidence against crime boss Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson). Meanwhile, Nicholson has already sent Collin Sullivan (Matt Damon) as a mole into the Boston Police Department. A game of cat and mouse starts when Sullivan is ordered to find the mole in the Police Department as well as the informant working for Nicholson. Costigan, on the other hand, is trying to find the mole while trying not to be discovered.
Babel – Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu
Richard (Brad Pitt) and Susan (Cate Blanchett) are an American couple who go to Morocco on vacation. They leave their two children in the care of Amelia (Adriana Barraza), their housekeeper. Amelia needs to travel to Mexico to her oldest son’s wedding in Tijuana but since she can’t find someone who can watch the kids, she decides to take them with her. At the same time, in Morocco a poor farmer buys a hunting riffle and gives it to his sons to scare off predator animals that have been eating their goats. The boys decide to try the rifle’s range by shooting at a far bus and they accidentally hit Susan in the shoulder. In Japan, Chieko (Rinko Kikuchi) is a teenage deaf-mute whose mother committed suicide. The girl shows her rage and frustration by developing a destructive conduct. Chieko's father then struggles to reach past the emotional distance which separates them.
The Queen – Directed by Stephen Frears
On August 31, 1997, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a car accident in Paris and the public immediately showed sorrow and grief for one of the most popular and loved women in the world. However, due to the troubled divorce between Diana and Prince Charles, the spokespeople for the Royal Family hesitated about how to publicly address the passing. This was seen by the public as a sign of cool emotional distance. Prime Minister Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) saw a potential disaster and tried to convince Queen Elizabeth II (Helen Mirren) to make a statement in tribute to Diana.
Little Miss Sunshine – Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris
When bespectacled seven-year-old Olive (Abigail Breslin) says she wants to take home the Little Miss Sunshine crown, all her dysfunctional family sets out on a road trip to give her a chance to realize her dreams. Despite his early success as a motivational speaker, head of the family Richard (Greg Kinnear) continues to stick to his “Refuse to Lose” philosophy, which is making his wife (Toni Collette) more and more annoyed. To add to the mix there is a teenage son (Paul Dano) who has taken a vow of silence, a horny grandfather (Alan Arkin) with a proclivity to creative profanity, and a suicidal genius (Steve Carell). All of them set the stage for a road trip in which sanity takes the back seat.
Letters from Iwo Jima – Directed by Clint Eastwood
In this military drama, Clint Eastwood brings us the other side of the story he had told in Flags of our Fathers. In 1945, when World War II was almost over, the U.S. military forces planned to take on the Japanese on a small island named Iwo Jima. The Japanese, on the other hand, saw the island as their last opportunity to prevent an Allied invasion. Lt. General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) was in charge of the forces on Iwo Jima, he had spent some time in the United States and understood his opponents in a way other officers did not. While Kuribayashi and his men fight a battle they are not sure they can win, their story is told through their actions and through the letters they write to their loved ones. |
Zoom
