Posts Tagged ‘rise-and-fall’

21 (2008)

Monday, June 9th, 2008
Genres: Drama
Countries: USA
Actors: Sturgess, Jim | Spacey, Kevin | Yoo, Aaron | Pitts, Jacob | Fishburne, Laurence | McGee, Jack | Gad, Josh | Golzari, Sam | Gilpin, Jack | Williams, Butch | Ma, Jeffrey | Patton, Frank | Vezina, Steven Richard | Werner, Chaska T. | Morris, Kyle
Directors:
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Ben Campbell is a young, highly intelligent, student at M.I.T. in Boston who strives to succeed. Wanting a scholarship to transfer to Harvard School of Medicine with the desire to become a doctor, Ben learns that he cannot afford the $300,000 for the four to five years of school since he comes from a poor, working-class background. But one evening, Ben is introduced by his unorthodox math professor Micky Rosa into a small but secretive club of five students, Jill, Choi, Kianna, and Jimmy whom are being trained by Professor Rosa of the skill of card counting at blackjack. Intriged by the desire to make money, Ben joins his new friends on secret weekend trips to Las Vegas where, using their skills of code talk and hand signals, they have Ben make hundreds of thousands of dollars in winning blackjack at casino after casino. Ben only wants to make enough money for the tuition to Harvard and then back out. But as fellow card counter, Jill Taylor, predicts, Ben becomes corrupted by greed and his arrogance at winning which lets his feelings get in the way, and it also puts Professor Rosa, as well as the group, on the radar of a brutal casino security enforcer, named Cole Williams, who holds a personal grudge of some kind against Rosa which threatens to undo everything the students have learned and earned.

Boogie Nights (1997)

Tuesday, June 3rd, 2008
Genres: Drama
Countries: USA
Actors: Guzmán, Luis | Reynolds, Burt | Moore, Julianne | Bueno, Rico | Reilly, John C. | Parker, Nicole Ari | Cheadle, Don | Graham, Heather | Wahlberg, Mark | Macy, William H. | Barkhordarian, Samson | Hartley, Nina | Braeden, Brad | Gleason, Joanna | Hudd, Lawrence
Directors: Anderson, Paul Thomas
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Everyone’s born with one special thing, and Eddie Adams uses his humongous “asset” to take the world of film pornography by storm. Things get ugly though when success leads to drugs and ruin. Will Dirk clean up and get back on top? Will Amber see her son? Will Rollergirl ever take off her skates?!

Blow (2001)

Friday, January 18th, 2008
Genres: Biography | Crime | Drama
Countries: USA
Actors: Depp, Johnny | Cruz, Penélope | Potente, Franka | Griffiths, Rachel | Reubens, Paul | Mollà, Jordi | Curtis, Cliff | Sandoval, Miguel | Suplee, Ethan | Liotta, Ray | Gage, Kevin | Perlich, Max | James, Jesse | Pérez, Miguel | Ferro, Dan
Directors: Demme, Ted
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George Jung is the son of a struggling small business owner. Seeing his family struggle to make ends meet and failing, George vows never to share a similar fate. Moving to California, he starts his own pot pushing operation in which he finds both success and imprisonment. In prison, he meets a cellmate who introduces him into a partnership to the lucrative new market in cocaine. Upon release, George Jung quickly becomes instrumental in establishing the exploding US market for cocaine in which he claimed that he handled about 85% of the supply in the 1970’s. However, for all the fabulous wealth and power he gained, the true costs of his dangerously treacherous occupation catch up with him in ways from which he would never recover.

Bobby (2006)

Friday, October 19th, 2007
Genres: Drama
Countries: USA
Actors:
Directors:
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The Ambassador Hotel, 1968: the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy will soon take place here but none of the hotel residents and employees knows about it yet. Everyone at the hotel is busy with his own affairs, and their paths never seem to cross, not even in this closed space. However, it only seems so and twenty two individuals who will become unwitting witnesses to the tragedy will make a lot of startling discoveries and have strange meetings.

All the King’s Men (2006)

Saturday, August 18th, 2007
Genres: Drama
Countries: Germany | USA
Actors: Penn, Sean | Law, Jude | Hopkins, Anthony | Winslet, Kate | Ruffalo, Mark | Clarkson, Patricia | Gandolfini, James | Haley, Jackie Earle | Baker, Kathy | Balsam, Talia | Champagne, Travis | Forrest, Frederic | Desmond, Paul | Dunn, Kevin | McCarthy, Kevin
Directors: Zaillian, Steven
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In the 50’s, in Louisiana, the smart populist, manipulative and wolf hick Willie Stark is elected governor with the support of the lower social classes. He joins a team composed of his bodyguard and friend Sugar Boy; the journalist from an aristocratic family Jack Burden; the lobbyist Tiny Duffy; and his mistress Sadie Burke, to face the opposition of the upper classes. When the influent Judge Irwin supports a group of politicians in their request of impeachment, Stark assigns Jack to find some dirtiness along the life of Irwin, leading to a tragedy in the end.

Goodfellas (1990)

Sunday, May 6th, 2007
Genres: Biography | Crime | Drama
Countries: USA
Actors: De Niro, Robert | Liotta, Ray | Pesci, Joe | Bracco, Lorraine | Sorvino, Paul | Low, Chuck | DiLeo, Frank | Sivero, Frank | Darrow, Tony | Starr, Mike | Vincent, Frank | Adonis, Frank | Scorsese, Catherine | Mastrogiacomo, Gina | Shepherd, Suzanne
Directors: Scorsese, Martin
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This film views the mob lives of three pivotal figures in the 1960’s and 70’s New York. Ray Liotta plays Henry Hill, a local boy turned gangster in a neighborhood full of the roughest and toughest. Joe Pesci plays Tommy Devito, a pure bred gangster, who turns out to be Henry’s best friend. Robert De Niro plays Jimmy Conway, the man who puts the two of them together, and runs some of the biggest hijacks and burglaries the town has ever seen. After an extended jail sentence, Henry must sneak around the back of the local mob boss, Paulie Cicero, played by Paul Sorvino, to live the life of luxury he has always dreamed of. In the end, the friends end up in a hell of a jam, and must do anything they can to save each other, and stay alive.

Casino (1995)

Saturday, May 5th, 2007
Genres: Crime | Drama
Countries: France | USA
Actors: De Niro, Robert | Stone, Sharon | Pesci, Joe | Woods, James | Vincent, Frank | Cajano, Pasquale | Rickles, Don | Pollak, Kevin | Vella, Vinny | King, Alan | Jones, L. Q. | Smothers, Dick | Rigano, Joseph | Bloom, John | Prophet, Melissa
Directors: Scorsese, Martin
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This Martin Scorsese film depicts the Janus-like quality of Las Vegas—it has a glittering, glamorous face, as well as a brutal, cruel one. Ace Rothstein and Nicky Santoro, mobsters who move to Las Vegas to make their mark, live and work in this paradoxical world. Seen through their eyes, each as a foil to the other, the details of mob involvement in the casinos of the 1970’s and ’80’s are revealed. Ace is the smooth operator of the Tangiers casino, while Nicky is his boyhood friend and tough strongman, robbing and shaking down the locals. However, they each have a tragic flaw—Ace falls in love with a hustler, Ginger, and Nicky falls into an ever-deepening spiral of drugs and violence.

Aviator, The (2004)

Saturday, May 5th, 2007
Genres: Biography | Drama
Countries: Germany | Japan | USA
Actors: DiCaprio, Leonardo | Blanchett, Cate | Beckinsale, Kate | Reilly, John C. | Baldwin, Alec | Alda, Alan | Holm, Ian | Huston, Danny | Stefani, Gwen | Law, Jude | Scott, Adam | Ross, Matt | Garner, Kelli | Conroy, Frances | Spiner, Brent
Directors: Scorsese, Martin
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The script begins as a young Hughes directs one of Scorsese’s favorite films, Hell’s Angels. Hughes was so obsessed with perfection in the aerial sequences that he waits forever for perfect conditions, right down to cloud formations. The Aviator ends in 1946, when Hughes was still a dashing young man and romancing actresses like Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn.