The Brothers Bloom
{4.5/5} “He writes his cons the way dead Russians write novels — with thematic arcs and embedded symbolism.” Stephen and Bloom are brothers. They have been con men since they were kids and, along with their associate Bang Bang, they’re very successful at it. But Bloom wants out — he wants to live an unscripted life. […]
Skyfall
{5/5} “What did you expect, an exploding pen?” A hard drive is stolen from MI6 that has on it a list of agents embedded in terrorist organizations around the world. James Bond chased the person who stole the hard drive and is wrestling with him on top of a train when another agent has them […]
Mystic River
{5/5} “The reality is we’re still 11 year old boys locked in a cellar imagining what our lives would have been if we’d escaped.” When Jimmy, Dave, and Sean were kids they wrote their names in wet cement. An official-looking guy caught them and scolded them — he then told Dave to get in his […]
Mary and Max
{5/5} “When I was young, I invented an invisible friend called Mr. Ravioli. My psychiatrist says I don’t need him anymore, so he just sits in the corner and reads.” Mary is an eight-year-old girl in Australia who picks Max’s name out of a New York phone book and writes him a letter. Mary has a […]
The Social Network
{4.5/5} “The internet’s not written in pencil, Mark, it’s written in ink.” Mark Zuckerberg creates Facebook while a student at Harvard. His roommate Eduardo puts up some money to start it up — and later sues him. Some other students wanted Mark to work on their own similar project — and later they sue him too. Mark […]
American Splendor
{5/5} “Man, she’s got good lookin’ handwritin’.” Harvey Pekar is a file clerk who likes jazz and comics. After his friend Bob Crumb becomes a comic book writer and illustrator, Harvey decides to try it himself. He can’t draw, but Bob and others illustrate his stories for him. Harvey’s comics have no superheroes — they’re […]
Arlington Road
{4.5/5} “Never wiser than when we’re children. They say it and it’s true. We’ll never see things that clear again.” Michael is a professor who teaches a class on American terrorists. His wife, who worked for the CIA, died some time ago. He’s now going out with Brooke, a former grad student of his. After […]
Following
{4.5/5} “You watch somebody’s behaviour and it raises 100 000 questions. I wanted to answer those questions — I wanted to know what the answers were. And so I followed people to try and find out.” A would-be writer follows people around in order to get ideas for characters. He starts making up rules for […]
Happiness
{2.5/5} “I mean, we all have our… you know… pluses and minuses.” Trish is married to psychiatrist Bill and has three kids, Helen is a successful poet, and Joy has an unfulfilling telephone sales job. Allen is obsessed with Helen, his next door neighbour, but can’t bring himself to say more than hello to her. Trish, Helen, […]
The Ghost Writer
{4.5/5} “Forty thousand years of human language, and there’s no word to describe our relationship. It was doomed. ” A writer is hired for a lot of money to do some work on the memoirs of Adam Lang, former Prime Minister of Britain. The previous writer who was working on it mysteriously drowned. The writer […]