Movie/Book

Director: Marc Rocco Writer: Dan Gordon Stars: Kevin Bacon,Christian Slater,Gary Oldman  As a 17-year-old orphan,Henri Young,steals $5.00 from a grocery store to feed himself and his little sister, both of whom are destitute.He is apprehended by the store clerk, and his sister is sent to an orphanage. Because that grocery store also housed a U.S.Post Office his crime becomes a federal offense. Young never sees his sister again and is sentenced to  Leavenworth Penitentiary , Kansas .After later being transferred to Alcatraz,he participates in an escape attempt with two other prisoners.  The escape plan fails due to the betrayal of a fellow inmate, Rufus McCain Young is punished by being sent to "the hole" which is in Alcatraz's dungeons.Except for 30 minutes on Christmas Day in 1940, he is left in there for three years.The solitary confinement causes Young to lose his sanity.On release back to th...

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Director:   Milos Forman It Happened One Night in 1934—is more than a superlative human drama. It is, on a broader level, one of the seminal works of its time in that it keenly reflects the systematic stifling of individuality within post-World War II American society.  The year is 1963, and Randall Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is a new patient in a mental ward. He has been sent there from a prison work farm because he is a nonconformist, and so the authorities, having labelled him "belligerent," "resentful" and "lazy," want to evaluate him and determine if he is mentally ill. McMurphy's "problem" is that he is a logic-minded individual in a society ruled by bureaucratic illogic. McMurphy dares to think for himself, and question authority. He resists taking his medication, and makes a perfectly rational declaration to Mildred Ratched (Louise Fletcher), the ward's head nurse: ...

Director: Adam Elliot Writer: Adam Elliot Stars:  Toni Collette ,  Philip Seymour Hoffman ,  Eric Bana “Mary and Max” is an unusual, difficult-to-describe movie, to say the least. The broad strokes go like this: Mary Daisy Dinkle, a crushingly lonely eight-year-old Australian girl with a largely absentee father and an overbearing monster for a mother, goes thumbing through a post office phone book, chooses a random name – Max Jerry Horovitz of New York – and sends him a letter, thus beginning a long transcontinental friendship. It’s a friendship that both Max and Mary desperately need. Mary, with a birthmark on her forehead that looks like poop, endures terrible abuse at home and at school, while the overweight, anxious Max spends his days picking up litter and attending Overeaters Anonymous support groups between “chocolate hot dog” binges. If that sounds like an awful lot of strange darkness for one movie, it is – but it only serves to underscore “Mary ...

Director:    Jean-Pierre Jeunet Writer:  Guillaume Laurant ,  Jean-Pierre Jeunet Stars: Audrey Tautou , Mathieu Kassovitz ,  Rufus Jean-Pierre Jeunet 's "Amelie" is a delicious pastry of a movie, a lighthearted fantasy in which a winsome heroine overcomes a sad childhood and grows up to bring cheer to the needful and joy to herself. You see it, and later when you think about it, you smile.  Audrey Tautou , a fresh-faced waif who looks like she knows a secret and can't keep it, plays the title role, as a little girl who grows up starving for affection. Her father, a doctor, gives her no hugs or kisses and touches her only during checkups--which makes her heart beat so fast he thinks she is sickly. Her mother dies as the result of a successful suicide leap off the towers of   Notre Dame, a statement which reveals less of the plot than you think it does. Amelie grows up lonely and alone, a waitress in a corner bistro, until one day the d...

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel by Harper Lee published in 1960. It was immediately successful, winning the Pulitzer Prize, and has become a classic of modern American literature. The plot and characters are loosely based on Lee's observations of her family, her neighbors, and an event that occurred near her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, in 1936, when she was 10 years old. The story is told by the six-year-old Jean Louise Finch. The novel is renowned for its warmth and humor, despite dealing with the serious issues of rape and racial inequality. The narrator's father, Atticus Finch, has served as a moral hero for many readers and as a model of integrity for lawyers. One critic explains the novel's impact by writing, "In the twentieth century, To Kill a Mockingbird is probably the most widely read book dealing with race in America, and its protagonist, Atticus Finch, the most enduring fictional image of racial heroism." As a Southe...

Jose Saramago's  Blindness José Saramago's Blindness starts out with one man spontaneously going blind in the middle of rush hour. Confused and scared, a crowd gathers, their frustration forgotten, and one man offers to drive him home. Once he has the blind man home, he proceeds to steal the first blind man's car. Not long after, the car thief goes blind while trying to hide the car. Then a wave of spontaneous blindness follows. The first blind man goes to an ophthamology clinic–everyone there is eventually struck blind. It is at this point that the narrative begins to follow the doctor at the clinic and his wife. Informed by the ministry of health that they must vacate their house and move to a quarantine, the doctor's wife decides to join her husband even though she is not blind herself. Inside this quarantine, the situation quickly turns dire as their supplies begin to run low and the criminal element takes over, demanding sex for food. Eventually t...

Director:Sidney Lumet Writers:Reginald Rose Stars:Henry Fonda,Lee J. Cobb,Martin Balsam  '' 12 Angry Men" focuses on a jury's deliberations in a capital murder case. A 12-man jury is sent to begin deliberations in the first-degree murder trial of an 18-year old Puerto Rican boy accused in the stabbing death of his father, where a guilty verdict means an automatic death sentence. The case appears to be open-and-shut: The defendant has a weak alibi; a knife he claimed to have lost is found at the murder scene; and several witnesses either heard screaming, saw the killing or the boy fleeing the scene. Eleven of the jurors immediately vote guilty; only Juror No. 8 (Mr. Davis) casts a not guilty vote. At first Mr. Davis bases his vote more so for the sake of discussion; after all, the jurors must believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty. As the deliberations unfold, the story quickly becomes a study of the jurors' complex persona...