The General

USA, 1926

Genre: Comedy

Directors: Buster Keaton & Clyde Bruckman

Writers: Buster Keaton & Cyde Bruckman

Producer: Buster Keaton

Cast: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack, Glen Cavender.

Plot Summary:

Johnnie loves his train (The General) and Annabelle Lee. When the Civil War begins he is turned down for service because he's more valuable as an engineer. Annabelle thinks it's because he's a coward. Union spies capture The General with Annabelle on board. Johnny must rescue both his loves.

Pi

USA, 1998
Genre: Thriller
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Producers: Eric Watson, Scott Franklin
Writers: Darren Aronofsky, Sean Gullette
Cast: Sean Gullette, Mark Margolis, Ben Shenkman, Pamela Hart
Budget: $60K
Awards: Sundance (Directing), Independent Spirit Awards (screenplay)

Plot Summary:
The mathematician Maximillian Cohen is tormented by a severe migraine since he was a kid, and he uses many pills to reduce his painful headaches. He is a lonely man, and his only friend is his former professor Sol Robeson. Max has the following assumptions, which rules his life: (1) Mathematics is the language of nature; (2) Everything around us can be represented and understood from numbers; (3) If you graph the numbers in any systems, patterns emerge. Therefore there are patterns everywhere in nature. Based on these principles, Max is trying to figure out a system to predict the behavior of the stock market. Due to his research, Max is chased by a Wall Street company with obvious interest in the results of his studies, and by an orthodox Jew follower of the Torah, who believes that this long string of numbers is a code sent from God.

The Hurt Locker

USA 2008
Genre: War
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Writer: Mark Goal
Producers: Kathryn Bigelow, Mark Boal, Greg Saphiro, Nicholas Chartier
Cast: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie, Brian Geraghty
Budget: $11M

Plot Summary:
Bagdad, 2004. War is a drug. An intense portrayal of elite soldiers who have one of the most dangerous jobs in the world: disarming bombs in the heat of combat. When a new sergeant, James, takes over a highly trained bomb disposal team amidst violent conflict, he surprises his two subordinates, Sanborn and Eldridge, by recklessly plunging them into a deadly game of urban combat. James behaves as if he's indifferent to death. As the men struggle to control their wild new leader, the city explodes into chaos, and James' true character reveals itself in a way that will change each man forever.

Hounddog

USA 2007
Genre: Drama
Director: Deborah Kampmeier
Producers: Deborah Kampmeir, Scott Franklin, Raye Dowell
Writers: Deborah Kampmeier
Cast: Dakota Fanning, Isabelle Furhman, Cody Hanford, David Morse, Piper Laurie
Budget: $3.75M
Awards: Sundance 2007 (nominated), Toronto Female Eye Film Festival 2009 (won)

Plot Summary:
A drama set in the American South (1950 aprox.), where a precocious, troubled girl finds a safe haven in the music and movement of Elvis Presley.

Requiem for a dream

USA 2000
Genre: Drama
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Producers: Eric Watson, Palmer West, Scott Franklin
Writters: Darren Aronofsky (screenplay), Hubert Selby Jr. (book & screenplay)
Cast: Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, Marlone Wayans.
Budget: $4.5M

Plot Summary:

Requiem for a Dream exposes four paralleled individuals and their menacing addiction to heroin, cocaine, and diet pills (speed). Taking place in Brooklyn amidst the waning Coney Island, the drugs are very easily obtained and keep each main character in its cycle of dependence. The protagonist Harry Goldfarb is your typical heroin junky with an ambitious plan of "Getting off hard knocks," with help from his cocaine crazed girlfriend Marion and his long time friend Tyrone. Meanwhile his widowed mother is obsessed with the glamor of television and eventually finds her way to a dietitian who pushes her into the cycle of drug induced enslavement.