Film of the Day – Beginners (2011) Dir. Mike Mills
Synopsis: 2003 in L.A. Oliver’s 38, grieving: his father Hal has died, six years after Oliver’s mother. After her death (and 45 years of marriage), Hal comes out of the closet. In flashbacks we see Oliver with Hal during his last year of life, in love with Andy, a younger man. Flashbacks include Oliver’s childhood...
Film of the Day – Adventureland (2009) Dir. Greg Mottola
Synopsis: In 1987, James Brennan’s dreams of a summer European tour before studying at an Ivy League school in New York City are ruined after his parents have a severe career setback. As a result, James must get a summer job to cover his upcoming expenses at the decrepit local amusement park, Adventureland, where he...
Film of the Day – Trading Places (1983) Dir. John Landis
Synopsis: Louis Winthorpe is a businessman who works for commodities brokerage firm of Duke and Duke owned by the brothers Mortimer and Randolph Duke. When Winthorpe bumps into Billy Ray Valentine, a street hustler and assumes he is trying to rob him, he has him arrested. Upon seeing how different the two men are, the...
Film of the Day – Taxi Driver (1976) Dir. Martin Scorsese
Synopsis: Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool....
Film of the Day – Big (1988) Dir. Penny Marshall
Synopsis: A young boy makes a wish at a fairground machine to be big. He wakes up the following morning to find that his wish has been granted and his body has grown older over night. But he is still the same 12 year old kid on the inside. Now he must learn how to...
Film of the Day – Lost in Translation (2003) Dir. Sofia Coppola
Synopsis: Bob Harris is an American film actor, far past his prime. He visits Tokyo to appear in commercials, and he meets Charlotte, the young wife of a visiting photographer. Bored and weary, Bob and Charlotte make ideal if improbable traveling companions. Charlotte is looking for “her place in life,” and Bob is tolerating a...
Film of the Day – 25th Hour (2002) Dir. Spike Lee
Synopsis: 25th Hour depicts the last day of freedom for a young man before he begins serving a seven-year jail term for drug dealing. Prowling through the city until dawn with his two close male friends and his girlfriend, he is forced to re-examine his life and how he got himself into his predicament, which...
Film of the Day – Mystery Team (2009) Dir. Dan Eckman
Synopsis: At age seven, Oakdale’s Mystery Team was a band of kid detectives dedicated to solving child-sized mysteries (like who put their finger in the pie, and who stole the tricycle), and the town loved them for it. Now they’re eighteen years old, about to graduate from high school, yet they’re still storming the playground...
Film of the Day – Groundhog Day (1993) Dir. Harold Ramis
Synopsis: Phil Connors is an arrogant and egotistical weatherman for a local station in Pittsburgh. He has disdain for those with who he works as well as for his viewers. But the thing he hates most is Groundhog Day held in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, which he is to cover for the third time in his career,...
Film of the Day – Man on Wire (2008) Dir. James Marsh
Synopsis: On August 7, 1974, Philippe Petit, a French wire walker, juggler, and street performer days shy of his 25th birthday, spent 45 minutes walking, dancing, kneeling, and lying on a wire he and friends strung between the rooftops of the Twin Towers. Using contemporary interviews, archival footage, and recreations, it tells the story of...
Film of the Day – Back To The Future (1985) Dir. Robert Zemeckis
Synopsis: In 1985, Marty McFly, a mild-mannered high school student, stops by Dr. Emmett L. Brown’s laboratory to play around with an amplifier. While there he receives a message from Doc that he needs help from him for Doc’s latest invention, a time machine made out of a DeLorean sports car that can travel through...
Film of the Day – Annie Hall (1977) Dir. Woody Allen
Synopsis: Annie Hall is a film about a comedian, Alvy Singer (Woody Allen), who falls in love with Annie Hall (Diane Keaton). Both of the characters are completely different but both strikingly entertaining and unusual. Alvy is an extreme pessimist that obsesses over the subject of death and has very sarcastic and cynical views about...
