"Chaos Theory" stars Reynolds as an obsessive organizer, devoted husband, loving father, celebrated author and a man who is consumed with making lists. He maps out every minute detail of his life in order to keep everything on track. When a misunderstanding with his wife (Mortimer) unveils a secret about his family and his best friend (Townsend), the meticulous list maker decides to toss away his ordered life and leave things to chance.
The film is a production of Castle Rock Entertainment, Warner Independent Pictures and Lone Star Film Groups with Warner Independent owning the North American distribution rights. Frederic Golchan and Erica Westheimer are producing "Chaos Theory," Ramsey Nickell is the director of photography, and Nicholas Eramus is the editor.
Source: Warner Independent Pictures
The film takes place 10 years after the events depicted in The Silence of the Lambs. FBI Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) is disgraced after a botched drug raid resulting in the deaths of five people, including HIV-positive drug dealer Evelda Drumgo (Hazelle Goodman), who was shot by Starling while holding a baby—and threatening Starling with a "whispering death" (MAC-10). Though Starling had tried to abort the raid before a violent situation developed, another officer charged ahead and precipitated the gun battle with Drumgo and her bodyguards, and Starling is unjustly blamed for the bloodbath by Justice Department official Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta), whose romantic advances Starling had rejected years earlier.
As a result of the publicity surrounding the drug raid, Starling and her past connection to escaped serial killer Hannibal Lecter come to the attention of one of Lecter's victims, Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), a wealthy, sadistic pedophile. Verger, who was left horrifically disfigured and paralyzed by his encounter with Lecter, still seeks revenge for what occurred. He uses his political influence to have Starling assigned to the Lecter case once again in the hope that this will draw Lecter out of hiding.
Verger claims to have new information about Lecter (an X-ray) which he is willing to disclose only to Starling, and she is sent to his estate to collect it and interview him. Upon her arrival, Verger tells Starling about his history with Lecter. They met when Lecter was assigned by a court as Verger's therapist after Verger's conviction on multiple counts of child molestation. Verger, the only one of Lecter's victims to survive, is now bedridden and confined to his secluded mansion, but with the assistance of his personal physician Cordell (Zeljko Ivanek) and other minions he is pursuing an elaborate scheme to capture, torture and kill Lecter.
In Florence, Italy, Chief Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi of the Questura (Giancarlo Giannini) is investigating the disappearance of the curator of the Capponi Library, a Renaissance palace that serves as a repository of rare books, historical documents and art treasures. In the course of his investigation, Pazzi meets the new curator: "Dr. Fell," who is actually Hannibal Lecter.
As Verger surmised, Lecter soon learns of Starling's public disgrace and of her reassignment to his case, and sends her a letter that is at once sympathetic and mocking. The letter contains no apparent clue to Lecter's whereabouts, but Starling detects a strange fragrance on it. She takes it to a perfume company, where the experts inform her that the writer used a skin cream that could have been made by only a few shops in the world, one of which is in Florence.
Starling contacts the police departments of the cities where the shops are located, including Pazzi's department, asking for copies of any surveillance tapes made by cameras installed in the shops. When Pazzi sees one of his men making a copy of such a tape for Starling, he recognizes "Fell" in the tape and decides to find out why the FBI is interested in him. Pazzi accesses the FBI's database of fugitive criminals and learns that "Fell" is Hannibal Lecter. He also learns that Verger is offering a reward of $3 million to anyone who assists him in capturing Lecter rather than turning him over to the FBI (who offer a $250,000 reward). Hoping to get the reward, Pazzi makes contact with Verger's people and agrees to help them kidnap Lecter. Starling, meanwhile, has received the surveillance tape from Florence, recognized Lecter, and learned that Pazzi has been using the FBI's database to check on Lecter. She calls Pazzi and warns him against trying to capture Lecter himself, but Pazzi ignores her warning.
Pazzi and Verger's men try to kidnap Lecter after his scheduled evening lecture on the poetry of Dante to a group of scholars at the Palazzo Vecchio, but their plan goes badly awry. Instead, Lecter murders Pazzi by hanging him and cutting out his intestines. He then escapes, deciding to return to the United States to renew his acquaintance with Starling.
Frustrated by the failed attempt to kidnap Lecter, Verger tries to draw him out of hiding once again by getting Starling into more trouble. He bribes Krendler to accuse her of withholding a note she received from Lecter. The ploy works, and Starling is suspended from duty. Verger's men keep her under surveillance in the hope that Lecter will contact her. Lecter, meanwhile, has been watching her and also watching Krendler. Lecter then buys china and crystal for an elaborate meal—and also steals surgical equipment from a hospital. He takes everything to a secluded lakefront house that he has learned belongs to Krendler.
Lecter then contacts Starling, luring her to Washington's Union Station for a meeting. Verger's men follow her there. As Starling looks for Lecter among the crowd of travelers and shoppers at the station, she and Lecter converse by cell phone. He expresses his admiration for her and sympathy for the shabby treatment she has received from the FBI, at one point suggesting that he might force the people who have disrespected her to "scream apologies."
Having spotted Lecter, Verger's men capture him in the station's parking lot despite Starling's efforts to stop them. Starling makes a fruitless attempt to expose Verger's scheme to the FBI. Meanwhile, Verger's men transport Lecter to the Verger estate. Verger plans to watch Lecter being eaten alive by a herd of vicious wild pigs that Verger, an expert at swine breeding from his days in the family meatpacking business, has prepared especially for the purpose.
When the FBI refuses to act on her report that Verger has kidnapped Lecter, Starling goes alone to Verger's estate. She intervenes as Verger's henchmen are about to unleash the pigs on Lecter, shooting the men and freeing him—but she is shot and wounded in the process. Lecter then rescues her from the animals. When a furious Verger orders his physician Cordell to shoot Lecter, Lecter persuades Cordell (who has always hated his master) to throw Verger into the pen with the pigs instead, and Verger dies in the very manner in which he had hoped to kill Lecter, Lecter having assured Cordell he will take the blame for the deed.
Lecter takes Starling to Krendler's lakefront house and treats her bullet wound. She awakens in an upstairs bedroom, dressed for a formal occasion. On her way downstairs, she finds a phone and calls the police. Instead of taking their advice and leaving the house to wait for their arrival, she tries to find Lecter downstairs. She finds him in the dining room where he has set the table as if for an elegant dinner party, watched by the seated Krendler, who has been drugged. As Starling looks on, horrified, Lecter removes the top of Krendler's skull, cuts out part of his brain, sautees it in a pan by the table, and Krendler willingly eats it.
When Lecter wheels Krendler back to the kitchen to clear up after the "meal", Starling attacks him with a silver candlestick but is quickly overpowered. Lecter traps her in the kitchen by trapping her hair in the fridge. He asks her "Tell me Clarice, would you ever say to me, 'Stop...if you loved me, you'd stop'?" To which Starling replies "Not in a thousand years." Lecter replies with, "That's my girl," then kisses Starling. Just as he is about to leave, thinking he'd won, he hears a click and sees that Starling has handcuffed his wrist to hers. When she refuses to provide the key, Lecter pins her wrist to a table and brandishes a meat cleaver. He raises it and says, "This is really going to hurt."
Next we see Starling outside the house, looking for Lecter, who escaped just before the police cars arrived. Both her hands are intact.
The last scene is of Lecter on an airplane. One of his arms is in a sling. His hand is not visible. He is preparing to eat the boxed meal he has brought with him, and the small boy sitting next to him asks about the food. Lecter opens a container to reveal what appears to be part of Krendler's brain, cooked and sliced. The boy asks to try some, and Lecter allows him to, after saying that his mother always told him to try new things.
The Illusionist is a 2006 period drama written and directed by Neil Burger and starring Edward Norton, Jessica Biel, and Paul Giamatti. Based loosely on Steven Millhauser's story "Eisenheim the Illusionist", The Illusionist tells the story of Eisenheim (Norton), a magician in turn-of-the-20th-century Vienna.
The film begins in medias res as Chief Inspector Walter Uhl (Giamatti) recounts the story of Eisenheim for Crown Prince Leopold, following Uhl's visit to the theatre to arrest Eisenheim during what appears to be necromancy passed off as a magic show.
Eisenheim was born the son of a cabinetmaker in Austria-Hungary. One day when he was a teenager, Eisenheim (played as a young man by Aaron Johnson) meets a traveling magician along a road. The magician performs several tricks for him and then, according to various accounts, both the magician and the tree he was sitting under vanish. Eisenheim becomes obsessed with magic tricks after this.
He also falls in love with Sophie, the Duchess von Teschen (Biel, played as a young lady by Eleanor Tomlinson), a noblewoman well above his social class; her parents have hired Eisenheim's father as a cabinetmaker. Young Eisenheim makes Young Sophie a unique marquetry puzzle locket, which if twisted correctly reveals a small, hidden photograph of Eisenheim. Although the two are forbidden to see each other, they meet in a secret hideout chamber in the woods, where Eisenheim tells of his plans to go to China to learn more magic and Sophie promises to go with him. On the day that they are going to leave, however, the police come looking for Sophie. The two hide in the secret room and Sophie begs Eisenheim to make them both disappear. He is unable to fulfill this request and the two are separated. This event has major significance on their future lives and Eisenheim learns a great lesson from it.
Eisenheim leaves his village to travel the world, perfecting his magic. He returns 15 years later as a master illusionist. He meets Sophie at one of his performances, when she is volunteered by the ruthless Crown Prince Leopold as a reluctant participant in a trick. He soon learns that Sophie is expected to marry the Crown Prince, who purportedly has a history of abuse towards women. Eisenheim and Sophie, having recognized each other, meet privately, whereupon it is revealed that Sophie still has the locket he made for her years ago. After humiliating the Crown Prince during a private show, Eisenheim finds his hit performance shut out of Vienna. When Sophie comes to offer him help, the two consummate their relationship and realize that they are still in love. They plan to flee the Empire together; but first, Sophie points out, something must be done to stop Leopold, who, she reveals, is planning a coup d'etat to usurp the Crown of Austria from his aging father, the Emperor Franz Joseph I, while using his engagement to her to win the Hungarian half of the Empire as well. She also knows that the Crown Prince will view her as disposable if she leaves him for another man, and that he will have both her and Eisenheim followed and killed in order to protect his ego.
Leopold finds out from Uhl, who was following the couple, that Sophie has met with Eisenheim. While drunk, Leopold confronts Sophie and accuses her of being a whore. She tells him that she will not marry him or have anything to do with his plan. When she attempts to leave, he appears to murder her in the stables with a sword cut across her neck. Unfortunately, Leopold's royal status makes any accusations against him unthinkable, despite an existing belief among the people that Leopold has murdered a woman in the past. As Eisenheim plunges into despair and the citizens of Vienna begin to suspect Leopold of Sophie's murder, Uhl observes Eisenheim's actions more closely on behalf of Leopold.
Wracked with grief, Eisenheim prepares a new kind of magic show, using mysterious equipment and Chinese stagehands. Eisenheim purchases a run-down theater and opens a new performance. During his show, Eisenheim apparently summons spirits, leading many to believe that he possesses supernatural powers.
Leopold decides to attend one of Eisenheim's shows in disguise. During this show, Eisenheim summons the spirit of Sophie who says someone in the theater murdered her, panicking Leopold. Uhl pleads with Eisenheim to stop, but Eisenheim refuses. Finally, Leopold orders Eisenheim's arrest, but when Uhl tries to arrest him during a live show, Eisenheim's body fades and disappears like his summoned spirits.
Inspector Uhl first searches for Eisenheim at his house. There he finds a folio labeled "Orange Tree," the name of one of Eisenheim's illusions which had intrigued Uhl. Thinking he will find the solution to one of the magician's most famous tricks, he opens it to find empty pages except for a scrap of parchment showing how to open the locket Eisenheim had given Sophie when they were young.
At this point, we return to the first scene of the movie. Uhl reveals to Leopold that he has found evidence which links the Crown Prince to Sophie's murder: a jewel from the prince's sword and Sophie's locket that Eisenheim gave her when they were children. After ordering, then begging Uhl to keep silent, Leopold discovers that Uhl has already informed the Emperor and the General Staff of Leopold's conspiracy to usurp the Austro-Hungarian throne. As the Army arrives at his Palace to arrest him, Leopold shoots himself in despair after angrily justifying his plans to overthrow his father, saying that there were "a thousand different voices screaming to be heard", and that nothing would get done.
In the next scene, Uhl is shown leaving the Imperial Palace. After he takes a few steps, a boy runs up to hand him a folio labeled "Orange Tree". This time, the "Orange Tree" folio is filled with plans detailing a geared mechanism to make the tree "grow". Uhl demands to know where the child obtained the folio; the child reveals that Eisenheim had given it to him. Uhl then reaches down into his pocket, to discover the Duchess' locket, missing. He realises with a jolt that he has been pick-pocketed by a disguised Eisenheim, and gives chase following him to the train station. After the chase, a montage shows Uhl putting the pieces together and discovering how Eisenheim faked Sophie's death and framed Leopold. Eisenheim is then seen walking up to a house in the country where Sophie is waiting for him.
A Beautiful Mind is a 2001 American film based on the life of John Forbes Nash, a Nobel Laureate in Economics.The film was directed by Ron Howard and written by Akiva Goldsman. It was inspired by a bestselling, Pulitzer Prize-nominated 1998 book of the same name by Sylvia Nasar. The film stars Russell Crowe, along with Jennifer Connelly, Ed Harris, Christopher Plummer and Paul Bettany.
The story begins in the early years of Nash's life at Princeton University as he develops his "original idea" that will revolutionize the world of mathematics. Early in the movie, Nash begins developing paranoid schizophrenia and endures delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on his wife and friends.
The film opened in US cinemas on December 21, 2001. It was well-received by critics, grossed over $300 million worldwide, and went on to win four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actress. It was also nominated for Best Leading Actor, Best Editing, Best Makeup, and Best Score. The film has been criticized for its inaccurate portrayal of some aspects of Nash's life. The film fictionally portrayed his hallucinations as visual and auditory, yet factually they were exclusively auditory. Also, Nasar concluded that Nash's refusal to take drugs "may have been fortunate," since their side effects "would have made his gentle re-entry into the world of mathematics a near impossibility"; in the screenplay, however, just before he receives the Nobel Prize, Nash speaks of taking "newer medications."
John Nash (Russell Crowe) arrives at Princeton University as a new graduate student. He is a recipient of the prestigious Carnegie Prize for mathematics; although he was promised a single room, his roommate Charles Herman (Paul Bettany), a literature student, greets him as he moves in and soon becomes his best friend. Nash also meets a group of other promising math and science graduate students, Martin Hansen (Josh Lucas), Sol (Adam Goldberg), Ainsley (Jason Gray-Stanford), and Bender (Anthony Rapp), with whom he strikes up an awkward friendship. Nash admits to Charles that he is better with numbers than people, which comes as no surprise to them after watching his largely unsuccessful attempts at conversation with the women at the local bar.
The headmaster of Princeton informs Nash, who has missed many of his classes, that he cannot begin work until he finishes a thesis paper, prompting him to seek a truly original idea for the paper. A woman at the bar is what ultimately inspires his fruitful work in the concept of governing dynamics, a theory in mathematical economics.
After the conclusion of Nash's studies as a student at Princeton, he accepts a prestigious appointment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), along with his friends Sol and Bender.
Five years later, while teaching a class on calculus at MIT, he places a particularly interesting problem on the chalkboard that he dares his students to solve. When his student Alicia Larde (Jennifer Connelly) comes to his office to discuss the problem, the two fall in love and eventually marry.
On a return visit to Princeton, Nash runs into his former roommate Charles and meets Charles' young niece Marcee (Vivien Cardone), whom he adores. Nash is invited to a secret Department of Defense facility in the Pentagon to crack a complex encryption of an enemy telecommunication. Nash is able to decipher the code mentally, to the astonishment of other codebreakers. Here, he encounters the mysterious William Parcher (Ed Harris), who belongs to the United States Department of Defense.
Parcher observes Nash's performance from above, while partially concealed behind a screen. Parcher gives Nash a new assignment to look for patterns in magazines and newspapers, ostensibly to thwart a Soviet plot. He must write a report of his findings and place them in a specified mailbox. After being chased by Russian agents and an exchange of gunfire, Nash becomes increasingly paranoid and begins to behave erratically.
After observing this erratic behavior, Alicia informs a psychiatric hospital. Later, while delivering a guest lecture at Harvard University, Nash realizes that he is being watched by a hostile group of people, and although he attempts to flee, he is forcibly sedated and sent to a psychiatric facility. Nash's internment seemingly confirms his belief that the Soviets are trying to extract information from him. He views the officials of the psychiatric facility as Soviet kidnappers. At one point, he tries to dig out of his arm an implant he received at The Pentagon, causing much bleeding.
Alicia, desperate to help her husband, visits the mailbox and retrieves the never-opened "top secret" documents that Nash had delivered there. When confronted with this evidence, Nash is finally convinced that he has been hallucinating. The Department of Defense agent William Parcher and Nash's secret assignment to decode Soviet messages was in fact all a delusion. Even more surprisingly, Nash's friend Charles and his niece Marcee are also only products of Nash's mind.
After a series of insulin shock therapy sessions, Nash is released on the condition that he agrees to take antipsychotic medication; however, the drugs create negative side-effects that affect his sexual and emotional relationship with his wife and, most dramatically, his intellectual capacity. Frustrated, Nash secretly stops taking his medication and hoards his pills, triggering a relapse of his psychosis.
While bathing his infant son, Nash becomes distracted and wanders off. Alicia is hanging laundry in the backyard and observes that the back gate is open. She discovers that Nash has turned an abandoned shed in a nearby grove of trees into an office for his work for Parcher. Upon realizing what has happened, Alicia runs into the house to confront Nash and barely saves their child from drowning in the bathtub. When she confronts him, Nash claims that his friend Charles was watching their son. Alicia runs to the phone to call the psychiatric hospital for emergency assistance. Nash suddenly sees Parcher who urges him to kill his wife, but Nash angrily refuses to do such a thing. After Parcher points a gun at her, Nash lunges for him, accidentally knocking Alicia to the ground. Alicia flees the house in fear with their child, but Nash steps in front of her car to prevent her from leaving. After a moment, Nash realizes that Marcee is a hallucination, because although years have passed since their first encounter, Marcee has remained exactly the same age and is still a little girl. Realizing the implications of this fact, he tells Alicia, "She never gets old." Only then does he accept that although all three people seem completely real, they are in fact part of his hallucinations.
Caught between the intellectual paralysis of the antipsychotic drugs and his delusions, Nash and Alicia decide to try to live with his abnormal condition. Nash consciously says goodbye to the three of them forever in his attempts to ignore his hallucinations and not feed "his demons"; however, he thanks Charles for being his best friend over the years, and says a tearful goodbye to Marcee, stroking her hair and calling her "baby girl", telling them both he would not speak to them anymore. They still continue to haunt him, with Charles mocking him for cutting off their friendship, but Nash learns to ignore them.
Nash grows older and approaches his old friend and intellectual rival Martin Hansen, now head of the Princeton mathematics department, who grants him permission to work out of the library and audit classes. Even though Nash still suffers from hallucinations and mentions taking newer medications, he is ultimately able to live with and largely ignore his psychotic episodes. He takes his situation in stride and humorously checks to ensure that any new acquaintances are in fact real people, not hallucinations.
Nash eventually earns the privilege of teaching again. He is honored by his fellow professors for his achievement in mathematics, and goes on to win the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics for his revolutionary work on game theory. Nash and Alicia are about to leave the auditorium in Stockholm, when Nash sees Charles, Marcee and Parcher standing and watching him with blank expressions on their faces. Alicia asks Nash, "What's wrong?" Nash replies, "Nothing. Nothing at all." With that, they both leave the auditorium.
Apocalypto is a 2006 epic film directed by Mel Gibson. Set in Central America, during the declining period of the Maya civilization, Apocalypto depicts the journey of a Mesoamerican tribesman who must escape human sacrifice and rescue his family after the capture and destruction of his village.
The film begins with an epigraph from Will Durant: "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."
While hunting tapir in the Mesoamerican jungle in the early 16th Century, Jaguar Paw (Rudy Youngblood), his father Flint Sky (Morris Birdyellowhead), and their fellow tribesmen encounter a procession of traumatized and fearful refugees. Speaking in Yucatec Maya, the procession's leader explains that their lands have been ravaged, and asks for Flint Sky's permission to pass through the jungle. When Jaguar Paw and his tribesmen return to their village, Flint Sky tells his son not to let the procession's state of fear seep into him. At night, the tribe's elder tells the village a fable of man forever unable to fill his want, despite having been given the capabilities of all of the animals. The villagers follow the story with music and dance, leaving Jaguar Paw to ponder.
The next morning, Jaguar Paw wakes from a nightmare to see strangers enter the village and set the huts ablaze. The raiders, led by Zero Wolf (Raoul Trujillo), attack and subdue the villagers. Jaguar Paw slips out with his pregnant wife Seven (Dalia Hernández) and his little son Turtles Run, lowering them on a vine into a small cave (a chultun, shaped something like a well) to hide them. Jaguar Paw returns to the village to fight the raiders but is subdued with the rest of the tribe. A raider whom Jaguar Paw attacks and almost kills, the vicious Middle Eye (Gerardo Taracena), slits Flint Sky's throat while Jaguar Paw helplessly watches. His last words to him are to not be afraid. Middle Eye mocks Jaguar Paw by calling him 'Almost' for not being able to kill him. Before the raiders leave the village with their prisoners, one suspicious raider severs the vine leading into the ground cave, trapping Jaguar Paw's wife and son within.
The raiders and their captives trek toward the Maya city, encountering razed forests, falling trees, failed maize crops, slaves producing plaster, and the sick and dying. A small diseased girl prophesies that a man bringing the jaguar will bring the raiders to those who will scratch out the earth and end their world. In the city's outskirts, the female captives are sold as slaves and the males are escorted to the top of a step pyramid. The high priest sacrifices several captives by decapitating them after pulling out their beating hearts. When Jaguar Paw is about to be sacrificed, a solar eclipse (also prophesied by the girl) stays the priest's hand. He looks at the king, sitting nearby, and the two share a smile while the people below panic at the phenomenon. The priest declares the sun god Kukulkan is satisfied with the sacrifices. He asks Kukulkan to let light return to the world and the eclipse passes. The crowd cheers in amazement and the priest orders that the remaining captives be disposed of.
Zero Wolf takes the villagers to an amphitheater. The captives are released in pairs and forced to run the length of the open space within the amphitheater to give Zero Wolf's men target practice, with a cynical promise of freedom should they reach the end of the field alive. However, Zero Wolf's son, Cut Rock, is sent to the end of the field to "dispose of" any survivors. The raiders target them with javelins, arrows, and slingstones as they run. Jaguar Paw is struck by an arrow through the abdomen but reaches the end of the field and breaks off the arrowhead. As Cut Rock approaches to finish him off with an obsidian blade, Jaguar Paw shoves the broken arrow into Cut Rock's throat. As Cut Rock bleeds out with Zero Wolf easing him into the next life, Jaguar Paw escapes through a withered maize field and an open mass grave. The enraged Zero Wolf and his raiders pursue Jaguar Paw into the jungle and back toward Jaguar Paw's home. Along the way, one of the raiders is killed by a black jaguar that has been disturbed by Jaguar Paw. As he flees, Jaguar Paw jumps over a high waterfall and survives, declaring from the riverbank below that the raiders are now in his homelands.
Zero Wolf's raiders jump the waterfall as well, then fall to both the forest's elements and Jaguar Paw's traps. A heavy rain sets in, which begins to flood the ground cave in which Jaguar Paw's wife and son are still trapped. Jaguar Paw kills one raider with a poisoned dart and bludgeons Middle Eye in hand-to-hand combat and kills Zero Wolf by leading him into a trap meant for hunting tapir. He is chased by two remaining raiders out to a beach where they encounter Hernan Cortez and his men making their way ashore in boats. The amazement of the raiders allows Jaguar Paw to flee. He returns into the forest to pull his wife and son out of the flooded pit where they are hiding around the time when Seven gives birth to a child. He returns in time to save the family, and sees that his wife has given birth to a healthy second son. As the family walks near the coastline, Jaguar Paw's wife asks what the strange objects near the shore are. Jaguar Paw responds only that "they bring men." Jaguar Paw and his family go deeper into the forest, "to seek a new beginning," leaving the Spanish who are anchored in ships off the beach.