Astronomer Dr. Ellie Arroway has long been interested in contact to faraway lands, a love fostered in her childhood by her father, Ted Arroway, who passed away when she was nine years old leaving her then orphaned. Her current work in monitoring for extraterrestrial life is based on that love and is in part an homage to her father.
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Tag Archives: 1990s
Life Is Sweet (1990) Mike Leigh, Alison Steadman, Jim Broadbent, Claire Skinner, Comedy, Drama
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, leads aerobics at a primary school, jokes like a vaudevillian, agrees to waitress at a friend’s new restaurant and dotes on Andy, a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, and with a drunken friend, buys a broken down lunch wagon.
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Twenty Bucks (1993) Keva Rosenfeld, Linda Hunt, Brendan Fraser, Elisabeth Shue, Comedy, Drama
The film follows a $20 bill from its ATM birth to its eventual demise. Along the way, the note weaves in and out of the lives of a street person, an aspiring writer, a stripper, two thieves, and many others in surprising and inventive ways.
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By the Sword (1991) Jeremy Kagan, F. Murray Abraham, Eric Roberts, Mia Sara, Adventure, Drama, Sport
A mysterious man, Suba, gets himself a job at a fencing academy, and as he learns the way of the students, the school, and its maestro, they learn that there’s more to him than meets the eye. He gains (or regains?) his fencing skills and his philosophy of teaching clashes with the maestro’s.
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Larger Than Life (1996) Howard Franklin, Bill Murray, Matthew McConaughey, Jerry Adler, Comedy, Family
Motovational Speaker Jack Corcoran is determined to get his career off the ground, but the biggest gigs he can get are the ones nobody wants. Then one day, he receives a telegram that his circus clown father has passed away, and has left a “huge” inheritance.
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Confessions of a Hitman (1994) Larry Leahy, James Remar, Michael Wright, Emily Longstreth, Crime, Drama
A former hitman named Bruno steals some cash from his mobster uncle. He plans to go to Tahiti, but things go wrong and he finds himself headed for Vegas via Death Valley in a comandeered airport limousine, pursued by his uncle’s henchmen and accompanied by a limo driver and an enigmatic blonde.
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Den goda viljan / Best Intentions (1992) Bille August, Samuel Fröler, Pernilla August, Max von Sydow, Biography, Drama, Romance
The story of Ingmar Bergman’s parents. In 1909, poor, idealistic theology student Henrik Bergman falls in love with Anna Åkerbloom, the intelligent, educated daughter of a rich family in Uppsala. After their wedding Henrik becomes a priest in the north of Sweden.
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Citizen Ruth (1996) Alexander Payne, Laura Dern, Swoosie Kurtz, Mary Kay Place, Comedy, Drama
An irresponsible, drug-addicted, recently impregnated woman finds herself in the middle of an abortion debate when both parties attempt to sway her to their respective sides.
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Plenilune / Plenilunio (1999) Imanol Uribe, Miguel Ángel Solá, Adriana Ozores, Juan Diego Botto, Drama, Thriller
Romance and murder walk side by side in this psychological drama from Spain. A serial killer has been plying his grisly trade in a small town in Spain, murdering young girls and leaving their bodies in a nearby forest. A police inspector is sent in to investigate – his first case outside tumultuous Basque County in 14 years.
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Oi fotografoi / The photographers (1998) Nikos Koundouros, Michalis Iatropoulos, Katerina Pavlaki, Manos Vakousis, Adventure, Drama
In a nonaligned country, where a civil conflict is raging, a team of photographers follows a mercenary war lord, whose men wreak havoc among enemies and innocents alike. The story is a modern version of the tragedy Antigone, in a time when TV and the other media present unrelieved visions of war and bloody mayhem.
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