Monsters vs. Aliens

Susan Murphy (Reese Witherspoon) is hit by a meteorite on the day of her wedding to weatherman Derek Dietl (Paul Rudd), absorbing a substance called quantonium and growing into a giantess. Alerted to the meteorite crash, the military arrive and capture Susan. She is labeled a monster, renamed "Ginormica" by the government, and sent to a top-secret prison facility headed by General W.R. Monger (Kiefer Sutherland) and containing other monsters: B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a brainless, indestructible gelatinous blob; Dr. Cockroach, Ph.D. (Hugh Laurie), a mad scientist with the head and abilities of a cockroach; the Missing Link (Will Arnett), an amphibious fish-ape hybrid; and Insectosaurus, a colossal grub that is larger than Susan. The monsters are forbidden to have any contact with the outside world; while the other monsters have been living contentedly with this lifestyle for the past 50 years, Susan feels incredibly isolated and wishes to return to her old life.

An alien named Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) detects the quantonium radiation emanating from Earth and deploys a gigantic robotic probe to find it and extract it from its source, Susan. After a botched attempt by the President of the United States (Stephen Colbert) to make first contact with the robot, it begins destroying everything in sight, resisting all conventional military force used against it. General Monger convinces the President to use the monsters to fight the robot instead. The monsters accept the mission with the promise of freedom if they succeed. Arriving in San Francisco, Susan is chased by the robot across the city to the Golden Gate Bridge, where the monsters are able to defeat the robot.

Now free, Susan returns to her hometown and introduces her family and friends to the monsters, who are quickly rejected after innocently causing a panicked ruckus in the neighborhood. Derek, meanwhile, breaks up with Susan, claiming that he can't be married to someone who could overshadow his career. Initially devastated, Susan realizes that becoming a monster has improved her life, and fully embraces her new friends and lifestyle. Suddenly, she is abducted by Gallaxhar, who apparently kills Insectosaurus when he tries to save her. On Gallaxhar's spaceship, Susan breaks loose and chases Gallaxhar down, only to enter a machine that extracts the quantonium from her body, shrinking her to her normal size. Gallaxhar proceeds to use the quantonium to power a machine which clones him into an army so he can invade Earth.

With assistance from General Monger, B.O.B., Dr. Cockroach, and the Missing Link infiltrate Gallaxhar's spaceship, rescue Susan, and hot-wire the spaceship's power core, activating the spaceship's self-destruct sequence. However, during their escape attempt, Susan is cut off from her friends, who are trapped in the power core and tell her to save herself. Instead, Susan confronts Gallaxhar, who tries to escape with the quantonium, and attempts to force him into releasing her friends. When Gallaxhar says he cannot reverse the sequence, Susan takes the quantonium back and absorbs it, restoring her to her gianormous size and allowing her to save her friends. The monsters leap out of the exploding spaceship and are rescued by General Monger on the back of the revived Insectosaurus, who has transformed into a giant butterfly.

The monsters receive a hero's welcome upon their return. Derek attempts to get back with Susan for the sake of interviewing her, which could benefit his career; instead, Susan rejects him and forces him to endure the humiliation of being thrown into the air and caught, swallowed and spit out by B.O.B. on camera. At that moment, the monsters are alerted to a monster attack near Paris and fly off to face the new menace.

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Four Christmases

No one enjoys the holidays more than Orlando "Brad" McVie (Vince Vaughn) and Kate (Reese Witherspoon). Every December 25, this happily unmarried, upscale San Francisco couple embarks on a holiday tradition they have shared every year since they met - ditching their crazy families for a relaxing, fun-filled vacation in some sunny exotic locale. There, sipping margaritas by the pool, they toast the season, knowing they once again avoided the chaos and emotional fallout of their four respective households: divorced parents, squabbling siblings, out-of-control kids and all the simmering resentments and awkward moments that are the hallmarks of every family Christmas. But not in Christmas 2006. Shorts and sunglasses packed, Brad and Kate are trapped at the San Francisco Intl. Airport by a fogbank that cancels every outbound flight. Worse yet, they are caught on camera by a CBS 5 local news crew, revealing their whereabouts to the whole city... and to their families.

With no escape and no excuses, they are now expected home by Brad's father (Robert Duvall) and Kate's mother (Mary Steenburgen), as well as Brad's mother (Sissy Spacek) and Kate's father (Jon Voight), thereby celebrating four Christmases in one day. As they brace themselves for a marathon of homecomings, Brad and Kate expect the worst-and that's exactly what they get. But as Brad counts down the minutes to their freedom, Kate surprisingly finds herself tuned to the ticking of a different clock. At the end of the day, each will gain a new perspective on where they came from... and where they're going. Getting to know themselves and each other as they really are could finally give them a chance at the kind of love they've only been playing at. Kate decides she would like to someday start a family, scaring Brad away. Brad eventually comes back to Kate, surprising her at her door with the line "If we're going to have one, we must have two, so they can play together," as he realises how empty his life is and how much he loves Kate after spending hours alone at his father's home.

A year later on New Year's Day 2008, the couple welcomes their first born child in a hospital: a baby girl. They attempted to keep the child's birth a secret from their families, but once again they were caught on camera by a local news crew who was covering the first birth of the new year thereby revealing the arrival of the child to the city...and to their families.

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Rendition

CIA analyst Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is briefing a newly arrived CIA agent in a square in an unnamed country in North Africa (filmed in Marrakech) when a suicide attack kills the latter and 18 other people. The target was a high ranking army official, Abasi Fawal (Yigal Naor), who is in liason with the United States of America and whose tasks include conducting interrogations, and even overseeing the application of techniques amounting to torture. Fawal escapes unscathed.

Egyptian-born Anwar El-Ibrahimi (Omar Metwally), a chemical engineer who lives in Chicago with his pregnant wife Isabella (Reese Witherspoon), their young son and his mother, is linked to a violent organization by telephone records indicating known terrorist Rashid placed several calls to Anwar's cell phone. While returning to the United States from a conference in South Africa, he is detained by American officials and sent to a secret detention facility near the location of the suicide attack depicted earlier, where he is interrogated and tortured. Isabella is not informed.

For lack of more experienced staff, Freeman is assigned the task of observing the interrogation of Anwar, whose interrogator is Fawal himself. After Freeman briefly questions and tortures Anwar himself, he is convinced of Anwar's innocence. However, his boss, Corrine Whitman (Meryl Streep) insists that the detention continue, justifying such treatments as necessary to save thousands from becoming victims of terrorism.

Growing worried, Isabella travels to Washington DC, where she meets up with an old friend, Alan Smith (Peter Sarsgaard) who now works as an aide to Senator Hawkins (Alan Arkin), and pleads with him to find out what has happened to her husband. Initially, she is informed that there had been a mistake in South Africa and Anwar wasn't on the flight, but Isabella presents Anwar's credit card record, that shows that Anwar had purchased something in the in-flight Duty Free shop, which confirmed that he had been on the flight. Smith slowly pieces together details of Anwar's detention. He is unable to convince the senator, nor Corrine Whitman, who had ordered the rendition to give proper details of the detention, nor to release him. After the senator advises him to let it go, as he is currently fighting to have a bill passed in Congress and it is not the right time to start debating an extraordinary rendition, Smith advises Isabella to get a very good lawyer he knows on the case, but she refuses. Upon hearing the confrontation from her office, his sympathetic secretary quietly tips Isabella off on when Whitman will be next in the office. The next day, Isabella confronts Whitman, but Whitman pretends not to know anything and avoids her questions. Frustrated, Isabella storms out of the office, only to go into labour in the hallway.

Eventually, Anwar confesses to have advised on how to make more powerful bombs, and to have been promised $40,000 in return. Freeman, suspicious that it is a false confession, asks Anwar where the money is and Anwar's response is that it was supposed to be delivered to him in South Africa, but the courier failed to show up. Freeman's suspicions are confirmed when he has the names Anwar gives traced by Interpol and draws up a blank. He then Googles the names and finds out that they are the names of the Egyptian football team from the year Anwar left Egypt. He also expresses doubt as to whether Anwar would be willing to put his life, family and job in danger for $40,000 when he earns $200,000 a year in his job. He quotes Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in a discussion on the value of intelligence gathered through torture:
I fear you speak upon the rack
Where men enforced do speak anything.

Without the consent of his superiors, and not caring what happens to him, Freeman gets a warrant for Anwar's release and sends him back to America via a clandestine ship to Spain. When Lee Mayers calls him to tell him to give Anwar back to Abasi Fawal, he simply hangs up. Freeman, angered by the injustice Anwar has suffered from, then leaks the details of Anwar's detention to the American press, to the horror of Whitman and Senator Hawkins.

Another story line is shown in parallel: Abasi's daughter Fatima (Zineb Oukach), has run away from home with her boyfriend Khalid (Moa Khouas). Khalid shows Fatima a picture of his brother, but does not tell her what has happened to him. Abasi is told that Khalid's brother was an inmate at his prison and later died. Fatima is unaware that Khalid is a member of a terrorist group until his friends are arrested at a planned march and he leads her to the terrorist group's base. Near the end of the movie, Fatima discovers a notebook that contains pictures of Khalid and his brother together, showing that they were extremely close, as well as a picture of the two brandishing AK-47s, then some pictures of a grief-stricken Khalid standing over his brother's corpse, some pictures of her father and finally a statement saying that Khalid is doing a deed in revenge for his brother's death. Realizing that Khalid's brother met his death at the hands of her father and that Khalid is about to assassinate him, she runs off. It is then revealed that the entire storyline took place before the suicide attack. At the town square Fatima begs him not to do it, arguing that the target is her father. After removing the pin of his detonator he hesitates, and is therefore killed by the organizers of the attack. As a result he releases the handle of the detonator, and the bomb explodes, killing Fatima also. In the present, Abasi rushes to Khalid's apartment and discovers his grandmother, who is stricken with grief over the loss of both her grandchildren and Fatima. Abasi then realises that his daughter died trying to protect him and is filled with grief himself.

The record of a phone call supposedly made by Rashid to Anwar is not explained in the film. However, earlier it was mentioned that phones are sometimes passed on from one person to another (the DVD extras explain that there was a subplot dropped from the film that elaborated on this concept). Yet despite this reasonable doubt the CIA officials refused to release him. It turned out that in South Africa, while Anwar's phone was off, there had been a call to it from an unknown person.

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Penelope

Penelope Wilhern is a young woman from a well-bred and wealthy family with all the qualities to make an excellent match for any other well-bred man of her status. However, the one thing that sets her apart is her face, which, in fact, resembles that of a pig. This was a curse set on her family generations ago, and the only way to break the curse is for one of her kind to accept her for what she is.

Generations ago, an embittered witch placed a curse on the Wilhern family because their son had impregnated her daughter, one of their servants. The son offered marriage but his family refused and married him off to another. The witch's daughter, overwrought, threw herself off a cliff. The witch cursed the Wilherns in such a way that would result in the next girl born into the clan having the face of a pig. For generations, only sons were born into the family, until five generations later when Penelope (Christina Ricci) was born, stricken with the curse. It is said that the curse can only be lifted if one of her own learns to love her, which is interpreted by her parents to mean a blueblood -- a person from an established noble family.

When a tabloid reporter named Lemon (Peter Dinklage) begins stalking the family to get a photograph of the infant Penelope, her parents, Jessica (Catherine O'Hara) and Franklin (Richard E. Grant) fake their daughters death and then hide their daughter away in their mansion, where Penelope spends her life immersing herself in intellectual pursuits such as literature, horticulture and music. Now an adult, Penelope's parents attempt to introduce her to possible rich suitors, hoping that one of them will fall in love with her and break the curse. Unfortunately, every man who lays eyes on the girl takes flight at first sight, never to return, including Edward Humphrey Vanderman III (Simon Woods), a spoiled, cruel-hearted snob who finds her repulsive.

Vanderman's panicked flight from the Wilhern house results in a newspaper article dubbing him unstable. To redeem his name, he teams up with Lemon and the team goes out to find someone who can get into the house for a picture. They mistakenly take Johnny Martin (James McAvoy), an unrepentant gambler with a heavy heart, for a distantly blue-blooded Max Campion (Nick Frost), who agrees to help Lemon and Vanderman snatch a photograph of her for money. When "Max" meets Penelope, however, he is unexpectedly caught off guard by her disarming charm, and decides to renege on his agreement with Lemon and Vanderman, realizing that their attempt to exploit Penelope is repugnant.

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Walk the line

 The film details Johnny Cash's life from his growing up as the son of a cotton picker in Dyess, Arkansas, dealing with the death of his brother, his drug addiction, subsequent rescue by future wife June Carter, and his famous concert at Folsom State Prison.

The film opens in medias res with an exterior shot of Folsom State Prison in 1968. An audience of inmates cheer for Johnny Cash's band, which is playing a vamp. Johnny Cash is sitting near a table saw, reminding him of his youth and particularly of the death of his brother.

In 1944, Johnny (then known as "J.R.") and his brother Jack are listening to a young June Carter on the radio. The brothers discuss their respective strengths and weaknesses with regard to the Bible and hymns. Jack, who is training to become a pastor, and therefore "needs to know the Bible front to back," is much better at recalling the words and stories of the Bible. J.R., who can sing well like his mother, is adept with the hymns they sing at church. Jack is sawing wood on a job for a neighbor with J.R. when J.R. leaves to go fishing. He is later taken home by his father, Ray, and they find out Jack has been fatally injured in an accident with the saw. J.R.'s relationship with his father, already strained, becomes much more difficult after Jack's death.

In 1952, J.R. joins the Air Force and is posted to Germany. He seems not to enjoy his time there, but finds solace in playing a guitar he buys and writing songs - one of which will become "Folsom Prison Blues," inspired by a B-movie shown to the troops, Inside the Walls of Folsom Prison. Following his discharge, he marries his girlfriend Vivian Liberto. In 1955, Vivian and John (as he is now generally known) live in Memphis in relative poverty while John works as a door-to-door salesman to support his growing family (Cash's eldest daughter Rosanne is an infant, and Vivian mentions "another one on the way"). One day, he walks past a recording studio and has an inspiration to organize a band (made up of guitarist Luther Perkins and bassist Marshall Grant, whom his wife describes as "two mechanics who can't hardly play") to play gospel music.

Cash's band auditions for Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records. As they play a pedestrian gospel song ("I Was There When It Happened"), Phillips interrupts and asks Cash to play a song that he really feels. As a result, Cash and his band play "Folsom Prison Blues," and Phillips accepts it. The performance results in a contract, in fulfillment of which Cash begins touring in 1955 (as Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two) with other young Sun artists. Among those he meets on the tour - along with Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Waylon Jennings and Elvis Presley - is June Carter, who performs as both a singer and a comedian.

Cash's career expands, and he finds himself spending more time with June, who divorces her first husband, Carl Smith, at this time. Cash is offered drugs and alcohol after his romantic intentions backfire and soon begins to behave erratically. The erratic behavior peaks one night when Cash invites June on stage to sing a duet. Cash suggests a love song ("Time's A Wastin'") which June recorded with Smith. She feels uncomfortable performing it with Cash, but he ignores her protests and kisses her in the middle of the performance. She storms off the stage and they go their separate ways, despite Cash's protest that "it was only a song." Soon afterwards June tells him (and many of the other artists on the tour) that they can't "walk the line," prompting Cash to write "I Walk the Line".

In 1964, Cash (Ray tells him that he would do well to start "sleeping at night...or eating...or both") takes Vivian to an awards program which June also attends. Despite his wife's objections to the level of interest he is paying her, Cash persuades June (who is divorcing her second husband, a stock car driver) to come out of semi-retirement and tour with him. The tour is a great success, but backstage, Vivian is critical of June's influence. After one Las Vegas performance in 1965, Cash and June sleep together in her hotel room. The next morning, as June is on the phone with one of her daughters, she notices Cash taking several pills and begins to doubt the wisdom of continuing the previous night's relationship. At that evening's concert, Cash, upset by Carter's apparent rejection, behaves erratically and eventually passes out. June disposes of Cash's drugs and begins to write "Ring of Fire", describing her feelings for Cash and her pain at watching him descend into addiction.

On his way home, Cash travels to Mexico to purchase more drugs and is arrested in El Paso, Texas. Vivian is upset and the tensions in Cash's marriage rise when he tries to put up his band's pictures at their house despite her objection (especially over one of June). After a final violent dispute, the pair eventually separate and Cash moves to Nashville, where he shares living quarters with Waylon Jennings (played by Jennings' son Shooter) in 1966.

Cash attempts to reconcile with June, which involves a long walk to her house (his car is in the shop and he has no cash to reclaim it), but he collapses in the rain. Later, he sees a large house near a lake in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and promptly buys it. His parents, and the extended Carter family (June, her daughters and her parents, Maybelle and Ezra) arrive for Thanksgiving, at which time Ray dismisses Cash's achievements and behavior, citing as an example of Cash's carelessness, an expensive tractor stuck in view of the house. After a tense meal, Cash decides to prove his father wrong by freeing the tractor. June and her family watch in concern as Cash struggles with the machine; June's mother, apparently aware of her daughter's true feelings toward Cash, encourages her to go help him, because "he's mixed up." June helps Cash when the tractor goes into the lake. After a long detoxification period, June sits with Cash. He wakes up and she gives him some fresh fruit. He then tells her that she's "an angel." June, however, admits that she's made mistakes as well. June then reveals that she, and God, have given Cash a second chance and he cleans himself up.

Cash notices in fan mail that many of his fans are prisoners, dresses in his customary black, visits his recording company (now Columbia Records) and makes a proposal to record an album live inside Folsom Prison. His record company is doubtful, arguing that the musical world has changed in the time Cash was rehabilitating, but he says bluntly that he will perform on a given date and the label can use the tapes if they think the music is any good.

While at Folsom Prison, the warden requests that Cash not play any more songs that would remind the inmates that they are in prison. Cash laughs wryly and replies, "You think they forgot?"

At the Folsom Prison concert Cash tells how he always admired prisoners, explaining that his brief prison stay after his drug bust really made him "feel like I'd seen a thing or two, you know?" But, he continues, he now realizes his experiences really can't compare because "I ain't never had to drink this yellow water you got here at Folsom!" Performing "Cocaine Blues" to great acclaim from the prisoners, the concert is a great success, and Cash embarks on a tour with June and his band.

While on a tour bus, Cash, disturbed by "bad dreams...memories," goes to see June in the back of the bus. (On his way he removes a cigarette from the mouth of a sleeping Luther Perkins, who in real life died around this time when his house caught fire; in his biography Cash said he believed Luther Perkins' house fire was caused by a cigarette.) Waking June at 2 AM, he proposes to her, but she turns him down. Cash tells her that that was the last time; June tersely replies, "Good." and that she doesn't like "re-runs." At the concert, June tells Cash that he is allowed to speak to her only on stage.

The concert, which is in London, Ontario, Canada, features "Ring of Fire," for which Cash acknowledges June. He then persuades her to join him in a duet of "Jackson." In the middle of the song, Cash breaks off; June looks concerned. Cash explains that he "just can't sing this song any more" unless she agrees to marry him. June is reluctant to give an answer, but after Cash proposes to her, June accepts. At his house, Cash watches his father interact with his newest granddaughters Rosie and Carlene. He jokes with his father, their tense relationship having apparently begun to heal. Cash continues down the stairs to the pier, looking up, and meeting June's eyes where she is fishing with her father. They look at each other and a smile from Cash closes the film.

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Just like Heaven

Elizabeth Masterson (Reese Witherspoon), a young doctor whose work is her whole life, had a serious automobile accident while on her way to a blind date. Three months later, David Abbott (Mark Ruffalo), a landscape architect recovering from the death of his wife, moves into the apartment that had been Elizabeth's.

Elizabeth appears to David at the apartment. Though seemingly a normal person, she has ghostly properties and abilities: she can suddenly appear and disappear, move through walls, and once takes over his actions. When they meet, they are both surprised, as Elizabeth is not aware yet of her condition.

For the most part, David is the only one who can see Elizabeth, leading others to believe that he is hallucinating and talking to himself. It is later revealed that one of Elizabeth's young nieces can also sense her presence although she cannot see her.

At first, Elizabeth does not remember anything of her life, and refuses to believe that she is dead. Her memories come back gradually. Together, assisted by Zen-like psychic Darryl (Jon Heder), she and David find out who she is, what happened to her, and why they are connected.

Eventually, David discovers that the reason he is the only one who can see Elizabeth is that he was her blind date. They find that her body is in a coma in the hospital. In accordance with her living will, she will soon be taken off life support. Elizabeth's spirit and David, who have fallen in love, manage to prevent this just in time, and she miraculously recovers. However, she doesn't remember anything that happened during the coma or any of the events with David, which leaves him heartbroken.

One day, Elizabeth goes up to her roof and sees David, who got in with the spare key and is finishing up the garden there. Just as he is about to leave, she asks for her key back. When their hands touch, her memory is restored, and they kiss. Before the credits roll, Darryl is shown looking at them in a crystal ball. Darryl is proud and sighs "Righteous".

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Vanity Fair

 
The ambitious Becky Sharp rises from humble beginnings as an orphan using her wit, beauty, and no small amount of spirit.

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Legally Blonde 2, Red, White & Blonde

Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) wants her Chihuahua, Bruiser, to reunite with his mother, because she would like Bruiser's mother to attend her wedding. Elle hires a detective to find Bruiser's mother, only to discover that the company that has her dog's mother is a cosmetics company that uses Bruiser's mother for cosmetic testing. She finds out that her law firm represents the C'est Magnifique Corporation.

Elle decides to leave Boston, where she had settled with her fiancé, and go to Washington, D.C. to work on Bruiser's Bill. Elle is so upset that her dog's mother is in a make-up testing laboratory, that she decides to take it upon herself to have a "voice for those who can't speak" and to outlaw animal testing.

While working for Congresswoman Victoria Rudd (Sally Field), Elle is met with skepticism and other barriers common to Washington politics. One of her new co-workers remarks that she is "Capitol Barbie!", (there has even been a Barbie doll based on Elle Woods). After a variety of ups and downs including a failed attempt to improve her work environment by having her co-workers write compliments about one another and place them in the "snap cup", Elle starts to lose her faith in Washington politics.

As the story moves along, Elle discovers that Bruiser is actually gay, after she is paged by "The Paws that Refreshes: A Doggy Day Spa." Bruiser has been affectionate with Leslie, a Rottweiller owned by Representative Stan Marks (Bruce McGill). Elle also finds that Congresswoman Libby Hauser (Dana Ivey) was a member of Delta Nu (the sorority from the first film). As a result, Hauser warms to Elle and eventually comes to support Bruiser's Bill.

Elle also discovers that Congresswoman Rudd has been working against her. Rudd has been doing so in an effort to satisfy the interests of a major campaign donor named "Bob" (who is never seen, but with whom Rudd has several telephone conversations). However, Rudd is eventually blackmailed into supporting Elle's discharge petition, because Rudd's Chief of Staff, Grace Rossiter (Regina King) eavesdrops on a recorded conversation during which Rudd admits to Elle that she has been working against Bruiser's Bill in order to help Rudd's sponsors who want to continue with tests on animals. Grace and Elle eventually reach a place of mutual respect, even though Grace openly dislikes Elle.

Elle's discharge petition is successful, and Bruiser's Bill is brought to the floor of the House. Elle gets married in a park in D.C., albeit not at Fenway Park as she had planned, but standing on the home plate which has been delivered to D.C. by the UPS Guy (Bruce Thomas). In the final scene of the movie, when Emmett asks where to live, Elle says, "Oh, I think I know just the place," as they are driving by the White House.

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The Importance of Being Earnest

The plot revolves around two men in Edwardian England, John (Jack) Worthing and Algernon (Algy) Moncrieff. Whenever Jack travels to London from his Hertfordshire estate he says he is going to see his (fictitious) wayward brother Ernest. Once in London he keeps his privacy by calling himself Ernest. This tactic is especially important as his beloved, Gwendolen, declares that she could only love a man named Ernest. Her cousin, Algy, is the one person who knows Jack's secret and one day he travels down to the estate, announcing himself to Jack's attractive ward Cecily as the infamous Ernest. Cecily is enamoured with him and his name, and upon Jack's return home and Gwendolen's unexpected arrival it becomes clear there are both too many and too few Ernests earnestly courting.
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Sweet Home Alabama

The story is a love triangle involving two childhood Alabama sweethearts who married but became estranged, Jake Perry and Melanie Smooter (Lucas and Witherspoon), and Melanie's boyfriend of 8 months, Andrew Hennings (Dempsey).

The film starts at a beach in Alabama during a thunderstorm with two children chasing each other (10 yr old Melanie and Jake) who kiss but get struck by lightning. Then it goes to present day with Melanie now a successful fashion designer in New York City. When she becomes engaged to Andrew, the son of the mayor of New York City, Melanie announces that she has to go back home alone to Alabama to tell her parents in person. Her private reason is to demand a divorce from Jake. She has not told Andrew that she is still married.

Jake refuses to divorce her until one night she gets drunk and explains to everyone in the bar that the reason she married Jake was because she was pregnant, and she later had a miscarriage. Jake becomes angry with her and takes her home. When she wakes up the next morning, the divorce papers are laying on her bed signed by Jake.

Melanie learns that Jake had once gone to New York City to try to find her, because he still loved her. That night, she goes to the cemetery to tell her old coon dog Bear good bye. Jake shows up and explains how he told the dog that her disappearance was his fault and they end up talking about why the marriage did not work, the baby they lost, and why she left. Jake gives a blessing for Melanie to have a good life with Andrew, but Melanie says she cannot do it and kisses Jake passionatly. Jake pushes her away, however, and tells her to go home.

The next day, Andrew arrives in town. Jake meets him and discovers that he is Melanie's fiancée. Jake, identifying himself as Melanie's cousin, brings Andrew to Melanie. Andrew finds out that Melanie is still married to Jake and runs off angrily.

Melanie returns to her parents' house where her father walks in with Andrew. Andrew tells her how sorry he is and how he still wants to marry her. They decide to have the wedding in Alabama and Andrew's mother comes down from New York. On her wedding day, as she is walking down the aisle, her lawyer shows up and explains that Jake has signed the divorce papers, but she has not. Melanie decides to not sign the papers, and that she does not want to marry Andrew, because she still loves Jake, which Andrew understands. She runs away from her wedding to go find Jake, who is on the same beach where, years ago, ten-year-old Jake had told her that he wanted to marry her "so I can kiss you anytime I want."

Melanie tells him that she did not marry Andrew because she wanted to be with him so that she could kiss him whenever she wanted too. As Jake and Melanie kiss, Wade, the town sheriff, interrupts them by taking them back Jake's mother's bar, where all of their friends and family are waiting.

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The Trumpet of the Swan

The Trumpet of the Swan is a 2001 animated film produced by RichCrest Animation Studios, directed by Richard Rich, and distributed by TriStar Pictures, being TriStar's first animated film since 1988's Pound Puppies and the Legend of Big Paw. It is based on the popular children's book by E. B. White. It tells the story of a young Trumpeter Swan who is born without a voice and is vying for the attention of a beautiful pen named Serena. He overcomes this by learning to play the trumpet. It stars the voices of Jason Alexander, Reese Witherspoon, Mary Steenburgen, Seth Green, Carol Burnett and Joe Mantegna. Dee Bradley Baker provides the voice of Louie.

It was not well received by critics. Many stated the animation was poor, that the charm of the original book was lost, the characters were dull, the casting did not match, the songs were unmemorable and that the character design was awful. But the most common criticism of the film version was that it did not follow the original story well. This disappointed many fans of the book. On Rotten Tomatoes, it scored 13% rotten on the tomato-meter. It failed to get an audience at the box office, for two reasons, A small limited release, and the release of the Shrek the following week would cause the film to lose most of its audience.

In 2001, it was nominated by the Casting Society of America for best voice-casting in an animated film, but lost the award to Disney-backed The Emperor's New Groove. It is notable, however, that an independent animated film would be able to win such a nomination. It was the last film based on a book by E. B. White until 2006's Charlotte's Web.
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Legally Blonde

When beautiful Delta Nu sorority president Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon) is asked to dinner with her boyfriend, Harvard law student Warner, she believes he is proposing. Instead, Warner breaks up in favor of someone more serious, leaving Elle to decide to apply for Harvard to become a law student in order to win him back. Elle applies to Harvard and, due to her unconventional application, is accepted.

Elle's law school experience is not as good as she initially hoped. Elle discovers Warner is engaged to another law student, Vivian Kensington (Selma Blair), who is hostile to Elle. Devastated, Elle expresses her misery and her regret of going to law school to her manicurist, Paulette Bonafonte (Jennifer Coolidge), whom Elle quickly befriends, giving Paulette advice to attract the attention of the UPS driver she is interested in and later helping her gain custody of her dog from her ex-husband.

After Vivian cruelly tricks Elle into attending a party in a Playboy Bunny costume, Elle is determined to do well at law school, studying hard and impressing her professors. This leads her to win an internship with Professor Callahan (Victor Garber), along with Warner, Vivian, Enid Wexler (Meredith Scott Lynn), and Emmett Richmond, an assistant professor at Harvard. Their case is to defend Brooke Taylor-Wyndham (Ali Larter), a famous fitness instructor, accused of murdering her billionaire husband Hayworth Wyndham. Elle remembers Brooke as her own fitness instructor and a sister of Delta Nu, and consequently believes in Brooke's innocence. Two witness accounts made by Brooke’s stepdaughter Chutney Wyndham (Linda Cardellini) and one by the household’s “cabana boy”, Enrique Salvatore (Greg Serano), said that they saw Brooke standing over her husband’s dead body, covered in his blood, thus solidifying Brooke's guilt. Enrique claims to have had an affair with Brooke, and Brooke is unwilling to give Callahan her alibi.

Elle visits Brooke in prison, and manages to get Brooke's alibi: Brooke had liposuction on the day of the murder. Shocked and knowing that it will ruin Brooke's reputation as a fitness instructor, Elle assures Brooke that she will keep it a secret. Elle refuses to give Callahan the alibi, saying she made a promise. Vivian is impressed by Elle’s commitment and her hostility towards Elle disappears, and they start to become friends, Vivian revealing that Warner actually only got into Harvard after his father pulled some strings.

Elle uses her knowledge of fashion and female intuition to help her move closer to winning the trial, most notably deducing that Enrique is gay after he correctly identifies her shoe style, subsequently revealing that information to Callahan and Emmett. While Callahan dismisses the suggestion, Emmett subsequently asks the name of Enrique's boyfriend during the trial amid a series of questions, to which Enrique answers "Chuck", to the astonishment of the courtroom. Which he quickly tries to cover up by saying that Chuck is just a friend, and Chuck- who just happens to be sitting in the court room at the time-, screams out at Enrique, proving that Enrique is gay and was lying about his affair with Brooke.

An impressed Callahan has a private discussion with Elle about her future career, but makes advances on her. Vivian sees this, but not Elle's reaction, prompting her to lash out at Elle and leaving her convinced that she'll never be taken seriously, Elle thus planning to return to California. Elle bids Paulette farewell, but she encounters Professor Stromwell who encourages her to continue standing up for herself like she had done in Stromwell's class. Emmett reveals the truth about Callahan and Elle's encounter, Elle returns to court and Brooke fires Callahan, hiring Elle as her new attorney, with Emmett supervising her.

During her cross-examination, Chutney Windham claims to have been taking a shower and washing her hair at the time of the murder, and the noise drowned out the gunshot. Elle discovers that Chutney had a perm earlier that day, but knows from an incident with a friend of hers that a shower taken twenty-four hours after a perm would have deactivated the ammonium thioglycolate and would have ruined her curls, yet her perm is still intact. Chutney finally breaks down in tears and confesses to accidentally shooting Hayworth because she thought it was Brooke, due to the fact that she despised Brooke for being the same age as her. The entire courtroom gasps in shock; Brooke is exonerated and Chutney is arrested for murder. While leaving the courthouse, Warner admits he underestimated Elle, and wants her back, but is rejected, Elle having come to prefer her new career.

The epilogue, set at the graduation ceremony, shows that Elle graduated from Harvard as the class-elected speaker of her graduate class with high honors, and she has been recommended to one of Boston's most successful law firms. Elle's best friend Vivian called off her engagement, while Warner graduated near the bottom of his class, with "no honors, no girlfriend, and without any job offers". Paulette is now the UPS guy's (Bruce Thomas) wife, and they are expecting a baby which they will name Elle. Emmett has quit working for Callahan and started his own practice, is now Elle's boyfriend of two years, and is revealed to be planning to propose to Elle the night of the graduation.

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American Psycho

Mary Harron, who had previously directed I Shot Andy Warhol (based on the story of Valerie Solanas), directed the film and co-wrote its screenplay with Guinevere Turner. This screenplay was selected over three others, including one by Ellis himself. Turner claims Ellis' only complaint with the film was Bateman's moonwalk before killing Paul Allen. In the novel, Patrick Bateman's favorite artists are Genesis, Huey Lewis and the News and Whitney Houston. Three distinct, and entire chapters, are devoted to each. Virtually every line in the film, including voice-overs, are taken nearly verbatim from Ellis' novel. One of the few discrepancies is that several names from the book were changed for the film; for instance Paul Owen became Paul Allen and Tim Price became Tim Bryce. In an interview, Mary Harron claimed to be distressed upon discovering that Paul Allen was a high-powered figure in business and technology and that she meant nothing by the use of his name.[2]

American Psycho, as other works by Ellis, has connecting characters from his other books which subsequently do not appear at all in the film version. With the exception of the character of Vanden, whom Evelyn (Reese Witherspoon) introduces as her cousin at Espace, is also from Rules of Attraction. Patrick Bateman's brother Sean from Rules of Attraction is in the chapter entitled Birthday/Brother, but is mentioned nowhere in the film; However, Patrick is mentioned by Sean in both the book and the film version of Rules of Attraction.

Johnny Depp was informally attached to the project, first with Stuart Gordon in talks and then with David Cronenberg attached. Brad Pitt was once attached to star, with David Cronenberg directing and Ellis himself writing the script. Edward Norton was offered the part of Bateman but turned it down. Mary Harron was set to direct, and offered the role of Bateman to Christian Bale. When production company Lions Gate Entertainment issued a press release that Leonardo DiCaprio would star, Harron resigned in protest. Oliver Stone subsequently expressed interest in directing the film which would see DiCaprio as Patrick Bateman, James Woods as Donald Kimball and Cameron Diaz as Evelyn Williams with a script written by Matthew Markwalder. DiCaprio was going to be paid $20 million for the film. When Gloria Steinem lobbied DiCaprio not to make the film, on the grounds that his fan base consisted mostly of young teenage girls following his Titanic success, he dropped out, as did Stone, and Harron and Bale returned (Steinem's participation is somewhat interesting, considering she would soon become Christian Bale's stepmother). Many people[who?] in the film industry had said that the novel was "un-filmable" because of its graphic violence and sexual content.

Christian Bale spent several months working out by himself, and then three hours a day with a trainer during pre-production, in order to achieve the proper physique for the narcissistic Bateman. To prepare for the role, Bale spoke to Harron on the phone about "how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave". During their conversations, he told her that he had seen Tom Cruise on David Letterman's talk show and Harron related that Bale was struck by the movie star's "very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.

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Best Laid Plans

 





Nick is caught in a dead end job in a dead end town. About the only thing going well for him is Lissa, his new girlfriend. A chance to make some easy cash, and a way out of town, only leads to more trouble. Also caught in the web of sex, thefts, gangsters, kidnappings and murder is Nick's college friend, Bryce.

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Election

Jim McAllister (Matthew Broderick) is a high school teacher in the suburbs of Omaha, Nebraska whose enthusiastic involvement at school masks his frustration with other aspects of his life. Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon) is an overachieving senior with a secret vindictive and sexual side. Earlier in the year, Tracy had an affair with McAllister's best friend, another teacher. As a result, her lover was fired from his job, divorced by his wife, and ended up a ruined man; Tracy, however, walked away with no one knowing of her involvement aside from the principal, McAlllister, and her mother.

Tracy announces that she is running for student body president, horrifying McAllister, who is in charge of organizing the school's student government and is one of the few people who dislikes Tracy (he also seems afraid that, like his friend, he will be tempted into an affair with her). Other students assume she will win the election, and she is set to run unopposed, but McAllister decides to teach Tracy a lesson in humility by introducing some competition into the election, and convinces one of the most popular, yet dumbest students, a jock, Paul Metzler (Chris Klein) to run against Tracy. Paul agrees, after McAllister convinces him that politics could be his purpose in life, now that his football career has been ended by his broken leg.

Meanwhile, Paul's younger sister Tammy (Jessica Campbell) - who is sexually involved with another girl at the school - is dumped by her lover, Lisa (Frankie Ingrassia), who says that she is straight and was just "experimenting". Lisa quickly becomes Paul's new girlfriend and campaign manager, in part to anger Tammy. Tammy decides to run for president to spite her brother and Lisa with a platform that student government is a sham.

At the speeches, Flick's speech gets only polite applause, while Paul's overwhelming support is dwindled by his terrible rhetorical skills. Tammy, however, delivers a demagogic masterpiece in which she denounces the election as a farce that will change nothing at the school. In summation she admits she doesn't care whether her fellow students vote for her and vows she will do nothing in their service if she wins. Her defiant conclusion "Don't vote at all!" rallies the student body to a standing ovation, to the consternation of Paul, Tracy and the faculty. Tammy is suspended for three days, but she and her brother make up.

The competitive, ambitious Tracy wants to win at any cost. The night before the election, she tries to fix one of her posters that had become detached from a wall, but accidentally destroys the poster completely. In a fit of uncharacteristic rage, she destroys all of Paul's campaign posters. Claiming innocence, she threatens legal action against the school when McAllister attempts to use her affair with his best friend to impeach Tracy's credibility. Tammy then "confesses" she destroyed the posters after witnessing Tracy disposing of the refuse by the town factory, and is transferred to a private parochial school for girls, which was the original objective of her false confession.

Jim is secretly attracted to his best friend's ex-wife, Linda. The day before the school elections, they spontaneously begin to kiss passionately. Linda asks Jim to rent a motel room for a later rendezvous, but when he arrives at her house to pick her up, she isn't there (and he gets a bee sting in the eye which swells humorously throughout the rest of the film). He returns home to find Linda and his wife talking together. Knowing he's been caught, he spends the night in his car. The next morning he oversees the counting of the election ballots at school. During this, he calls Linda several times, professing his love for her. Linda blames the whole affair on him, and his wife kicks him out of the house when he tries to apologize. Jim is forced to move into a low-budget motel.

After all the ballots are counted, Tracy has won by one vote (Paul, who has no ill will towards Tracy and did not want to egotistically vote for himself, had voted for her). McAllister is so angry that he secretly disposes of two of the pro-Tracy ballots, demands a recount, and names Paul as the winner. When a janitor, who McAllister had angered earlier in the film, discovers the two discarded ballots and presents them to the principal in what can be assumed to be an act of revenge, McAllister resigns from his job and becomes a pariah. Divorced and humiliated, he leaves town, becoming a tour guide at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and winds up meeting a new woman that seems to make him happy. He claims that even if Tracy becomes rich and successful, she'll be miserable because she ruthlessly climbs the ladder of success without any time to truly enjoy it or any close friends or family to enjoy it with (several scenes earlier in the film suggest that Tracy has few if any friends at school) And she will most likely end up all alone after reaching her goals in life.

Tracy gets accepted into her first choice college, Georgetown University, though she realizes she has few friends. Paul also gets into his first choice of a state college and continues to live with an optimistic "que sera sera" attitude, even when Lisa breaks up with him. Tammy loves the all-girl Catholic school, where she has met her new girlfriend. Years later, on a visit to Washington, D.C., Jim sees Tracy entering a limo with a congressman from her home state in Nebraska, obviously successful in life. He throws a soda cup at the car in anger and runs away. The film ends with Jim back in New York, enjoying teaching at the museum but resenting a Type-A elementary student who reminds him of Tracy.

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Overnight Delivery

 

The main character Wyatt Trips, played by Paul Rudd, is a college student at Twin Cities College. He believes that his long-distance girlfriend, Kimberly Jasney, played by Christine Taylor, is not being faithful to him. As a result of this he goes to a strip club where he gets intoxicated and decides to send a letter to his girlfriend. With the letter he includes a picture of himself and a topless stripper. Rudd soon discovers that his girlfriend was not, in fact, cheating on him, and that he has twenty-four hours to retrieve the package before it gets to his girlfriend. Rudd and the stripper, played by Reese Witherspoon, go on a road trip in hopes of getting the package back, but encounter many obstacles along the way, including a psychotic deliveryman.

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Twilight

Aging private detective Harry Ross, an ex-cop, is working on a case to return 17-year-old Mel Ames to her home. He tracks down Mel and her boyfriend at a motel. During a struggle with the reluctant runaway, Harry's gun is discharged, striking him in the upper thigh.

Two years go by. Ross is living in the guest quarters of Mel's wealthy parents, Jack and Catherine Ames. They are former film industry bigwigs, now in the twilight of their years. Jack is dying of cancer, and he and Ross pass time playing cards.

One day, Jack asks a favor of Harry -- to deliver a package. It turns out to be the first development in a series of twists and turns in a 20-year-old case involving the disappearance of Catherine's ex-husband.

A man named Ivar is murdered at the proposed meeting place where Harry was to bring the package. Harry is detained by police, including a close friend, Lt. Verna Hollander. At the police station he runs into another old pal and colleague, now retired, Raymond Hope.

Verna and Raymond are both sympathetic because they have heard rumors that Harry was shot two years ago not in the thigh but between the legs. He assures them it isn't true.

Harry has a developing interest in Catherine and ends up in bed with her one night. He also is blackmailed by a prostitute called Mucho, who describes herself as "Mucho Hair, Mucho Tits," and by Mel's old boyfriend, Jeff, now an ex-con.

A dying Jack Ames feels betrayed that Harry has had a fling with his wife. Harry, meanwhile, is forced to face the reality that his friends have been deceitful and manipulative of him.

Raymond Hope tries to persuade Harry to get away from it all, but Harry has figured it out that Hope has been on-the-take and a conspirator in the 20-year-old murder of Catherine's first husband. A showdown ensues in Raymond's glass-walled hillside home.

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Cruel Intentions

Kathryn Merteuil (Sarah Michelle Gellar), the image of social perfection, takes the sheltered and naïve Cecile Caldwell (Selma Blair) under her wing, promising to turn Cecile into a model student like herself. Kathryn's real intention, however, is to take revenge on Court Reynolds, her ex-lover, who dumped her for the "innocent little twit" Cecile. She intends to corrupt Cecile by getting her to sleep with as many men as possible, thereby destroying her reputation and teaching Court a lesson.

She asks for the help of her womanizing step-brother, Sebastian Valmont (Ryan Phillippe). Though Kathryn and Sebastian have collaborated in schemes of manipulation before, he initially refuses. He is busy planning another "conquest," the beautiful Annette Hargrove (Reese Witherspoon), a girl who has published a manifesto saying that she plans to keep her virginity intact until she is in love.

Kathryn does not think Sebastian has a chance with Annette, so they make a wager. If Kathryn wins, she gets Sebastian's vintage Jaguar, a 1956 XK140 Roadster; if Sebastian wins, she offers him a night of passion with her, as Kathryn knows she is the only girl Sebastian cannot bed. Sebastian initially rejects this deal, being very enamored of his car, but relents when Kathryn ups the ante, telling him that he can "put it anywhere."

Ronald Clifford (Sean Patrick Thomas), Cecile's music teacher for the summer, is also smitten with Cecile, and Kathryn makes arrangements for Ronald and Cecile to spend time together, hoping that he will take Cecile's virginity.

Sebastian, meanwhile, has a hard time seducing Annette. Though they have chemistry, she sees right through him and rejects his advances. Sebastian learns that Annette has been forewarned of his libertine ways by none other than Cecile's mother, Mrs. Caldwell (Christine Baranski). Wanting revenge, he joins Kathryn in her plans to corrupt Cecile.

Kathryn engineers Ronald's break-up with Cecile by informing Mrs. Caldwell of their flirtations; Mrs. Caldwell, a noted racist, quickly ends their affair. Sebastian, in turn, calls Cecile to his house, ostensibly to give her a letter from Ronald. Once at his house, Sebastian blackmails Cecile and performs oral sex on her. The next day, Cecile confides in Kathryn, who advises her to learn the art of sex from Sebastian so that she can make Ronald happy in bed.

Meanwhile, Sebastian genuinely begins to fall in love with Annette, who returns his feelings but still keeps her defenses up. Sebastian declares that Annette is a hypocrite, waiting for love but refusing to sleep with the guy that loves her. Confused and beaten by Sebastian's logic, Annette relents - but Sebastian, now feeling guilty, refuses her. Heartbroken and embarrassed, Annette flees his aunt's estate. Sebastian tracks her down and professes his love, and they consummate their feelings.

Kathryn offers herself to Sebastian the next day, since he has won the bet, but he refuses; his romantic focus is now on Annette. Jealous, Kathryn taunts him for having gone soft, then convinces him that his love for Annette is nothing more than a passing infatuation. Finally swayed by Kathryn's threat to ruin Annette's reputation, Sebastian coldly breaks up with Annette and returns to Kathryn. Kathryn, however, now refuses to sleep with him. After Sebastian tells Kathryn that he has arranged for Cecile and Ronald to be together, Kathryn reveals that she has known all along that he was truly in love with Annette, yet she manipulated him to give it up. While Sebastian may have initially won the bet, she made him lose his first true love, and she (Kathryn) does not sleep with "losers."

Sebastian realizes his mistake. After trying unsuccessfully to talk to Annette, he sends her his journal, in which he has detailed all his previous "conquests" but written his true feelings for Annette, hoping she will learn the truth for herself and forgive him.

Kathryn, meanwhile, informs Ronald of Sebastian's affair with Cecile; Kathryn also claims that Sebastian had hit her (although in a deleted scene Sebastian does hit her). A furious Ronald confronts Sebastian in the middle of the street and a fight ensues. Annette, in search of Sebastian, comes upon the fight and tries to stop it. She is thrown into the way of an oncoming cab. Sebastian pushes her to safety and is hit by the speeding cab himself. Annette rushes to his side. Before he dies, he professes his love for her, and she reciprocates.

The new school year is inaugurated with Sebastian's funeral. During the service, Kathryn gives a self-important speech to the school about how she had unsuccessfully tried to get Sebastian to mend his ways and become a model student like herself. Halfway through her speech, students start walking out. Flustered, Kathryn rushes outside the chapel, where Cecile is distributing copies of Sebastian's journal (entitled Cruel Intentions) to all the students. The journal shows all of Sebastian's inner thoughts: his conquests, his description of the bet, and a page on Kathryn, which finally exposes her manipulative and deceitful ways, including the fact that she hides a vial of cocaine in a crucifix she wears in the rosary beads around her wrist. The headmaster takes Kathryn's crucifix and opens it, spilling the cocaine. Kathryn's spotless reputation is destroyed, and people finally see her for the troubled, callous mastermind that she is.

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Pleasantville 

David (Tobey Maguire) and Jennifer (Reese Witherspoon) are twins and attend the same high school. Jennifer is concerned mainly with her appearance, relationships, and popularity, while David watches a lot of television, has few friends, and is socially awkward. Jennifer makes a date with Mark Davis, one of the most popular boys in school. Their mother (Jane Kaczmarek) leaves Jennifer and David alone at home while she heads out of town for a rendezvous with her boyfriend. The twins begin to fight over the use of the downstairs TV; Jennifer wants to watch an MTV concert with Mark, while David hopes to watch a marathon of his favorite show, Pleasantville.

Pleasantville is a black-and-white '50s sitcom, a cross between Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best that centers around the idyllic Parker family — George (William H. Macy), his wife Betty (Joan Allen), and their two children, Bud and Mary Sue. David is an expert on every episode and wants to watch the marathon so he can win a trivia contest. During the fight between David and Jennifer, the remote control breaks and the TV cannot be turned on manually. A mysterious TV repairman (Don Knotts) shows up uninvited, and quizzes David on Pleasantville before giving him a strange-looking, retro-styled remote control. The repairman leaves, and David and Jennifer promptly resume fighting. However, through some mechanism of the remote control, they are transported into the television, ending up in the Parkers' black and white Pleasantville living room. David tries to reason with the repairman (who communicates with him through the Parkers' TV set) but succeeds only in chasing him away. David and Jennifer must now pretend they are, respectively, Bud and Mary Sue Parker.

Breakfast in the Parker house is promptly served by stay-at-home mother Betty. On the way to school, Jennifer meets Skip (Paul Walker), the captain of the basketball team and her soon-to-be boyfriend. David tells her that they must stay “in character,” so as not to disrupt the lives of the Pleasantville citizens. Accordingly, Mary Sue agrees to go on a date with Skip.

The date between Skip and Mary Sue is the first catalyst for change in the town. Skip has no knowledge of sex until Mary Sue introduces him to it. The plot is further thrown out of sequence when Bud’s boss Mr. Johnson (Jeff Daniels), who runs the soda shop, becomes dissatisfied with his mundane life. Bud initially attempts to convince him to carry on as usual, but soon realizes his error and encourages Mr. Johnson to pursue his real passion, painting.

Meanwhile, Skip tells the other boys about sex, and soon the teenagers begin to experiment, leading to a sort of sexual revolution. Betty is curious, leading to a sex talk between her and Mary Sue. Knowing that her husband would never do any of the things Mary Sue describes, Betty achieves her first-ever orgasm while bathing. Immediately afterwards, a tree outside spontaneously combusts.

Bud, realizing the firemen have no experience, teaches them how to put out fires and is awarded a medal. He is thus noticed by a beautiful cheerleader named Margaret (Marley Shelton), who bakes him oatmeal cookies -- cookies she was supposed to bake for a boy named Whitey (David Tom). Bud’s act of heroism has inadvertently changed the storyline, but he seizes the moment and asks Margaret out for a date. When the TV repairman returns and berates him for altering the show so much, Bud turns off the TV, relinquishing his ability to go home in the process.

Pleasantville soon begins changing at a rapid pace, and objects which have changed from the original plotline begin to develop full and vibrant colors. The mayor, Big Bob (J.T Walsh) becomes concerned with these changes, and recruits George Parker, as a respected citizen, to the Pleasantville Chamber of Commerce to help normalize the town again. However, Betty has become "colored" as well and is afraid that George will hate her. Bud helps her to conceal the color with her old make-up, which is still black and white.

People in Pleasantville begin to explore hidden abilities and revel in their new freedoms. Mr. Johnson begins to paint, and Betty finds that housework no longer interests her. The basketball team loses their first game, while students begin visiting the public library and reading books recommended by Mary Sue and Bud. Ironically, Mary Sue, who had never shown any interest in school, finds she likes reading so much that she rejects Skip in favor of a book by D. H. Lawrence, and finds her own color.

Gradually, more objects begin turning multicolored, including flowers and the faces of people who have experienced bursts of passion or change. The town fathers, who see the changes as eating away at the town's moral values, remain unchanged. Certain youths, such as Skip and Whitey and their friends, also remain unaffected. They resolve to do something about their increasingly distant wives and disaffected youths. A town meeting is called. Betty falls in love with Mr. Johnson and leaves George for him, no longer wishing to hide her colored face.

Behavior similar to Nazism, as well as racial segregation and subsequent rioting similar to that of the African-American Civil Rights Movement, soon reach Pleasantville, incited by a nude painting of Betty on the window of Mr. Johnson’s soda shop; the window is smashed with a park bench, and the soda shop is destroyed, books are burned, and anyone who is "colored" is harassed in the streets. Bud earns his color by defending Betty from a gang of thugs led by Whitey. Bud begins to grow into a strong leader, advocating resistance to the new "Pleasantville Code of Conduct", a list of regulations preventing people from visiting the library and Lovers' Lane, playing loud music, or using colorful paints

In protest, Bud and Mr. Johnson paint a colorful mural on the police station. For this they are imprisoned, and are soon brought to trial in front of the entire town, with the monochrome citizens on the ground floor as witnesses, segregated from the "colored" residents who sit in a balcony. George gains his color when, in the courtroom, he cries for the loss of his wife after Bud helps him realize that he misses her. Mr. Johnson is repentant and tries to haggle with the Mayor, but Bud speaks out, finally arousing enough anger and indignation in Big Bob that the Mayor himself becomes colored.

With this, the entire town becomes colored—and the people of Pleasantville are finally introduced to the rest of the world. Televisions at the television repair shop now display full-colored images of various scenic vistas around the world, and Main Street, which had previously been a circuit that led back to its beginning again, now leads away to other towns and cities.

Jennifer chooses to stay behind, and goes to university out of town as Mary Sue Parker. David returns using the remote control and finds his mother crying in the kitchen, distraught over her life and her failed relationship. She complains to him that her life was not supposed to run this undesirable course. David replies, "It's not supposed to be anything."

The movie ends with a cut back to Jennifer/Mary Sue, reading a book to a sweetheart on the university steps, and with a shot of Betty and George, reunited; however, when Betty turns to look at her husband, it is Mr. Johnson who appears in his place.

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Freeway

Vanessa Lutz is a poor, illiterate teenage girl living in the slums of Los Angeles. After her mother, Ramona, is arrested in a prostitution sting, she runs away with a stolen car from her social worker guardian to stay with her grandmother in Stockton. Along the way, Vanessa stops to see her boyfriend and classmate Chopper Wood, a local gang member to tell him about her excursion and he gives her a gun for protection. Minutes after Vanessa leaves Chopper, he is killed in a drive-by shooting by rival gang members. A little later, Bob Wolverton, a serial killer and rapist known as "the I-5 killer", picks her up after her car breaks down, and promises to take her to her grandmother's house. (The scenes that take place on the northbound I-5 freeway were filmed on Interstate 5.)

Over the long drive, Bob manipulates Vanessa into confessing to him the details of her painfully dysfunctional life, including a prostitute mother and a sexually abusive stepfather. (At one point, Vanessa shows Bob a photo she keeps in her wallet of her biological father. The photo used is actually a picture of mass murderer Richard Speck.) That evening, Bob eventually reveals his true nature and tries to kill Vanessa when she refuses to talk to him. The tables are turned, however, as Vanessa eventually pulls out her gun and shoots him several times before escaping.

Vanessa is quickly arrested and questioned by two detectives, named Mike and Garnet, who write her off as a carjacker, even though she insists Bob had tried to kill her and had told her about his other murders. Bob survives, but the bullet wounds have left him severely handicapped, costing him an eye and disfiguring his face. Vanessa is put on trial, with everyone believing (at first) that Bob is the innocent victim he claims to be since he has no police record, while Vanessa has a large one for various offenses ranging from shoplifting, to assault and battery. Vanessa goes to prison, while Bob and his socialite wife Mimi, who knows nothing of his crimes, are treated like heroes.

Scared at first, Vanessa eventually makes friends in prison, including a heroin-addicted lesbian named Rhonda, and a brutal Hispanic gang leader, named Mesquita. Undaunted, Vanessa plots to escape and continue her journey to visit her grandmother. With a little of Rhonda's help, Vanessa constructs a crude knife from a toothbrush as a weapon. The following evening, while Vanessa and Mesquita are being transferred to a new maximum security prison, Mesquita helps Vanessa with her escape by subduing and killing the prison guards assigned to escort them. After their escape, Vanessa and Mesquita part ways as Mesquita goes off to be reunited with her gang, and Vanessa continues her journey to her grandmother's house.

Meanwhile, detectives Mike and Garnet reexamine the evidence, and begin to suspect that Vanessa was telling the truth about Bob Wolverton being a serial killer. They then search Wolverton's home, where they find violent pornography in the locked shed adjacent to the house. Confronted at last with what her husband really is, Wolverton's wife commits suicide, after mumbling disbelief that he had hidden child pornography from her. Arriving home at just that moment to find police cars outside his house, Wolverton panics and flees to Vanessa's grandmother's house. (In his earlier encounter with Vanessa, he had apparently obtained a photo of the grandmother, with her address written on the back.)

While posing as a prostitute, Vanessa steals a car from a prospective customer, and drives to her grandmother's house, which is actually a trailer in a run-down trailer park (lacking the reed basket that she had with her earlier in the story). Vanessa finds her grandmother dead and Wolverton waiting for her with a gun. After a vicious struggle, Vanessa kills Wolverton by strangling him to death. Detectives Mike and Garnet arrive and seemingly wait outside during the struggle. They eventually enter the trailer to find Wolverton and Vanessa's grandmother both dead, and an exhausted and emotionaly broken Vanessa beside herself who puts up her hands and surrenders to the two detectives. However, the detectives appear to exonerate Vanessa when they both begin laughing, and Vanessa follows suit.

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