Tokyo is a city of transitions in three short films. A young woman who finds her life useless experiences a metamorphosis. A disheveled Caucasian emerges from a manhole to face arrest, trial, and execution; he calls himself "Merde" and speaks a language only his look-alike attorney understands. Is he human? A recluse experiences human contact when a pizza-delivery girl faints at his door during an earthquake. He conquers fear to seek her out. A chair, a corpse, a hermit: sources of urban connection?
Cast: Yû Aoi, YosiYosi Arakawa, Jean-François Balmer, Julie Dreyfus, Ayako Fujitani, Ayumi Ito, Teruyuki Kagawa, Denis Lavant, Yutaka Matsushige, Nao Omori, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Hiroshi Yamamoto
Directed by Michel Gondry ("Interior Design"), Joon-ho Bong ("Shaking Tokyo"), Leos Carax ("Merde")
Script by Michel Gondry ("Interior Design"), Joon-ho Bong ("Shaking Tokyo"), Leos Carax ("Merde")
Producer: Anne Pernod-Sawada, Masa Sawada, Michiko Yoshitake
Jim Carrey stars as Carl Allen, a man who signs up for a self-help program based on one simple principle: say yes to everything...and anything. At first, unleashing the power of "yes" transforms Carl's life in amazing and unexpected ways, but he soon discovers that opening up his life to endless possibilities can have its drawbacks.
Director: Peyton Reed
Cast: Jim Carrey, Zooey Deschanel, Bradley Cooper, Rhys Darby, John Michael Higgins, Danny Masterson, Terence Stamp, Rocky Carroll
Octave is the master of the universe.
Octave exercises the profession of copywriter. Today he decides what you will want tomorrow. For him, "man is a product like everything else." Octave works for the world's largest advertising agency, Ross & Witchcraft, nicknamed "The Ross."
He's swimming in money, girls and coke. Even so, he has his doubts. Two events will turn Octave's life on its head: his love affair with Sophie, the agency's most beautiful employee, and a meeting at Madone to sell an advertisement to this major company in the diary sector. Gifted Octave loses the plot and decides to rebel against the system that created him, by botching his greatest publicity campaign.
From Paris, where agency bosses negociate deals, to Miami, where advertisements get shot while gulping anti-depressants, from Saint-Germain-de-Pres to an isolated island in Central America, will Octave manage to escape his golden prison?
Cast: Jean Dujardin, Jocelyn Quivrin, Patrick Mille, Vahina Giocante, Élisa Tovati, Dominique Bettenfeld, Nicolas Marie, Antoine Basler
Directed by Jan Kounen
Andrey is a Moscow yuppie working as a creative manager in a large advertising agency. That day he smokes out an entire pack of cigarettes. With each cigarette the storm of events and conflicts Andrey is involved in becomes more and more violent. Confronted to a situation in which his professional and personal future is jeopardized, Andrey must make the one and only right decision.
Script writer Dmitry Sobolev: "Taking sides, making your choice in the world where everyone strives to achieve success. It is absolutely true about Moscow. In other areas of Russia changes haven't been so drastic. The way of life has remained the same. In Moscow success makes you. As a matter of fact I attempted to reveal that success was not all in life. The most important is the decisive choice. God has endowed us with the ability to choose and has given us the opportunity to make the choice. Success is not of vital importance, there is something else that counts. No use shrinking from taking sides. No one knows with whom the correct choice lies. The movie has no ready answer; it poses the question and leaves it unanswered. No answer is available; it can't be supplied either by philosophy or by any kind of art".
The comedy takes place in an Absurdistanian village. In this land, men are lazy and their only effort consists of getting to the pub and inventing an excuse to avoid making love with their wives. When a water supply crisis arises, the men do not do anything to improve the situation. The ony hope is Temelko
Cast: Kristyna Malerova, Maximillian Mauff, Dace Bonate
Directed by Veit Helmer
Scriptwriter: Veit Helmer, Zaza Buadze, Gordan Mihic
Producer: Veit Helmer
Burn After Reading, is a new comedy thriller from Academy Award winners, Joel Coen and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, Fargo, The Big Lebowski).
At the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency in Arlington, Virginia, analyst Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) arrives for a top-secret meeting. Unfortunately for Cox, the secret is soon out: he is being ousted. Cox does not take the news particularly well and returns to his Georgetown home to work on his memoirs and his drinking, not necessarily in that order. His wife Katie (Tilda Swinton) is dismayed, though not particularly surprised; she is already well into an illicit affair with Harry Pfarrer (George Clooney), a married federal marshal, and sets about making plans to leave Cox for Harry.
Elsewhere in the Washington, D.C. suburbs, and seemingly worlds apart, Hardbodies Fitness Centers employee Linda Litzke (Frances McDormand) can barely concentrate on her work. She is consumed with her life plan for extensive cosmetic surgery, and confides her mission to can-do colleague Chad Feldheimer (Brad Pitt). Linda is all but oblivious to the fact that the gym's manager Ted Treffon (Richard Jenkins) pines for her even as she arranges dates via the Internet with other men.
When a computer disc containing material for the CIA analyst's memoirs accidentally falls into the hands of Linda and Chad, the duo are intent on exploiting their find. As Ted frets, "No good can come of this," events spiral out of everyone's and anyone's control, in a cascading series of darkly hilarious encounters.
Cast: Brad Pitt, George Clooney, John Malkovich, Tilda Swinton, Frances McDormand
Directed by: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Script: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen
Set in contemporary London, 'Cassandra's Dream' is a powerful and thrilling story about two brothers (Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell) who are desperate to better their troubled lives. One is a chronic gambler in debt over his head, and the other is a young man in love with a beautiful actress (newcomer Hayley Atwell) he has recently met. Their lives gradually become entangled into a sinister situation with intense and unfortunate results.
Cast: Ewan McGregor, Colin Farrell, Peter-Hugo Daly, John Benfield, Ashley Madekwe, Hayley Atwell, Tom Wilkinson
Directed by Woody Allen
Based on George Crile's book about the CIA's largest and most successful covert CIA operation, the arming of the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan. The covert ops were engineered by Charlie Wilson (Hanks), a charismatic, wheeler-dealer, liberal Texas congressman who teamed with a rogue CIA operative (Hoffman). The two manipulated Congress, the CIA and a host of foreign governments in order to assist the Afghan rebels in their fight against the Soviets in the 1980s. Many of the men armed by the CIA went on to become the Taliban's enforcers and Osama bin Laden's protectors.
Cast: Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Om Puri, Jud Tylor, Nazanin Boniadi
Directed by Mike Nichols
Corprate billionaire Edward Cole and working class mechanic Carter Chambers have nothing in common except for their terminal illnesses. While sharing a hospital room together, they decide to leave it and do all the things they have ever wanted to do before they die according to their bucket list. In the process, both of them heal each other, become unlikely friends, and ultimately find the joy in life.
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman
Directed by Rob Reiner
This French comedy is a story of a Parisian artist, who, being tired of the city, returns to his country home. Discovering that the beautiful garden has been neglected, he employs a gardener, which, much to his surprise, is his close school friend. They spend months in conversations, revealing their life stories.
Cast: Daniel Auteuil, Jean-Pierre Darroussin
Directed by Jean Becker
Scriptwriter: Jean Cosmos
Producer: Louis Becker
Ryan Reynolds stars as Will Hayes, a 30-something Manhattan dad in the midst of a divorce when his 10 year-old daughter, Maya (Abigail Breslin), starts to question him about his life before marriage. Maya wants to know absolutely everything about how her parents met and fell in love.
Will's story begins in 1992, as a young, starry-eyed aspiring politician who moves to New York from Wisconsin in order to work on the Clinton campaign. For Maya, Will relives his past as an idealistic young man learning the ins and outs of big city politics, and recounts the history of his romantic relationships with three very different women.
Will hopelessly attempts a "PG" version of his story for his daughter and changes the names so Maya has to guess who is the woman her father finally married. Is her mother Will's college sweetheart, the dependable girl next-door Emily (Elizabeth Banks)? Is she his longtime best friend and confidante, the apolitical April (Isla Fisher)? Or is she the free-spirited but ambitious journalist Summer (Rachel Weisz)?
As Maya puts together the pieces of her dad's romantic puzzle, she begins to understand that love is not so simple or easy. And as Will tells her his tale, Maya helps him to understand that it's definitely never too late to go back...and maybe even possible to find a happy ending.
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Isla Fisher, Derek Luke, Abigail Breslin, Elizabeth Banks, Rachel Weisz
Directed by Adam Brooks
Thadeous (McBride) has spent his life watching his perfect older brother Fabious (Franco) embark upon valiant journeys and win the hearts of his people. Tired of being passed over for adventure, adoration and the throne, he’s settled for a life of wizard’s weed, hard booze and easy maidens. But when Fabious’ bride-to-be, Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel), gets kidnapped by the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux), the king gives his deadbeat son an ultimatum: Man up and help rescue her or get cut off.
Half-assedly embarking upon his first quest, Thadeous joins Fabious to trek across the perilous outlands and free the princess. Joined by Isabel (Natalie Portman)—an elusive warrior with a dangerous agenda of her own—the brothers must vanquish horrific creatures and traitorous knights before they can reach Belladonna. If Thadeous can find his inner hero, he can help his brother prevent the destruction of his land. Stay a slacker, and not only does he die a coward, he gets front row seats to the dawn of an all-new Dark Ages.
Starring: Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Justin Theroux, Toby Jones, Damian Lewis
Directed by: David Gordon Green