Danny Aiello

A young couple must navigate a blossoming romance, amidst a war between their families' competing pizza restaurants. Young adults Nikki Angioli and Leo Campo were staunch competitors and best friends growing up in the Little Italy neighborhood of Toronto. Their respective fathers, friends Sal Angioli and Vince Campo, ran Pizza Napoli, which made the best pizza in the neighborhood due to the combination of Nikki's paternal nona Franca Angioli's secret marinara sauce, and Leo's paternal nono Carlo Campo's secret thin crust pizza dough recipe. While Leo has stayed in Toronto working part-time at his father's pizzeria with the secret hopes of one day opening his own pizzeria, Nikki, who loved Leo while they were growing up, ran off to London five years ago hoping never to return to Toronto to get away from her past, which includes Leo himself, who she believes has turned into a ladies man solely trying to put notches in his bedpost, and Sal and Vince now in a feud of an unspecified nature following they winning best pizza in Little Italy several years ago, each subsequently having opened competing pizzerias next door to each other, which would preclude Nikki and Leo getting together even if either wanted. Nikki is working toward being a chef in her own right of anything but pizza, she at the cooking school of famed Michelin starred chef, Corinne, who seemingly has nothing nice to say about anyone, especially her students. Nikki learns that it is between her and another student, Gareth, who Corinne will choose to work at her new London restaurant, the two who will compete to produce the best menu. First, Nikki further learns that she has to deal with a visa issue, meaning that, whether or not she likes it, she has to return to Toronto for a few weeks. In inevitably running in Leo, she finds that there is still a sexual tension that exists between the two. They will have the many existing hurdles to overcome to get together, they each having to realize that they are hurdles worth overcoming, while learning some of those issues are truly non-existent. —Huggo

In the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles County, two hit-men, Lee Woods (James Spader) and Dosmo Pizzo (Danny Aiello), break into a house at night and walk into a bedroom where a sleeping couple, aspiring Olympic athlete Becky Foxx (Teri Hatcher) and her ex-husband Roy Foxx (Peter Horton) are in bed. Lee injects Becky with a tranquilizer then shoots Roy in the head. Lee and Dosmo then drive to an abandoned area off Mulholland Drive, where Lee shoots Dosmo and blows up the car in order to set Dosmo up as the fall guy for the murder. Lee flees the scene with his Swedish girlfriend, Helga Svelgen (Charlize Theron) where they hide out at a local hotel bungalow. However, Dosmo was wearing a bulletproof vest and survived the shooting and car explosion. He seeks shelter at the mansion of wealthy art dealer, Allan Hopper (Greg Cruttwell) where he takes Hopper and his assistant, Susan Parish (Glenne Headly) hostage. Dosmo is unaware that Hopper has called his sister, Audrey Hopper (Marsha Mason) a nurse, to come to the house. On her way, Audrey picks up Teddy Peppers (Paul Mazursky) a down-and-out TV producer contemplating suicide. The next morning, Becky awakens and discovers Roy's body in bed beside her. She runs from her house and flags down two police detectives, young, ambitious Wes Taylor (Eric Stoltz) and cynical veteran Alvin Strayer (Jeff Daniels) who are driving by. Although he is sympathetic, Wes begins to suspect that Becky knows more than she is saying. It turns out that Becky was the one who had hired Lee and Dosmo to kill Roy for $30,000, but was unaware that they would kill Roy in her own house. When Audrey arrives at Allan's house, Dosmo takes both her and Teddy hostage as well as forces Audrey to tend to his wounds in exchange for her not being harmed. Meanwhile, Lee goes back to the house to get the money, encounters homicide detectives Creighton (Keith Carradine) and Carla Valenzuela (Ada Maris) working the crime scene, and kills them both. Wes decides to return to the crime scene to see if he can offer any insight on the case. Masquerading as one of the detectives, Lee lures Wes outside, intending to kill him. In Lee's bungalow, Becky and Helga get into an argument, which escalates into a fight. After being smashed over the head with a vase by Becky, Helga reaches across the bed to grab her gun from her purse, but Becky realizes this and runs and grabs the gun as well to prevent herself from being shot. In a confused fight for the gun, Helga ends up getting shot and wounded in her left side, after which Becky escapes from the hotel with Helga shooting at her from the doorway of the room multiple times but missing with each shot. Helga finds her way to Becky's house, where Lee has knocked Wes unconscious. Lee reluctantly decides to kill Helga instead of taking her to the hospital, concluding that her wound is too severe to be treated, but his gun jams. He turns to retrieve Wes' gun but finds that Helga has escaped and has flagged down a passing car containing Dosmo and his four hostages. Audrey jumps out of the moving car and tries to help the dying Helga, but Helga dies on the roadside. Wes is caught in the middle of a shootout between Dosmo and Lee, and is shot in both of his legs. Just before Lee can kill Dosmo, Teddy shoots Lee, killing him. A grateful Wes allows Dosmo to take the $30,000 and escape with Susan. The following day, Teddy shows up to an anniversary party that Audrey is attending. In the final scene, as Susan and Dosmo drive down a highway leaving Los Angeles behind them, Dosmo contemplates using the money to start a pizzeria in Brooklyn. Susan smiles and he kisses her.

This complex 1996 drama directed by Harold Becker (Sea of Love) attempts to explore big-city corruption and the flexibility of what's right and wrong in the political arena. John Cusack plays the senior aide to mayor John Pappas (Al Pacino), a popular and seasoned politician whose administration is threatened when what seems to be an accidental shooting of a child reveals a nest of corruption and lifelong personal debts. This tests Cusack's loyalty to the man he thought he knew. Pacino turns in a finely textured performance as a man who has his own lofty ideals, but whose pragmatism sets in motion a series of events with tragic results. Cusack admirably captures the essence of someone polished and savvy at his job but must cope with fundamental disillusionment. This political thriller suffers at times from a lack of focus, but still offers an insightful and poignant treatise on the quagmire of politics in the modern age and the human toll it sometimes exacts.

A professional assassin Leon (Jean Reno) takes a 12 year old girl Mathilda (Natalie Portman) under his care after her family is killed in a raid by corrupt DEA agents, led by the psychotic Stansfield (Gary Oldman). Mathilda makes a deal with Leon to become his protge in exchange for work as a domestic servant, hoping to learn the hitman`s trade and take out the men who took her brother`s life.

A cat burglar is forced to steal Da Vinci works of art for a world domination plot. Eddie Hawkins, called Hudson Hawk has just been released from ten years of prison and is planning to spend the rest of his life honestly. But then the crazy Mayflower couple blackmail him to steal some of the works of Leonardo da Vinci. If he refuses, they threaten to kill his friend Tommy. —Harald Mayr <marvin@bike.augusta.de>

Reminiscing about his dead son, a Vietnam War veteran attempts to uncover his past while suffering from a severe case of dissociation. To do so, he must decipher reality and life from his own dreams, delusions, and perceptions of death. Jacob Singer is trying to make sense of his fractured life and memories. Plagued by hallucinations, flashbacks, and conspiracies, he struggles down a path to enlightenment from these manic strains. With nothing but support from friends and loved ones will he be able to push through the haze of his PTSD. New York postal worker Jacob Singer is trying to keep his frayed life from unraveling. His days are increasingly being invaded by flashbacks to his first marriage, his now-dead son, and his tour of duty in Vietnam. Although his new wife tries to help Jacob keep his grip on sanity, the line between reality and delusion is steadily growing more and more uncertain. —Jean-Marc Rocher <rocher@fiberbit.net> On 06 Oct 1971, in Vietnam, the American soldier Jacob Singer is wounded by a bayonet during an attack to his platoon. He wakes up in a New York subway while going home late at night after working overtime in the post office. He is divorced from Sarah, lives with his colleague and lover Jezebel in a small Brooklyn apartment and misses his young son Gabe, who died in an accident for which Jacob feels responsible. During the next days, Jacob is chased by demons and finds the army conspiracy against him, while having strange visions during different moments of his life. —Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

During the 1930s, a New York City illegal gambling house owner and his associates must deal with strong competition, gangsters, and corrupt cops in order to stay in business. "Sugar" Ray is the owner of an illegal casino, who contends with the pressures of vicious gangsters and corrupt policemen who want to see him go out of business. In the world of organized crime and police corruption in the 1930s, any dastardly trick is fair.

On the hottest day of the year on a street in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, everyone's hate and bigotry smolders and builds until it explodes into violence. This film looks at life in the Bedford-Stuyvesant district of Brooklyn on a hot summer Sunday. As he does everyday, Sal Fragione opens the pizza parlor he's owned for 25 years. The neighborhood has changed considerably in the time he's been there and is now composed primarily of African-Americans and Hispanics. His son Pino hates it there and would like nothing better than to relocate the eatery to their own neighborhood. For Sal however, the restaurant represents something that is part of his life and sees it as a part of the community. What begins as a simple complaint by one of his customers, Buggin Out - who wonders why he has only pictures of famous Italian-Americans on the wall when most of his customers are black - eventually disintegrates into violence as frustration seemingly brings out the worst in everyone. —garykmcd Life over twenty-four hours during a heatwave along one small section of Stuyvesant Avenue in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn is presented. It is a historically black section, with the exception of Sal's Pizzeria, which has been located there for twenty-five years, Sal, who now operates it with his two young adult sons Pino and Vito, making the very conscious decision on location due to the overabundance of pizzerias in his own Italo-centric neighborhood, in the process doing good business. Sal's customer base has largely been the black residents of the neighborhood, he currently employing black Mookie as a delivery boy. However, the makeup of the neighborhood has slowly been changing with Latinos moving in - Mookie's girlfriend, Tina, also the mother to his son, being Latina - gentrification leading to well-off Caucasians buying properties, and a recent immigrant Korean family opening a general store across the street from the pizzeria. There has been an underlying tension between the races as each tries to stake out his or her place: competing boomboxes blaring Caribbean music from one and black music from another; Pino, in particular among those in Sal's family, not liking the business largely due to the clientele and neighborhood; and contempt by some for the seeming success of the general store operated by a visible racial exception in the neighborhood, despite that property having sat empty for years. But on this day, the seeming spark that may ignite that tension is black Buggin Out taking exception to Sal only posting the photos of ethnic Italian celebrities on the pizzeria's Wall of Fame, instead of including "brothers and sisters" to reflect the makeup of Sal's customer base. —Huggo As the dog days of summer drag on in the Bed-Stuy neighbourhood of Brooklyn, an unexpected incident is about to bring tensions to a boiling point. After all, among the businesses on the lively block, it is hard not to notice Love Daddy's storefront radio station, Sonny's convenience store, and Sal's Famous Pizzeria. And then, in just one day, the residents' once-peaceful interactions become explosive confrontations as pressing demands to give voice to the frustrations of people of colour echo through the streets. Now, there is no turning back. But when you have put everything on the line to make yourself heard, what does it take to do the right thing? —Nick Riganas Salvatore "Sal" Fragione (Danny Aiello) is the Italian owner of a pizzeria in Brooklyn. A neighborhood local, Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito), becomes upset when he sees that the pizzeria's Wall of Fame exhibits only Italian actors. Buggin' Out believes a pizzeria in a black neighborhood should showcase black actors, but Sal disagrees. The wall becomes a symbol of racism and hate to Buggin' Out and to other people in the neighborhood, and tensions rise. —maschzentertainment

Two years after being forced out of the NYPD, quirky Nick Starkey is rehired by the mayor to help catch a serial killer after 11 women are murdered in the city. Nick and Frank Starkey were both policemen. A scandal forced Nick to leave the force, now a serial killer has driven the police to take him back. A web that includes Frank's wife, bribery, and corruption all are in the background as Nick tries to uncover the secret of where the killer will strike next, and finally must lay a trap without the police. —John Vogel <jlvogel@comcast.net>

Thirty-seven-year-old Loretta Castorini (Cher), a Sicilian-American widow, is an accountant in Brooklyn Heights, New York, where she lives with her family: her father Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) who is a successful plumber, her mother Rose (Olympia Dukakis), and her paternal grandfather (Feodor Chaliapin, Jr). Her boyfriend, Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) proposes to her before leaving for Sicily to attend to his dying mother; she accepts, but is insistent that they carefully follow tradition as she believes her first marriage was cursed by her failure to do so, resulting in her husband's death when he was hit by a bus. They plan to marry one month later, and Johnny asks Loretta to invite his estranged younger brother Ronny (Nicolas Cage) to the wedding. Loretta returns home and informs her parents of the engagement. Cosmo dislikes Johnny and is reluctant to commit to paying for the "real" wedding Loretta insists on, while Rose is pleased that Loretta likes Johnny but does not love him; she believes that one can easily be driven crazy by a partner whom one loves. The next day, Loretta goes to see Ronny at his bakery after he refuses to speak to her on the phone. He reveals that he has a wooden prosthetic hand, and he explains that he blames Johnny for the loss of his hand and his own fiancée; Ronny became distracted while talking to Johnny as he cut bread for him, his hand was mangled in the slicer, and his fiancée left him. Loretta insists that they discuss the matter upstairs in his apartment, where she cooks for him and then tells him that she believes he is a "wolf" who cut off his own hand to escape the trap of a bad relationship. Ronny reacts furiously and passionately, kissing Loretta (who responds to his kiss) and then sweeping her up in his arms and carrying her to his bed where they make love. That evening, Rose's brother Raymond (Louis Guss) and his wife Rita (Julie Bovasso) join Rose and Cosmo for dinner, and they all wonder where Loretta is. Raymond recalls that when he was a boy and Cosmo was courting Rose, he thought that a particularly bright moon one night was somehow brought to the house by Cosmo because of his love for Rose. That night, Loretta remains at Ronny's apartment and sees such a moon; Raymond sees it as well, and it leads him and Rita to make love. The next morning, Loretta tells Ronny they can never see each other again. She slaps him when he claims to be in love with her ("Snap out of it!) and he agrees to never see her again if she will attend the opera (his other great love) with him that night. She agrees. After closing out the cash register in Raymond and Rita's store, Loretta impulsively has some long-neglected beauty treatments, including having the gray removed from her hair, and buys a glamorous evening gown. She then goes to church and confesses her infidelity. She unexpectedly sees her mother there, and Rose tells her that Cosmo is having an affair; Loretta is doubtful, but Cosmo is in fact dining with his mistress Mona (Anita Gillette) at that moment and giving her jewelry. Loretta and Ronny (wearing a tuxedo) meet at Lincoln Center, and each is impressed with the other's appearance. Loretta is deeply moved by her first opera, Puccini's La bohème. But as they leave, Loretta sees Cosmo and Mona, and she confronts her father. He sees that she is with Ronny, and he suggests that they simply agree that they didn't see each other at all, but Loretta is conflicted. Loretta then intends to return home alone, but Ronny leads her back to his apartment where he passionately and desperately persuades her into another tryst. The same night, Rose dines alone at a restaurant and sees a college professor, Perry (John Mahoney), being dramatically dumped by a female student, a similar scene having played out with a different girl the night Johnny proposed to Loretta. Rose invites Perry to dine with her, asks him why men pursue women, and then shares with him her belief that men pursue women because they fear death. Perry walks Rose home and tries to convince her to invite him in; she refuses, citing the fact that she knows herself. Later, Johnny unexpectedly returns from Sicily after his mother's "miraculous" recovery and goes to Loretta's house; Rose explains that she's not there and then asks him why men chase women. He tells her it may be because they fear death, and Rose realizes, as she had suspected before, that he is right. After this exchange he leaves, planning to return in the morning to see Loretta. In the morning, Loretta returns home in a reverie but is then distressed to learn from Rose that Johnny will be there soon. Ronny then arrives, and Rose notes their matching "love bites" and invites him for breakfast over Loretta's objections. Cosmo and his father emerge from upstairs, and the older man cajoles Cosmo into agreeing to pay for Loretta's wedding. Rose then confronts Cosmo and, after he acknowledges in response to her questioning that she has been a good wife, demands that he end his affair; he is upset but agrees and, after insistence from Rose, also agrees to go to confession, and they then affirm their love for each other. Raymond and Rita also arrive, concerned and seemingly reluctantly suspicious, to find out why Loretta didn't make the previous day's bank deposit; they are relieved to learn that she merely forgot and still has the money. When Johnny finally arrives, he breaks off the engagement, superstitiously believing that their marriage would cause his mother's death. Loretta, momentarily offended by his breaking the engagement, chastises Johnny for breaking his promise and throws the engagement ring at him. Seizing the moment, Ronny borrows the ring and asks Loretta to marry him; she accepts. To Rose's chagrin, Loretta declares that she loves Ronny. The family toasts the couple with champagne and a befuddled Johnny joins in at the grandfather's urging, as he will now be part of the family after all.

Inspired by Sherlock, Jr., Hellzapoppin', and Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author, it is the tale of a film character who leaves a fictional film of the same name and enters the real world.