Frankie Faison

In August 1955, 14-year-old Emmett Till lived with his mother, Mamie, at 6427 South Saint Lawrence Ave in Chicago, Illinois. Before Emmett leaves to visit relatives in Money, Mississippi, Mamie warns him to be extra careful around white people. At a train station, the Tills meet with Mamie's uncle, Mose "Preacher" Wright, and Emmett's cousin, Wheeler Parker. After picking cotton on a sharecropper plantation, Emmett and his cousins purchase candy at the Bryant's Grocery and Meat Market. At the cash register, Emmett tells Carolyn Bryant that she looks like a movie star before showing her a photograph of a white girl in his wallet. Carolyn follows Emmett outside of the store, where he whistles at her. Disgusted, Carolyn retrieves a shotgun from her vehicle as Till and his relatives flee from the store. In the early hours of August 28, Carolyn's husband, Roy, and his half-brother, John William "J. W." Milam, arrive at the Wrights' house and force themselves inside. They locate Emmett inside one of the bedrooms and force him to put on his clothes before kidnapping him. Emmett's great-aunt Elizabeth offers the men money, but Milam refuses. Before leaving, Milam holds Wright hostage with a gun. Inside one of the other vehicles, Carolyn identifies Till and the Bryants drive off into the night. Emmett is then badly beaten, fatally shot, and his body is dumped into the Tallahatchie River. Back in Chicago, Mamie is informed of Emmett's kidnapping. Her cousin, Rayfield Mooty, arranges her to meet with William Huff, the counsel for the NAACP chapter in Chicago. At his office, Huff inquires about Mamie's past marriages as her personal history will be questioned. Meanwhile, the police locate Till's corpse along the river. Upon hearing the news, Mamie collapses in shock. Despite Mooty's reservations, Mamie asks for Emmett's body to be transferred back to Chicago. Shortly after, his coffin arrives on train, and Mamie cries in anguish upon seeing it. After seeing Emmett's mutilated corpse on an autopsy table, Mamie has an open casket funeral for Emmett to reveal what had been done to him. Emmett's killing and funeral garner national headlines across America. Milam and Bryant are charged for their actions in relation to Till's killing. Accompanied by her father, Mamie travels to Mound Bayou to help represent Emmett for the trial. At the Regional Council, headed by T. R. M. Howard, Howard asks Mamie to consider her future after the trial as her activism can help galvanize federal support for voting rights toward Black Americans. On the first day of the trial, the defense team requests a recess after learning of another witness, to which the judge agrees and adjourns. During the recess, the prosecution locates Willie Reed, who was an eyewitness to Till's killing. The next day, Wright and Reed give their testimonies, and the former identifies Milam as the culprit who held his family at gunpoint. Next, Mamie goes before the trial, testifying she could identify the corpse as her son. The defense then cross-examines Mamie, as she had told the "colored press" she warned Emmett on how to conduct himself in Mississippi. Later, on the witness stand, Carolyn Bryant testifies that Emmett grabbed her by the waist[7] and told her that he had previous interracial romance. Angered, Mamie leaves the courtroom sure that she already knows the verdict. After an hour, the all-white and all-male Mississippi jury[8] acquits Milam and Bryant of Till's killing. Later, at an NAACP rally in Harlem, Mamie criticizes the Mississippi criminal justice system for victim blaming and the United States for failing in its promise for equal justice. She returns home and fondly remembers Emmett as she imagines him in his room. The post-credits state that Mamie's actions galvanized the Civil Rights Act of 1957. She dedicated her life to teaching children while continuing to fight for civil rights in America. (thanks to Wikipedia)

A documentary about the life of video game reviewer Kirill Denisenko in a small Russian village.

A teenage runaway and a widowed father each fight to take matters into their own hands to redeem their dark past.

Rennie Cray (Caviezel) embarks on a bloodthirsty rampage to avenge the death of his wife who was struck down by a serial killer - a man who hunts and kills women using his '72 El Dorado. Since the hit-and-run murder of his wife five years ago, Rennie Cray has crisscrossed America in his souped-up, stripped-down '68 Plymouth Barracuda, pursuing her killer. The man he seeks in a high-speed, high-stakes game of cat-and-mouse is James Fargo, a merciless, wheelchair-bound pyschopath. Through a series of mechanical innovations, Fargo has turned his rampaging '72 Cadillac Eldorado into a monstrous extension of his own twisted body and mind. Now, their deadly battle of wits and wills is about to move into overdrive. And caught in their headlights is a tormented beauty who unwittingly holds the key to their ultimate showdown. —Sujit R. Varma

Todd Anderson's life changes overnight when he signs a $30 million contract with the NBA. Determined not to forget who he is and where he's from, he throws a cookout for his family and friends from the hood, in his new neighborhood. When Todd Anderson signs a $30 million deal with his hometown team, the New Jersey Nets, he knows that his life is set for a big change. To keep things real, he decides to throw a barbeque at his place -- just like the ones his family used to have. But when you have new and old friends, family, agents, and product reps in the same house, things are bound to get crazy. —Anonymous

Dan Foreman (Dennis Quaid) is a 51-year-old advertising executive and head of sales for Sports America, a major sports magazine. Happily married with two daughters, Dan faces a life-changing event when his magazine is bought out by Globecom, an international corporation that promotes the corporate concept of "synergy". Globecom is headed by Teddy K (Malcolm McDowell) a reclusive billionaire. Dan has been with the company for 20 years and believes in the power of the magazine as a great advertising medium. Dan believes in building relationships with his clients rather than resorting to any aggressive sales techniques. He leaves them a copy of the Magazine as his final argument. One of Dan's prospects is Eugene (Philip Baker Hall with whom he is in the process of building such a long term relationship. Mark Steckle (Clark Gregg) is Carter's boss at Globecom. Teddy K picks Mark to run Marketing at Sports America and Mark picks Carter to run the Advertisements division. Mark intends to "Cut the fat" at Sports America. Carter gets excited when Mark mentions that Carter "is being groomed" by Teddy K, presumably for leadership positions at future acquisitions. After he is forced to fire several of his longtime colleagues (like Enrique (Ty Burrell), Lou (Kevin Chapman) & Morty (David Paymer)), to reduce payroll by $300,000 in the sales team), Dan is demoted and becomes the "wingman" of his new boss, Carter Duryea (Topher Grace), a 26-year-old business school prodigy. While Dan develops clients through handshake deals and relationships, Carter champions the corporate creed of synergy, cross promoting the magazine with the cell phone division and "Krispity Krunch", a snack food also owned by Globecom. Carter has no experience in advertisement sales. He wants to use the synergy concept to increase sales by 20%. The big idea is to put sports factoids in Krispity Krunch boxes and basically force them to buy 28 pages a year in the Sports America magazine, and same with the cell phone division. Dan and Carter are both facing challenges in their personal lives. Dan is supporting two daughters-16-year-old Jana (Zena Grey) and 18-year-old Alex (Scarlett Johansson) who is preparing to enter college and learns that his wife is pregnant with their third child. Alex gets into NYU to study creative writing, which is a much more expensive course as compared to the one she was taking in Newark. Meanwhile, Carter is dumped by his wife of seven months (for being too self-centered and career focused) and focuses all his energy on work. With Dan facing the financial realities of a mortgage, education costs, and a new child, and with Carter needing Dan's practical, real-life experience in the field of advertising, the two form an uneasy friendship. One day, Carter, who has been struggling with loneliness following the breakup of his marriage, invites himself to dinner at Dan's house, where he meets Dan's daughter Alex, and the two quickly form an attraction. Their initial friendship allows Carter to forget his loneliness, and Alex, who is now attending New York University, is able to escape her own loneliness and boredom. Dan is angry at Carter for making him fire the people that he hired himself and had worked with for many years. Dan wants Carter to fire him instead, and Carter retorts that the only reason he doesn't fire Dan is because he has a family that needs him. Dan has to accept his reality and continue to do what Carter tells him to, even if Dan does not agree with it. In the coming days, Carter and Alex spend time together and become romantically involved. Fearful of offending her father, they keep their relationship a secret for the time being. They are successful since Alex has moved into a dorm in NYC to pursue her studies at NYU. Their friendship, however, takes a turn for the worse when Dan discovers that Carter and Alex have been seeing each other, approaches them in a restaurant, and punches his boss in the face when he finds that Alex has been sleeping with Carter. Carter says that he loves Alex. The confrontation with her father (Dan said that he took out a 2nd mortgage so that Alex could study at NYU) convinces Alex to break off the relationship with Carter who is heartbroken. Soon after, faced with a major setback with a longtime client who is unimpressed with Carter's "synergy" and cross-promotional ideas, Carter relies on Dan's personal approach, which ends up saving the account. Later, when Mark tells Carter to fire Dan, he refuses. This is because Dan was honest enough to tell Teddy K in a live office conference that some of his synergy ideas would end up destroying the Sports America brand. Teddy wanted to put a computers section in the Sports America Magazine, and Dan argues that nobody will want to read that and that a sports magazine should remain true to their mandate. Carter stands up for Dan and says that Dan is a hardworking employee. He also threatens Mark that he would call Teddy K and reveal how Mark took his most profitable magazine and drove it into the ground with all the layoffs. To top it off, he says that he and Dan have been working on a huge account, that would save the magazine. The duo approach Eugene and convince him to make a large purchase of ad space in the magazine, thus proving to Mark that their bluster was not bluff. Following another corporate shakeup, Sports America is sold off, Carter is let go, and Dan returns to his former position as head of sales. Having developed fatherly feelings toward Carter, Dan offers him a position in his new department as his "wingman", but Carter refuses, admitting he needs to take some time off and examine what he really wants to do in his life, and the two part as friends. On his way out of the building, Carter runs into Alex, and they exchange pleasantries. Dan's wife gives birth to a girl. He calls Carter-who is jogging outdoors for the first time and feels like a new man-in Los Angeles with the news.

Agent Will Graham is on the trail of a serial killer called The Tooth Fairy but must ask his arch-nemesis Dr. Hannibal `The Cannibal` Lecter for help in bringing him to justice.

After dying before his time, an aspiring black comic gets a second shot at life - by being placed in the body of a wealthy white businessman. It seems everyone is trying to get into heaven; at least those whose time is up. For Lance Barton (Chris Rock), a struggling comedian and bicycle messenger, it's the last thing on his mind. His due date in heaven is fifty years away. In the meantime, he has big dreams to pursue on Earth, such as landing a slot at the final Amateur Night Contest at the famed Apollo Theatre. Lance's has one little problem though - he isn't that funny. Thanks to an overly cautious emissary from heaven, Mr. Keyes (Eugene Levy), he's going to get hit (literally) with a much bigger problem. Showing that even God has difficulty finding good help these days, the inept minion mistakenly plucks Lance from a traffic accident - before it takes place. Transporting him to the Pearly Gates, or more accurately, the velvet roped-lines of the hottest club around, the error is finally addressed by Mr. King (Chazz Palminteri), the streetwise, no-nonsense head angel who manages the place from his plush windowed office. Since returning to his own body on Earth is impossible, the urban dwelling Lance reluctantly agrees to a normally unthinkable proposal. He'll occupy the body of a wealthy old white mogul, Charles Wellington III (Brian Rhodes), until a more suitable body can be found. Strangely enough, in a Park Avenue penthouse, servants and butlers become his new homeys as Lance works on his streetwise comedy routine for the big Apollo showdown. Living in the body of a callous old white man would be bizarre enough for Lance without falling in love with Sontee Jenkins (Regina King), the beautiful woman publicly battling Wellington's company at the same time. And if that wasn't enough, he has to deal with the love affair between Wellington's wife and his personal assistant, and their plot to have him killed. —Gilbert lee

Thieves infiltrate the Metropolitan Museum of Art inside an actual Trojan horse, preparing to steal an entire gallery of paintings, but are apprehended. In the confusion, billionaire Thomas Crown (Pierce Brosnan) - the crime's secret mastermind - steals Monet's painting of San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. NYPD Detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary) heads the investigation into the theft of the $100 million artwork, with the unwelcome assistance of insurance investigator Catherine Banning (Rene Russo). Banning says that according to McCann, the thieves shut off the AC to drive out the crowd from the museum (but they were themselves among the crowd). Plus, the theory of trying to steal 1000 pounds of artwork (plus 800 pounds of their own weight) doesn't seem plausible with a chopper that has a 600-pound effective load. There is also a mystery of a titanium briefcase that was used to keep open a specific gate of a section from where the Monet was stolen. Banning figures that the Monet section had thermal cameras. When the air was cut off, the temp rose so much that the entire camera feed was wiped off. But the rest of the sections were fine. She then figures that the desk in front of the Monet had 3 legs in the video and only 2 actually. (the 3rd leg was another briefcase placed by Thomas earlier in the day, in which he took the Monet home). Banning reckons that the bench briefcase also had a heater that increased the temp around the Monet more than the rest of the museum. Banning watches as Thomas comes in to identify the perpetrators. She interrogates one of them and figures that they were hired to conduct the robbery by a middleman. They were given schedules and timetables and everything. Banning thinks they were hired to create a diversion. Crown donates a Pissarro to fill the Monet's space in the museum and falls under Banning's suspicion. Banning meets Thomas and tells him that she suspects him of stealing the Monet. Thomas is intrigued and asks her out to dinner. She convinces McCann to begin surveillance of Crown, deducing that the wealthy playboy is motivated not by money but the sheer thrill of the crime. Banning accepts Crown's invitation to dinner. Before the date, Crown's therapist correctly guesses that he has found "a worthy adversary" in Banning. Before dinner Thomas takes Banning to the museum. Banning taunts Thomas by saying that personally she would have taken an irrelevant painting rather than the Monet (and points to the painting of a boat on a lake). At dinner, Banning has a copy of Crown's keys made; she and her team search his home and discover the Monet, which is revealed to be a taunting imitation, painted over a copy of Poker Sympathy from the Dogs Playing Poker series. Banning confronts Crown and the two give in to their mutual attraction, spending a passionate night together. Banning and Crown continue their cat-and-mouse game and their trysts, despite McCann's surveillance. Accompanying Crown on a trip to Martinique, Banning realizes he is preparing to run and rejects his offer to join him when the time comes. Banning is having full blown feelings towards Thomas but continues to look for clues for the missing Monet. After she returns, McCann presents Banning with photographs of Crown with another woman, Anna (Esther Cañadas), complicating her feelings toward the case and her prime suspect. when confronted Thomas maintained that he allowed himself to be photographed with Anna as he wanted to know Banning's true feelings towards him. Banning and McCann discover that the fake Monet is in fact an expert forgery that could only have been painted by someone with access to the original; they visit the likeliest forger in prison, to no avail, although his attitude suggests to them that he recognizes the work. Later, Banning finds Crown packing his belongings with Anna. He promises Banning his interest lies with her alone, stating that Anna works for him, but he would be compromising her to define the nature of their association, and offers to return the Monet, giving her a time and place to meet him when he's finished. Tearfully, Banning leaves and informs McCann. The following day, the police stake out the museum, waiting to arrest Crown. Banning learns that the fake Monet was painted by Anna; the imprisoned forger is her father, a partner of Crown, who became her guardian. Crown arrives but quickly blends into the crowd, aided by lookalikes in bowler hats a la Magritte's The Son of Man. Evading police, Crown sets off the museum's fire sprinklers. His donated Pissarro, hanging in the Monet's place, is washed clean by the sprinklers to reveal the real Monet. Crown's plan is made clear; upon stealing the Monet, Crown had Anna forge the Pissarro over it, and "returned" it to the museum. However, Crown has now vanished with another painting (the one that Banning had pointed to early on), but Banning's employer and McCann consider their case closed as this painting is not covered by Banning's employer. Banning races to meet Crown but finds only the missing painting. Devastated, she sends the painting to McCann, and boards a plane back to London. Taking her seat, she finds Crown sitting behind her and the two are passionately reunited.

Fleeing robbers stumble into a staked-out bar in New Orleans. Three petty thieves who the police believe to be major criminals are chased into a basement bar where they take five hostages including all the bar employees. The rest of the movie deals with the cops lurking outside the bar while the trio try to get hold of the situation inside. —Danny Paikov <deepee@netvision.net.il>

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