Giancarlo Esposito

After a group of criminals kidnap the ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, they retreat to an isolated mansion, unaware that they're locked inside with no normal little girl.

After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtle brothers set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers through heroic acts. Their new friend April O`Neil helps them take on a mysterious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army of mutants is unleashed upon them.

When a disgraced policeman accidentally kills an 11-year-old girl's abductor, he does everything it takes to find the child.

In the taut and tense thriller Money Monster, Lee Gates ( George Clooney ) is a bombastic TV personality whose popular financial network show has made him the money wiz of Wall Street. But after he hawks a high tech stock that mysteriously crashes, an irate investor ( Jack OConnell ) takes Gates, his crew, and his ace producer Patty Fenn (Julia Roberts) hostage live on air. Unfolding in real time, Gates and Fenn must find a way to keep themselves alive while simultaneously uncovering the truth behind a tangle of big money lies.

Georgia, who leads a life full of unfulfilled desires, is left shocked when she discovers her terminal illness. Soon, she quits her job, gathers her savings and sets out on a luxurious trip to Europe. In morte veritas. Georgia Byrd clerks at a New Orleans department store. She defers pleasure: cooks gourmet meals, eats Lean Cuisine; likes a co-worker in silence; has savings, but hasn't left Louisiana. All that changes when a CT Scan discloses she has three weeks to live. She cashes her savings and heads to Grandhotel Pupp in the Czech Republic, where Chef Didier presides. She checks into the Presidential Suite, orders everything on the menu, snowboards, and comes to the attention of the chef and the hotel's powerful American guests: a Congressman, a Senator, a retail magnate, and his mistress. She has nothing to lose, so she tells them what she thinks. Will the truth set them free? —<jhailey@hotmail.com>

A retired detective accepts a simple task, unaware that it will tear open old, forgotten, but deadly wounds. Retired ex-cop and private detective Harry Ross (Paul Newman), who lives with rich actor Jack Ames (Gene Hackman), who is dying from cancer and his actress wife Catherine (Susan Sarandon) gets mixed up in murder when he is asked to deliver blackmail money. He walks into a twenty-year-old case involving the mysterious disappearance of Catherine's former husband. Raymond Hope (James Garner) is another ex-cop who also does occasional errands for the couple. —John Sacksteder <jsackste@bellsouth.net>

Brooklyn Cigar Store is a neighborhood hangout in Brooklyn with Auggie Wren/H.Keitel as center. Some people are interviewed about Brooklyn, spiced up with statistics on Brooklyn. Wayne Wang's follow-up movie to Smoke (1995) presents a series of improvisational situations strung together to form a pastiche of Brooklyn's diverse ethnicity, offbeat humor, and essential humanity. Many of the same characters inhabiting Auggie Wren's Brooklyn Cigar Store in Smoke (1995) return here to expound on their philosophy of smoking, relationships, baseball, New York City, and Belgian Waffles. Most of all, this is a movie about living life, off-the-cuff.

Two lone riders hold up a bank's armoured car to save their friend's bar from imminent foreclosure. Soon, the mission goes awry when they discover the vehicle's unexpected cargo. With their favourite hangout facing foreclosure, Harley Davidson and Marlboro, two lone riders and childhood friends, reunite to right a wrong. But the bank always wins. As the greedy financial institution demands an impossible new contract, Harley and Marlboro embark on a mission to win back the bar by holding up the bank's armoured car. However, there is no such thing as a foolproof plan. And soon, the mission goes awry when they discover the vehicle's unexpected cargo. Now, the bank wants it back, and nothing can stop them. Is all hope lost? —Nick Riganas The tough biker Harley and his no less tough cowboy friend Marlboro learn that an old friend of theirs will lose his bar, because a bank wants to build a new complex there and demands 2.5 million dollars for a new contract in advance. Harley and Marlboro decide to help him by robbing the corrupt bank. They rob the Bank transport and are targeted by criminal bankers. —Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

Jazz trumpeter Bleek Gilliam makes questionable decisions in his professional and romantic lives. Bleek Gilliam is a talented and self-centred jazz trumpeteer, whose single-minded concentration on his music leaves many, especially the women in his life, scrambling for his attention. Bleek forms his own band The Bleek Gilliam Quartet, and a rivalry emerges with bandmate Shadow that threatens to tear apart the quartet. Opens with Bleek as a child learning to play the trumpet, his friends want him to come out and play but mother insists he finish his lessons. Bleek grows into adulthood and forms his own band - The Bleek Gilliam Quartet. The story of Bleek's and Shadow's friendly rivalry on stage which spills into their professional relationship and threatens to tear apart the quartet. —David <DGOWERS6@CHECLABA.SCU.EDU.AU>

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

A not so popular young man wants to pledge to a popular fraternity at his historically black college. In the South of the United States are taking place confrontations between two groups of students who have different ideas and are not able to accept the one of the opponent. —Volker Boehm A contemporary comedic look at black college life. Dap (Fishburne) and Big Brother Almighty (Esposito) conflict over the greek frat system while the Wanna-be's and Jigaboo's conflict over self-identity and self-esteem. —Sandra Hall