Jean Smart

Decadence, depravity and outrageous excess lead to the rise and fall of several ambitious dreamers in 1920s Hollywood as the industry transitions from silent pictures to sound films.

Chapter One - The Hero (narrated by Samuel L. Jackson) The film starts with Samuel Jackson attempting to introduce us to the hero of our story. He first shows us a handsome gay man, Henry (Jake Robinson), as he is talking to his therapist, Dr. Cait Morris (Annette Bening). Sam is unimpressed with Henry's story, so he moves the focus to Cait. Afterwards, Cait is walking down the street when Will Dempsey (Oscar Isaac) tells her he's a big fan. Cait smiles in gratitude...and then she's hit by a bus. Sam then breaks the narration and appears physically to suggest that since Cait is the hero that she'll be fine... except for the blood pouring out of her head. This all turns out to be part of an "unreliable Samuel L. Jackson narrator" script that Will is working on in real life, and another narrator continues the story from there. Will then goes to get coffee and starts singing obnoxiously in front of everyone after adding alcohol and xanax to his coffee. He goes to therapy to see Cait, as he has been doing so since his wife Abby (Olivia Wilde) has left him. Flashbacks show Will and Abby's married life. She was a big Bob Dylan fan, and they had a dog named Fuckface (seriously). Abby was shown to be very pregnant before their marriage ended. Will tells Cait about Abby's history when she asks him to talk about Abby. Abby's mother and father met in college while she was eating a PB&J sandwich. Abby lived with them for seven years until they perished in a horrible car accident that left her father decapitated. She would go on to live with her Uncle Joe (Bryant Carroll), who was physically and sexually abusive to Abby until she got a gun from a friend and threatened to kill him if he ever touched her again, and she shot him in the knee to prove that she's not kidding. Abby found herself in college when she met Will, and he made the bold move to ask her out. Less than a year after they start dating, the two go to a Halloween party dressed as Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace (and they even recreate the adrenaline needle scene), and Will asks Abby to marry him. Abby has some conditions, specifically about wanting a dog before kids, but she agrees to marry him. They later meet Will's parents Irwin (Mandy Patinkin) and Linda (Jean Smart). On another occasion, Abby goes to Will to talk about her school thesis paper, and she wants to make it on the unreliable narrator, and how life is the ultimate unreliable narrator because of how tricky and surprising it can be. In the present day, Will wonders to Cait just how it went wrong with Abby. Cait mentions that Will was institutionalized following Abby leaving him. Cait asks Will to tell her about what happened on "that day". Will and Abby had just had lunch at his parents' house. They were walking down the street as Abby told Will that they were having a girl. Abby gets distracted as Will tells her he's a big fan, and Abby is struck by a bus. Inside, a little boy named Rodrigo Gonzalez (Adrian Marrero) watches as Will frantically tries to revive Abby. She died, but the baby survived. Will still blames himself for what happened. On impulse, Will pulls out a gun and blows his brains out in front of Cait. She runs away screaming to get help. Chapter Two - Dylan Dempsey The narrator mentions how Will and Abby's daughter Dylan (Kya Kruse) was born of death and tragedy, and these just seemed to follow her growing up. After being taken in by Irwin and Linda, Dylan loses Linda at age 6, and then Fuckface dies when she is 7. After Linda's funeral, Dylan asked Irwin if he would die. The two of them imagine the right things to say one another, with Dylan wanting to express her desire for a great life, and Irwin wanting to be honest with her, but they just keep it simple. On her 21st birthday, Dylan (now played by Olivia Cooke) is getting ready to go out. Her relationship with Irwin is a little more hostile, but she is shown to still care about him. She goes to a venue where she and her band, PB&J, are getting ready to play. Dylan tries to play a song and describe her feelings toward it regarding her mother, but some dickhead in the audience keeps telling her to take her shirt off until she throws a beer bottle at him. The band plays the song to an excited crowd. After the show, Dylan is making out with one of her band mates. Another girl records them, and Dylan gets up to take her phone and stomp it on the ground. The girl confronts Dylan to demand that she get her another phone, and Dylan responds by punching the girl in the face and fighting her until she gets pulled off. Dylan leaves the venue. Dylan sits down on a bench to smoke a joint. She passes out momentarily and dreams that she watches her mother's final moment. Dylan wakes up crying with the bus in front of her. It appears that she sees Rodrigo again asking her if she's okay. Chapter Three - The Gonzalez Family In Spain, a man named Vincent Saccione (Antonio Banderas) owns a piece of land with several men at his employment. He brings in one man, Javier Gonazlez (Sergio Peris-Mencheta), for a drink. Saccione tells Javier a story of how his father was an Italian man who did not allow any Spanish being spoken in his home. He later impregnated Saccione's mother and essentially shunned the two of them. After he died, Saccione took advantage of the fact that his father left no will, and so he took his father's money and now owns the land. Saccione wants to be friends with Javier, but Javier prefers to keep the relationship professional, stating that he wouldn't have taken his father's money. Saccione offers Javier a place to stay so that he may oversee some of the land. Javier agrees. Javier goes to see his beloved girlfriend Isabel Diaz (Laia Costa), who works as a waitress. The two build a life with each other, eventually marrying and becoming parents to Rodrigo. All the way back in America, Abby turns in her thesis paper and it is said to be a disaster. Her professor also tried to have his way with her, which, according to the narrator, somehow proves Abby's paper on the unreliable narrator. Saccione starts to make secret visits to the Gonzalez home whenever Javier isn't there. He presents Rodrigo with a globe, and the boy takes an interest in seeing New York. Saccione tells Isabel how he feels it is late in his life to find the kind of happiness that Javier has, and he feels bad for intruding on their life, but Isabel assures Saccione that Rodrigo likes him. However, Javier disapproves of Saccione's visits and gives the globe back to him. Javier then decides to take Isabel and Rodrigo to America to see New York City. Rodrigo has the time of his life, until they find themselves on the bus. Rodrigo talks to the bus driver, who is momentarily distracted when he hits Abby. Rodrigo watches the whole scene and becomes traumatized. Back home, Javier and Isabel struggle to take care of Rodrigo since he can't sleep and still feels the effects of what he's seen. They invite Saccione to come back and help the boy, and it works. Saccione teaches him English and helps him get better. Javier sees this and becomes envious, feeling that Isabel and Rodrigo love Saccione more than they love him. He confronts Saccione and asks if he loves them both, and he says yes, but he feels guilty about it. Javier makes the decision to leave, even though Isabel insists that she loves the life that she has with Javier. Isabel stays with Saccione, but she makes it clear she won't love him the way she loves Javier. Chapter Four - Rodrigo Gonzalez Rodrigo (now played by Alex Monner) grows up to go to school in New York. He runs track and starts a relationship with a girl named Shari Dickstein (Isabel Durant), who is, in Rodrigo's words, "loud". At one point, Rodrigo travels back home when Isabel gets sick with cancer. Rodrigo wants to come back and stay with his mother, but she tells him "Enough is enough", and with that, they say goodbye. The narrator takes us to what is the most important day in Rodrigo's life. He wakes up with Shari, who says she is pregnant. Rodrigo becomes worried, even as she continues going on about it casually to the point where she almost gets hit by a cab until Rodrigo pulls her out of the way, but she doesn't notice and keeps talking. Shari then says it was just an April Fool's prank, but Rodrigo breaks up with her right then and there. Back in Spain, Isabel knows her time is running out. Saccione wants to call Rodrigo, but she doesn't want to say goodbye to him twice. Javier then arrives for the first time in years. The narrator reveals that Javier asked Saccione to write letters to him to update him on Isabel and Rodrigo. Javier spends one final moment with his wife. Rodrigo goes back to his dorm room and gets a call from Saccione that Isabel has passed away. Distraught, Rodrigo goes for a run throughout the city. That's when he runs by Dylan crying on the bench. He asks her if she is okay. Chapter Five - Elena Dempsey-Gonzalez It is then revealed that the narrator is Elena (Lorenza Izzo), Dylan and Rodrigo's daughter. She is telling a group of people in a book store the story that led to her life right now. Elena tells the listeners the last thing that Isabel told Rodrigo, and we see her saying it in English. She tells her son that although life may bring us to our knees, if we look hard enough, we will find love. Elena concludes her story by saying how one moment shaped her whole life, and that every bit of her has some of her mother, her father, and her grandmothers. The last is a brief clip of Will admiring a pregnant Abby.

A mathematical genius who helps crime syndicates to cover up their financial frauds is hunted by an agent, who is on the verge of retirement.

A story of unrequited love set on a backdrop of temporal paradox. Dr. Alice Sharpe has a choice to make, stay with her true love and risk the collapse of the space time continuum, or take more drastic measures to ensure all of creation isn't erased. In the great city of Iolanthus in the year 2101 Dr Alice Sharpe is the first person to travel through time, but a mistake in the calculations leads to a paradox that could destroy time itself. Alice is thrown 100 years forward to nightmare future, the only clues to her predicament are a letter from herself she doesn't remember writing and another from her grandfather. Alice learns that with the help of Iolanthe the city's AI, she must travel back in time to change the course of the past. Alice arrives in the year 2050 in a remote secret base; the location of the first ever tests into casimir energy and wormholes and her true love Dr. Robert 'Bob' Cameron. Unfortunately for Alice they are not destined to meet until 2090, so she must lay low and buy her time until she can find a way to fix things. The only person she knows she can trust is her grandfather Alfred, who works on the base. Major David Jones who runs the base quickly captures her and coerces Alice for information. Cromwell Jackson, an entrepreneur and major business owner, gains knowledge of Alice's predicament from his future self and will do anything to get information on the future from her. Alice becomes Bob's assistant and they start to fall in love. Alice knows that any relationship between them could have unforeseen consequences and could endanger time itself. She tries her best to stick to Alfred's letter, however as their love blossoms Alice realizes this is the key. It's the love between them that pull Alice into the past so she could be with Bob again and give him the key to changing the passage of time. With the experiment near completion Bob's admits his feelings for Alice and wants her to stay with him in this time. With continued pressure from the Major and Cromwell Jackson, Alice has to make the ultimate sacrifice, and hope her time with Bob is enough to change fate.

The film opens with talk about snow forming from crystallized water and explaining that a snow day isn't just when school's close, but a day of magic. We're then introduced to Tom Brandston (Chevy Chase) the local weatherman forced to wear a Hawaiian style outfit to promote the warm weather coming in. Tom isn't happy with his job as he works for a station that makes him use gimmicks on camera to improve their low ratings. We're next introduced to Tom's daughter Natalie (Zena Grey) as she hopes to get snow on what were told has been a unusually warm season. As she and her friends Chet (Jade Yorker) and Wayne (Josh Peck) throw snowballs leftover from last year (kept in a cooler) at their principal (Damian Young) a stick in the mud who's a prime target for snowballs during the winter. We're also introduced to Tom's son Hal (Mark Webber), who sits besides the high school pool area with his friends Lane (Schuyler Fisk) and Bill (J. Adam Brown). Hal has a crush on the local popular girl Claire (Emmanuelle Chriqui) as he tells us via voice over. He watches her dive and when sliding along the side of the pool, he falls in and finds her ankle bracelet at the pools bottom. The ankle bracelet containing a whale charm had fallen off when she was diving. Later Hal plans to return it to Claire, but is unable to when her loud jock boyfriend Chuck (David Paetkau) shows up, revealing that he and Claire are on the verge of ending their relationship. Natalie takes Hal's collectible action figures and attempts to play with them, but Hal takes them away from her, claiming he doesn't want her playing with them because he plans to sell them some day. At dinner with their father and younger energetic brother Randy (Connor Matheus), the kids wait for their mother Laura (Jean Smart) to come home, she does arrive, apologizing for being late as she is a workaholic. Later that night, Natalie shakes a snow globe her father has given her, claiming she wished it was that easy to get snow to appear. At the news station, Tom is getting ready to report sunshine all day, when he discovers a snow storm is coming in from his radar. Natalie awakens the next morning to find the entire area has been blanketed in several layers of snow. The radio then announces that all schools are officially closed and a snow day is in effect. Natalie is so excited and plans to use the magic of a snow day to take down her arch enemy, The Snowplowman (Chris Elliott) a local villain who is said to run over kids and plow the streets so efficiently that there has never been a second snow day in years. Natalie enlists Hal's help, but in light of hearing Claire has broken up with Chuck, Hal wants to use the magic of the snow day to return Claire's whale bracelet and profess his love to her. Laura attempts to leave for work, but finds she has been so severely snowed in; she cannot make it into work and must stay home with Randy. Principal Weaver attempts to clean his car off of the snow, but is overwhelmed by an army of kids who are throwing a barrage of snow balls at him. Weaver appears throughout the movie as a running gag, being chased by snow balls as they are pelted at him off screen. Lane meets up with Hal and upon hearing he plans to spend the day winning over Claire; she disapproves and proclaims that love is about finding someone you can stand to be around for more than ten minutes at a time. Hal insists and she follows him. Natalie meets up with Chet and Wayne at their igloo-style snow fort, but Snowplowman appears and after Natalie throws a snowball at him, he maliciously goes off road to plow over their snow fort. Hal and Lane go to Claire's house, where Hal plans to talk to her, but a parade of other suitors has gathered outside her house after hearing about her break up. Chuck arrives and clears them out, attempting to win Claire back. She initially turns the volume on her TV up to drown him out, but caves and lets him inside. Lane hears that the TV station Claire has on is the same one Hal's dad Tom works at, giving Hal an idea. With the record snow fall, Tom is forced to wear a snowman costume to report the weather and is pushed down a scary hill on a sled. With everyone distracted when Tom wipes out, Hal uses the opportunity to introduce himself to Claire on live TV. Recovering from his crash, Tom discovers his rival weatherman Chad (John Schneider) from another station is taking credit for discovering the night's snow storm first. Meanwhile Natalie has her friend Wayne pretend to be dead in the middle of the street, pouring ketchup on him as blood in order to trick Snowplowman. When he leaves the plow to investigate, Natalie sneaks in. She's attacked by his bird Trudy and ends up kidnapping the violent creature, Snowplowman retaliates by grabbing Wayne. Hal and Lane have followed Claire and Chuck to the local skating rink, where Lane distracts the rink's DJ (Iggy Pop) while Hal changes the usually boring music to something more upbeat, much to Chuck's dismay. Next Snowplowman drops by Natalie's house to talk to Laura claiming he's taking kids around in his plow and that she's next in line, claiming Wayne to be his last passenger when she spots him in the plow. When Laura is distracted by Randy, Snowplowman gets a call from Natalie who offers him an exchange, the bird for Wayne and a second snow day, he agrees. Hal's next plan involves Lane going to the local diner where she tells Claire how great a guy Hal is, retelling a story about him. Claire is convinced and follows Lane to the local football field where Hal has carved a giant whale in the snow. Chuck shows up and Hal steals one of his snowmobiles and a chase ensues, Hal gets away. The prisoners are exchanged, but even with his bird back, Snowplowman appears to not be a man of his word as he leaves in his plow back on route to plow the snow. Laura chases after Randy when he escapes outside to play in the snow. Initially she's angry but after Randy throws snowballs at her, she retaliates and finds herself having fun. Natalie is about to give up, but after she imagines what her brother's action figures would tell her if they came to life, she rediscovers her determination for a second snow day. Hal meets up with Lane, but after he shows no signs of giving up, she gets angry admitting she hasn't done what she wants to do for the snow day, when Hal asks what she wants to do, she kisses him and leaves. Tom is reporting on the snow as Old Man Winter, but when his rival Chad appears, Tom proves him a fraud when he's unable to answer basic meteorology questions on air, proving he discovered the storm first. Hal meets up with Claire at the school's pool and she kisses him, but Hal realizes that he was wrong and that he has stronger feelings for Lane. Claire understands. Snowplowman continues to plow the streets, but at the last road, Natalie appears to challenge him. He taunts her but she reveals an army of kids have gathered together to stop him. The kids tie him to a street sign and take his plow to un-plow the snow back onto the roads. Hal journeys to find Lane (dressed in Bill's cloths for some reason) but is attacked by Chuck. A fight ensues, but Hal is saved when Natalie and friends plow Chuck away into a snow bank with the snow plow. Hal is impressed and tells Natalie she can keep his action figures and that he wants to spend the soon to be second snow day with her. They part ways as Hal finds Lane at the local skating rink. Hal apologizes to Lane repeating her line about true love being about finding someone you can stand to be around for ten minutes, and then asks "You got ten minutes?" They kiss. Hal narrates as he recaps everyone's journey throughout the day and the film ends with Principal Weaver making it home, only to find another volley of snowballs come at him from inside his house.

30 years later... Oscar has settled in Sarasota, Florida, where he reports on a weak minor league baseball team and plays cards with other senior citizens. His son notifies him from California that he's getting married in a few days, to the daughter of Felix Ungar. Oscar and Felix happily reunite at the Los Angeles airport, 17 years after living together in New York City, but having not seen each other since then. They rent a car and drive off together, promptly teasing each other about their annoying differences: Felix was always fastidious and clean, Oscar was always unkempt and casual. Oscar soon gets irritated with Felix for needing to stop to pee, and later needing to stop for food, and to take pills. Felix laments that his third wife left him a few years earlier. Within a couple hours of driving, the two lose the directions to the wedding, realizing that Felix's suitcase was left back at the car rental agency. Making matters worse, the empty rental car rolls down a hillside and explodes. Felix and Oscar set off on foot along the desert highway, and no other cars come by for hours. They finally get picked up by a Mexican farmer, who asks them to drive his truck to a nearby gas station. They are soon stopped and arrested by a phalanx of police who find many illegal immigrants in the back of the truck. The local sheriff deduces that the two are not criminals and lets them go. Felix calls relatives at the wedding site and learns that they are five hours off course, so he and Oscar decide to spend the night in their current town. Felix and Oscar go off to a local bar, where Oscar charms a couple ladies somewhat younger than they are, named Thelma and Holly, and Felix goes along. The two couples dance, until the ladies suddenly need to leave. The next morning, they get a ride with an older man who is heading to the town where the wedding is being held. Alas, he soon dies after driving the car very slowly for a few miles. Police show up and take Felix and Oscar back to town, where the same sheriff from before again deduces they have committed no crimes and lets them go. Felix and Oscar get a bus out of town, and Felix says he feels happy and youthful. Along a stop, Thelma and Holly get on the bus, but soon after, the ladies' husbands hijack the bus and take all of them hostage on a wild car ride. Soon the police stop them and take them back to the same town where the same sheriff from before becomes so frustrated that he offers to transport Oscar and Felix to the wedding by a regional airline. While getting on the plane, Felix meets a friend of Oscar's named Felice, whom he is sure is his soulmate. Oscar convinces Felix to chat up Felice, and the three continue on to the wedding. When they arrive, they immediately learn that Oscar's son-- the groom-- has gotten cold feet and is hiding on the roof. Oscar tries to talk him out of getting married, in reverse psychology that convinces his son to go through with the wedding. After the service, Felix dances with Felice. Oscar gives his son extremely valuable baseball cards as a gift. That night, Felix tells Oscar that he plans to spend some time in San Francisco with Felice. Felix and Oscar depart at the airport with restrained emotion. Back in Sarasota, Felix shows up at Oscar's house to tell him that things did not work out with Felice. Oscar is hesitant, but agrees that Felix can stay with him for a while. As Felix begins cleaning the place, Oscar goes back to playing poker with his old friends.

A young woman from a Catholic school and a young man from a nearby prison camp fall in love and must run away together to escape the law, the church and their parents. In this fact-based melodrama, Joe Fisk is a juvenile delinquent who falls in love with Lisa Taylor, a Catholic girl's school student, in an Oregon forest. The two meet by chance when the troubled young man stumbles upon her while being chased by his peers in a training exercise, sees the lovely young girl floating in a small lake as she works on a photography assignment. The two are immediately drawn to each other, but neither of their custodians encourage contact of the opposite sex. However, when their relationship is discovered there's trouble all around, forcing the young lovers to flee. The question then remains: Will they be able to escape the law and other authorities long enough to find happiness? —Bambi Ross <mgross@fuse.net>