Richard Edson

The film opens with news reports covering the events at the end of the prior film. The reports also reveal that Baby, Otis, and Captain Spaulding miraculously survived being shot and that they will be tried for their crimes. The trial is widely covered and becomes very popular, with many people protesting that the trio are innocent or were only fighting against the system. All three are found guilty and are sentenced to life in prison. Captain Spaulding is executed by lethal injection in prison, however Otis is reunited with his half-brother Winslow Foxworth "Foxy" Coltrane. The two manage to escape from jail during some outside prison work and in the process kill Rondo, who was on the same work crew but did not recognize Otis. Meanwhile Baby unsuccessfully seeks parole, as her mental state has greatly deteriorated since incarceration. Once free Otis and Foxy begin planning to free Baby from prison. To accomplish this they take the family and friends of Warden Virgil Dallas Harper hostage, demanding that he help Baby sneak out of prison or they will murder everyone. Harper follows their commands and sneaks Baby out of prison by disguising her as a guard, however Otis and Foxy still kill everyone. Now united, the three are undecided as to what to do next but eventually decide to flee to Mexico, a decision that is made more pressing due to the unstable actions of Baby. Otis, Baby, and Foxy manage to successfully travel to a small town in Mexico that is celebrating the Day of the Dead and hole up in the town's only hotel. They briefly worry about being recognized but dismiss these concerns, unaware that the hotel's owner has recognized them and has alerted Rondo's son Aquarius to their location. The owner keeps them occupied by the celebration and local prostitutes, so as to keep them from moving to another area. The following morning Baby bonds with a local worker, Sebastian, who notices Aquarius's arrival. He warns Baby of the danger before running to warn Otis, just as Aquarius's men break into the whorehouse. Otis and Sebastian manage to hold them off until Foxy arrives and rescues them, after which Otis separates from them to find and kill the hotel owner. During this time Baby manages to kill several of Aquarius's men using a bow and arrow set she took from Harper's house. Eventually Foxy and Baby are captured by Aquarius, who uses them to draw Otis out into the open. Otis and one of Aquarius's men have a knife fight while Sebastian, who had been shot and left for dead during Foxy and Baby's capture, sneaks up and silently frees Otis's kin. This enrages Aquarius, distracting his man in the knife fight and allowing Otis to gain the upper hand. He, Baby, and Foxy manage to overpower Aquarius, however Sebastian is shot and killed in the process. The film ends with the trio immolating Aquarius before walking off into the town.

We begin simultaneously with a screen showing 4 different stories that will converge during the film. Lauren Hathaway (Jeanne Tripplehorn) clandestinely flattens the tire of the car belonging to actress Rose (Salma Hayek) her lover. Lauren is suspicious of her faithfulness and plants a secret microphone on Rose so she can overhear her conversations when they are apart. Rose is eager to get to the casting sessions for a new film, being directed by Lester Moore (Richard Edson). Alex Green (Stellan Skarsgard), the studio executive overseeing Moores project, has problems of his own connected to his wife Emma (Saffron Burrows), who is discussing her relationship problems with her Therapist played by Glenne Headly. Alex also has a substance-abuse problem and this negatively affects his ability to perform executive decisions and his sexual involvement with Rose compromises his marriage and his career. At the studio a local spa has sent over Quentin (Julian Sands), a Latin-speaking masseuse to give everyone back rubs during their business conferences. Rose has come to the studio to meet up with Alex as part of a seduction to obtain a favorable introduction and audition for the current film being cast. The story also spins out the day of producer Evan Watz (Xander Berkeley) and his relationship with Alex and the other executives of the film company and attempts to push forward in spite of Alexs obvious problems. When Scott "Bunny" Drysdale (Kyle MacLachlan) brings in his client, Euro filmmaker Ana Pauls (Mia Maestro), an artist with ideas to pitch a new project to the executive group with the assistance of white rap musician Joey Z (Alessandro Nivola), the film clearly moves into the realm of screwball comedy, but with a pacing and delivery of some very bitter-sweet reality show. During this slice of the work day a variety of actions disrupt the actions including drug and alcohol consumption, fornication physical abuse and a few earthquakes to further shake things up as well as the actual camera work.

Jobless loser Tommy Collins is sequestered to be a juror in a serial killer trial. He does everything he can to prolong the trial and deliberations to take full advantage of the free lodging and food. When jobless Tommy Collins discovers that sequestered jurors earn free room and board as well as $5-a-day, he gets himself assigned to a jury in a murder trial. Once there, he does everything he can to prolong the trial and deliberations and make the sequestration more comfortable for himself. —Steve Derby <sderby@sdeco.com> Tommy Collins is an out of work male stripper living at home with his mother and her boyfriend...until they decide to go to Vegas to get married and take their mobile home with them and leave him behind. Before this happens he gets a letter summoning him to jury duty, which he initially throws away, but when he finds his only other option is to stay with some rather questionable relatives, he retrieves it and heads to jury duty. He makes it a point to get out of any trial that will be over quickly, then gets assigned to a murder trial which might take a few days. Even being sequestered into a dated hotel room in a historical wing that is being remodeled isn't so bad...until be finds he's rooming with his former high school principal...who likes to sleep to motivational cassettes cranked up full blast. In a desperate move, he manages to get down to the front desk and beg to be moved. Since business is slipping badly at the hotel, the manager makes a deal to use him as a marketing tool, and put him in a luxurious penthouse suite as compensation. All is well for him now. The trial is for a guy who is accused of murdering a number of people at a fast food restaurant, and he looks rather psychotic as well. This makes it seem to be an automatic slam dunk to all of the jurors. However, in fear of having nowhere else to go and of losing his pampered lifestyle, Tommy starts stalling and prolonging the deliberations by continuously going over the evidence. He ends up showing the case in a whole new light, and actually ends up changing the minds of his fellow jurors. Just when he finally won the respect and admiration from them, and they are about to find the defendant not guilty, his secret is found out by not just any juror, but a girl he has been infatuated with since day one. Has he lost her forever, or was his prolonging a blessing to everyone? —jlentz1@comcast.net

A nosy cab driver gets a hot tip on a race horse and wins big, but he can't seem to stop gambling. Will he go broke or walk home with a pretty penny? An average kind of guy who has a slight problem with gambling goes to the track, and mystically, it seems as though he can't lose, no matter how he bets; and he has an incredible day.

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