Director: Frank Darabont
Writers: Stephen King (novel), Frank Darabont (screenplay)
Stars: Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan, David Morse
Death Row guards at a penitentiary, in the 1930’s, have a moral dilemma with their job when they discover one of their prisoners, a convicted murderer, has a special gift.
Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120689/
Director: Akira Kurosawa
Writers: Hideo Oguni (screenplay), Ryûzô Kikushima (screenplay)
Stars: Toshirô Mifune, Yutaka Sada, Tatsuya Nakadai
A wealthy businessman is told his son has been kidnapped and he will have to pay a very large sum for him to be returned safely. It is then discovered that his son is safe at home: the kidnapper took his chauffeur’s son by accident. The kidnapper says this makes no difference: pay up or the child dies. This leaves him with a moral dilemma, as he really needs the money to conclude a very important business deal.
Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057565/
Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Writers: Arkadiy Strugatskiy (novel), Boris Strugatskiy (novel)
Stars: Alisa Freyndlikh, Aleksandr Kaydanovskiy, Anatoliy Solonitsyn
In a small, unnamed country there is an area called the Zone. It is apparently inhabited by aliens and contains the Room, where in it is believed wishes are granted. The government has declared The Zone a no-go area and have sealed off the area with barbed wire and border guards. However, this has not stopped people from attempting to enter the Zone. We follow one such party, made up of a writer, who wants to use the experience as inspiration for his writing, and a professor, who wants to research the Zone for scientific purposes. Their guide is a man to whom the Zone is everything, the Stalker.
Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0079944/
Director: David Fincher
Writers: Chuck Palahniuk (novel), Jim Uhls (screenplay)
Stars: Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, Meat Loaf
A nameless first person narrator (Edward Norton) attends support groups in attempt to subdue his emotional state and relieve his insomniac state. When he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), another fake attendee of support groups, his life seems to become a little more bearable. However when he associates himself with Tyler (Brad Pitt) he is dragged into an underground fight club and soap making scheme. Together the two men spiral out of control and engage in competitive rivalry for love and power.
Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0137523/
Director: Damien Chazelle
Writer: Damien Chazelle
Stars: Ryan Gosling, Emma Stone, Rosemarie DeWitt
Aspiring actress serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions and jazz musician Sebastian scrapes by playing cocktail-party gigs in dingy bars. But as success mounts, they are faced with decisions that fray the fragile fabric of their love affair, and the dreams they worked so hard to maintain in each other threaten to rip them apart.
Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3783958/
Director: Mary Harron
Writers: Bret Easton Ellis (novel), Mary Harron (screenplay)
Stars: Christian Bale, Justin Theroux, Josh Lucas
It’s the late 1980s. Twenty-seven year old Wall Streeter Patrick Bateman travels among a closed network of the proverbial beautiful people, that closed network in only they able to allow others like themselves in in a feeling of superiority. Patrick has a routinized morning regimen to maintain his appearance of attractiveness and fitness. He, like those in his network, are vain, narcissistic, egomaniacal and competitive, always having to one up everyone else in that presentation of oneself, but he, unlike the others, realizes that, for himself, all of these are masks to hide what is truly underneath, someone/something inhuman in nature. In other words, he is comprised of a shell resembling a human that contains only greed and disgust, greed in wanting what others may have, and disgust for those who do not meet his expectations and for himself in not being the first or the best. That disgust ends up manifesting itself in wanting to rid the world of those people, he not seeing them as people but only of those characteristics he wants to rid.
Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0144084/
Director: Tony Kaye
Writer: David McKenna
Stars: Edward Norton, Edward Furlong, Beverly D’Angelo
Derek Vineyard is paroled after serving 3 years in prison for brutally killing two black men who tried to break into/steal his truck. Through his brother’s, Danny Vineyard, narration, we learn that before going to prison, Derek was a skinhead and the leader of a violent white supremacist gang that committed acts of racial crime throughout L.A. and his actions greatly influenced Danny. Reformed and fresh out of prison, Derek severs contact with the gang and becomes determined to keep Danny from going down the same violent path as he did.
Link IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120586/
the poet's insomnia 