Meryl Streep
Language
English
Formats
Description
A hilarious look at marriage, divorce and everything in between. With a thriving Santa Barbara bakeshop, a new romance heating up, and her divorce finally behind her, Jane Adler has her life all figured out, until she finds herself trapped between the perfect new beau and her philandering ex-husband who's determined to win her back. When opposites attract all over again, will love be sweeter the second time around? It's...complicated!
3) Dark matter
Language
English
Description
Elite local patron, Joanna Silver, welcomes Liu Xing, a Chinese student, to Valley State University. He enters the university with dreams of fame and a Nobel Prize. Cultural differences and school politics threaten his ambitions and result in unimaginable violence.
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Five friends work in the stifling heat and infernal din of a steel mill. They blow off steam after work at a neighborhood tavern and go deer hunting every fall. One day late in 1968, three of them leave for a tour of duty in Vietnam. Before they go the wedding of one serves as the friend's farewell party.
6) Adaptation
Series
Language
English
Appears on list
Description
Blends fictional characters and situations with the lives of real people: obsessive orchid hunter John Laroche, "New Yorker" journalist Susan Orlean, Hollywood screenwriter Charlie Kaufman and his twin brother Donald. As Charlie struggles to adapt a best-selling book, he writes himself into the movie plot.
7) The homesman
Language
English
Formats
Description
When three women living on the edge of the American frontier are driven mad by harsh pioneer life, the task of saving them falls to the pious, independent-minded Mary Bee Cuddy. Transporting the women by covered wagon to Iowa, she soon realizes just how daunting the journey will be, and employs a low-life drifter, George Briggs to join her.
8) Ironweed
Language
English
Appears on list
Formats
Description
Based on the William Kennedy novel of the same name, IRONWEED is set in the waning years of the Depression. Jack Nicholson plays Francis Phelan, a washed-up baseball player who deserted his family back in the 1910s when he accidentally killed his infant son by dropping him. Since that time, Phelan has been a shabby barfly, living from drink to drink; spending his days palling around with Rudy (Tom Waits). Wandering into his hometown of Albany, New...
Language
English
Formats
Description
A daughter Ellen, gives up her job and boyfriend to take care of her dying mother. Her father, a gifted professor of an English department, is more occupied with having his life running as smoothly as possible than caring for his wife. Living at home, Ellen discovers many new aspects to her parents' personalities, a father who is human despite his imperfections and a mother who loves her family passionately. When her mother finally dies Ellen is suspected...
10) Manhattan
Language
English
Description
Allen portrays Isaac Davis, a successful comedy writer whose wife, having left him for another woman, is now embarking on a book about their failed marriage. Isaac happily consoles himself in the arms of an adoring 17 year-old schoolgirl until he meets someone closer to his own age, who happens to be his best friend's mistress.
11) Lions for lambs
Language
English
Description
Two determined California college students, Arian and Ernest, follow the inspiration of their idealistic professor, Dr. Malley, and attempt to do something important with their lives. The two make the bold decision to join the battle in Afghanistan. Dr. Malley is both moved and distraught. Now, as Arian and Ernest fight for survival in the field and the human consequences of war becomes clear for these two students trapped behind enemy lines. They...
Language
English
Description
Based on the novel by Carrie Fisher about her life in the Hollywood fast lane. Suzanne Vale is a wise-cracking, vulnerable actress determined to jump start her failing career. Her mother, an aging movie star is the definitive portrait of Hollywood's gutsy glamour queens and, of course, offers her daughter only razor sharp humor and searing honesty.
14) Sophie's choice
Language
English
Description
A haunting modern tragedy about Sophie Zawistowska, a beautiful Polish Auschwitz survivor settled in Brooklyn after WWII. She has intense relationships with a schizophrenic genius and an aspiring Southern writer.
15) Plenty
Language
English
Description
Susan Traherne is a former World War II French Resistance fighter who returns to her home in post-war Britain haunted by her experiences in occupied France. She finds that she is having trouble fitting back into formal British society after the war.
Language
English
Description
Hollywood actress Suzanne Vale is on a slippery slope as a recovering addict. On exit from rehab, it is recommended she stay with her mother, who has become a somewhat champion drinker herself. Suzanne therefore struggles to maintain her sobriety and her sanity in the company of Doris.
18) Plenty
Language
English
Formats
Description
Screen adaptation of David Hare's highly acclaimed masterpiece charting the clash of attitudes in the post-war world. Susan Traherne returns home to Britain after World War II, haunted by her experiences as a Resistance fighter in occupied France. Strong-willed and confident, Susan's unconventional behavior begins to destroy her own sanity and alters irreparably the lives of those around her.
20) Silkwood
Language
English
Description
Karen Silkwood becomes contaminated with plutonium at her job, voices her protest at the indifference and denial of her company, and becomes a threat to the entire nuclear industry and the government agencies that monitor it. Based on a true story.