Drama: 384

Lydia Tár is one of the greatest living composers/conductors, and first female chief conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. In an interview with Adam Gopnik at The New Yorker Festival in New York City, she promotes several new projects, including most prominently, her upcoming live recording of Mahler’s 5th Symphony. Lydia relies on her attentive personal assistant, Francesca, and her sickly wife/concertmaster, Sharon. Lydia has lunch with Eliot Kaplan, a conductor who also manages a fellowship program she founded for aspiring women professional conductors and talks of her plans to replace her assistant conductor, Sebastian, presumably with Francesca, as well as fill an open ...

Irma Vep is a comedy drama television miniseries created, written and directed by Olivier Assayas for HBO. Based on Assayas’s 1996 film of the same name, the series premiered at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival on May 22, 2022. It debuted on June 6, 2022 and concluded on July 25, consisting of eight episodes. Irma Vep revolves around Mira, an American movie star disillusioned by her career and a recent breakup, who comes to France to star as Irma Vep in a television series adaptation of the French silent film serial Les Vampires. Set against the backdrop of a lurid crime ...

In 2015, 28-year-old Tiffany “Ani” Fanelli, a respected New York women’s magazine editor, appears to have a picture-perfect life. As she prepares to marry her boyfriend, Luke Harrison, Ani meets with Aaron Wickersham, a documentary director who wants to make a short film about the school shooting she survived as a teenager. He informs her that a former classmate, Dean Barton, who went on to become a successful writer and advocate for gun control, has agreed to take part. Ani declines to be involved. Luke informs Ani that his firm have offered him an opportunity to move to London, and suggests Ani can take an MFA program there to allow her to write for herself. She agrees, despite ...

Ruby is an extremely hyperactive half border collie that has been adopted seven times from the shelter she has been in over the last six months, but always later returned due to an inability to train or control her. Rhode Island state trooper Daniel O’Neil has dreamed of joining the K-9 search and rescue team of the state police. However, he has been rejected seven times and he only has one last chance to qualify before he turns 30, as all applicants have to be under 30. Daniel learns that the K-9 unit has no funds to import any more German Shepherds, the breed usually used in search and rescue teams, and therefore he would not be able to join the program. He finds out his wife ...

The Forgiven is a 2022 drama film written and directed by John Michael McDonagh and based on the 2012 novel of the same name by Lawrence Osborne. Married couple David and Jo Henninger travel to Morocco in an effort to ease the strain that has been building between them. While traveling up a curve, David accidentally hits and kills a young teenager holding a fossil. After bringing the body of the deceased teenager, identified as Driss, to their friend Richard Galloway’s house during a celebration, David agrees to report the death as accidental since he was driving ...

In 1928, Tom Branson, the Earl of Grantham’s widowed son-in-law, marries Lucy Smith, the illegitimate daughter of and sole heir to Lady Maud Bagshaw, Queen Mary’s lady-in-waiting. Violet Crawley, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, astonishes the family by revealing that long ago she was gifted a villa in the South of France by the Marquis de Montmirail, who has recently passed away. She is leaving it to her great-granddaughter, Sybbie, Tom’s daughter with the late Lady Sybil Crawley, to ensure that she has a more equal social and financial standing to her cousins. A film production company wants to use Downton to shoot a silent film called “The Gambler”. ...

Stuart Long, a foul-mouthed amateur boxer from Helena, Montana has a troubled relationship with his mother and alcoholic father. His brother Stephen died at age six, leading to a rift in the family and causing his parents to be hostile towards religion. He moves to Southern California to try to make it as an actor, and gets a job in a grocery store, hoping to get connected in the entertainment industry. He is arrested for a DUI and attempts to steal his father’s truck to make it to an audition. While working in the store he meets a woman named Carmen, whom he tracks to a local Catholic parish, where she is a volunteer Sunday school teacher. Carmen resists his advances, telling ...

As a young girl, Norma Jeane Mortenson grows up raised by her mentally unstable mother Gladys. On her seventh birthday in 1933, she is given a framed picture of a man Gladys claims is her father. Later that night, a fire breaks out in the Hollywood Hills, and Gladys drives Norma Jeane up there, claiming that her father lives there, but is forced to go back home at the orders of the police. An enraged Gladys tries to drown Norma Jeane in the bathtub when she asks about her father but lets her go. Norma Jeane escapes to the house of her neighbor, Miss Flynn, who promises she will be fine. A few days later, Norma Jeane is sent to an orphanage while Gladys is admitted to a mental ...

In 1997, Elvis Presley’s former manager, Colonel Tom Parker, is on his deathbed, having suffered a stroke. Nursing a gambling addiction that has left him destitute, he looks back on how he first met the future King of Rock and Roll. Raised mostly by his doting mother Gladys, Presley spent his childhood in the poorest parts of Mississippi. He finds an escape in the comic book adventures of Captain Marvel Jr. and especially in song. However, once he moves with his parents to Memphis, he is ridiculed by his peers due to his fascination with the African-American music of Memphis’s Beale Street. At this time, Parker is a carnival “huckster” who fancies himself a ...

Neil Bennett, a quiet man from London, is on vacation in Acapulco with his sister Alice and her two children, Colin and Alexa. They stay in a luxurious hotel and eat at fancy restaurants. Day after day, the family participates in a variety of fun activities. Neil, however, is not having fun. Alice is told over the phone that her mother is in the hospital. Immediately, the family prepares to go home. On the way to the airport, Alice receives a second call. Her mother has passed away. Alice bursts into tears while Neil remains calm. In the airport, Neil says he left his passport at the hotel. The family departs without him. Neil lied about the ...

A Journal for Jordan is a 2021 American drama film directed and co-produced by Denzel Washington from a screenplay written by Virgil Williams, based on the memoir A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy. The film stars Michael B. Jordan (who also co-produced the film) and Chanté Adams in the lead roles, along with Jalon Christian,

The Tender Bar is a 2021 American coming-of-age drama film directed by George Clooney from a screenplay by William Monahan. The film is an adaptation of the 2005 memoir of the same name by J. R. Moehringer, and recounts Moehringer’s life growing up in Long Island. It stars Ben Affleck, Tye Sheridan and Daniel Ranieri as Moehringer, along with

Mrs. America is the nine-part series premiered in the United States on April 15, 2020 to widespread critical acclaim. At the 72nd Primetime Emmy Awards, it received ten nominations including Outstanding Limited Series and Outstanding Writing, as well as acting nominations for Blanchett, Aduba, Martindale, and Ullman, with Aduba winning Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie. In January 2021, the American Film Institute named Mrs. America as one of the ten best ...

The series is partly inspired by the real-life story of Cornelia Rau, an Australian who was unlawfully detained under the Australian Government’s mandatory detention program. The series centres on four strangers in an immigration detention centre in the Australian desert: an airline hostess escaping a suburban cult, an Afghan refugee fleeing persecution, a young Australian father escaping a dead-end job and a bureaucrat caught up in a national scandal. When their lives intersect they are pushed to the brink of sanity, yet unlikely and profound emotional connections are made amongst the group. ...

The film opens with Kenneth Feinberg detailing the law’s recognition of the monetary value of a person’s life to his class at Columbia University. Some time later, the September 11 attacks occur. Feinberg is appointed the Special Master of the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund while his law partner, Camille Biros, is appointed as his administrative deputy. Feinberg develops a rigid formula for each payout based on the victim’s income, and is instructed that if he cannot convince at least 80% of the 7000 estimated victims to sign on then they will be eligible to file a lawsuit which they may lose (as well as the pressure from the political administrations to ...

In August 1968, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Rennie Davis, David Dellinger, Lee Weiner, John Froines, and Bobby Seale make preparations to protest at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Five months later, they are arrested and charged with trying to incite a riot. John N. Mitchell, the Attorney General, appoints Tom Foran and Richard Schultz as the prosecutors, while all the defendants except Seale are represented by William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass. Judge Julius Hoffman shows significant prejudice for the prosecution, especially insisting that he and Abbie Hoffman are not related. Seale’s attorney, Charles Garry, ...

In 1971, the American photographer W. Eugene Smith, who was famous for his numerous “photographic essays” published in Life, has become a recluse. While on a separate assignment, a passionate Japanese translator, Aileen, urges Smith to visit Minamata to photograph and document the disease. Smith is finally convinced to do his best to unmask the devastating effects of corporate greed, an accomplice of the local police and government. Smith travels to Minamata in Japan to document the devastating effect of mercury poisoning and Minamata disease in coastal communities. This disease is caused by industrial pollution linked to the activities ...

Laura and Dean are a married couple living in Manhattan with two young daughters, Maya and Theo. Laura is a novelist who appears to be stuck in a rut as she struggles to finish her latest book. Meanwhile, Dean is a successful entrepreneur at a burgeoning tech start-up, surrounded by young and attractive co-workers, leaving Laura in charge of their daughters. One night, after arriving home from one of his frequent business trips, Dean climbs into bed and begins to kiss Laura passionately. However, once he recognizes her voice, he abruptly stops and goes to sleep, much to Laura’s confusion. The next day, Laura finds a woman’s toiletry bag in Dean’s luggage; he later ...

In 1940, Orson Welles is given complete creative freedom for his next project by RKO. For the screenplay, Welles recruits Herman J. Mankiewicz, who is in Victorville, California recovering from a broken leg he sustained in a car accident. Herman dictates the script to his secretary, Rita Alexander, who notices similarities between the main character and William Randolph Hearst. Producer John Houseman is concerned about Herman’s dense, nonlinear screenplay, while Herman’s brother Joseph worries that it may anger the powerful Hearst. In 1930, Herman visits an MGM location where he and the female lead, Marion Davies, recognize each other. ...

We Are Who We Are is a drama television series co-created and directed by Luca Guadagnino for HBO and Sky Atlantic. A coming-of-age story set on a US army base in Italy, the series follows two American 14-year-olds, Fraser Wilson and Caitlin “Harper” Poythress. The cast includes Chloë Sevigny, Jack Dylan Grazer, Alice Braga, Jordan Kristine Seamón, Spence Moore II, and