Director Clint Eastwood (1930)

By 1979, Texan rodeo star Mike Milo has retired due to a severe back injury. The following year, his former boss Howard Polk hires him to travel to Mexico City and bring back Howard’s 13-year-old son, Rafo. He agrees and upon entering Mexico, he meets the boy’s mother, Leta, who tells him that Rafo has turned to a life of crime, participating in cockfights with a rooster named Macho. Soon after, Mike finds Rafo participating in a cockfight that is interrupted by a police raid. After the police depart, Mike tells Rafo that his father wants to see him. Intrigued, Rafo agrees to go with Mike back to Texas and leaves to pack his stuff. A ...

In 1986, Richard Jewell works as an office supply clerk in a small public law firm, where he builds a rapport with attorney Watson Bryant. Eventually, Jewell leaves the firm to pursue a law enforcement career. At one point, Jewell is hired as a sheriff’s deputy, but ends up discharged. In early 1996, he works as a security guard at Piedmont College, but is fired after multiple complaints of acting beyond his jurisdiction. Jewell later moves in with his mother Bobi in Atlanta. In the summer of 1996, he works as a security guard at the Olympic Games, monitoring Centennial Park. In the early morning of July 27, 1996, after chasing off drunken ...

Spencer Stone and Alek Skarlatos are attending a suburban Christian middle school. They bond over their interest in guns, and are often sent to the principal’s office for disciplinary action. Once, while sent to the principal’s office, they meet another student, who often misbehaves in school, Anthony Sadler, and the three become friends. Spencer and Alek are from single-mother homes, and their mothers often stick up for them when called to the principal’s office regarding their misconduct. While working part time at a ...

In 2005 in Peoria, Illinois, Earl misses his daughter Iris’ wedding in order to attend an Horticultural awards ceremony that results in his estrangement from Iris and his eventual divorce from his wife Mary. Twelve years later, Earl’s house is foreclosed on by the bank and the homeless 80 year old Earl visits his granddaughter Ginny in order to attend her wedding rehearsal. While there he is spotted by a member of a drug cartel who recognizes the use Earl would have for the cartel as a mule. Earl accepts the offer and becomes a “mule” transporting cocaine through Illinois for a Mexican drug cartel. Facing little suspicion due ...

On the afternoon of January 15, 2009, Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and First Officer Jeff Skiles board US Airways Flight 1549 from LaGuardia Airport to Charlotte Douglas International Airport. Three minutes into the flight, at an approximate altitude of 2,800 ft (850 m), the Airbus A320 strikes a flock of birds, damaging both engines. Without much time to think, they judge themselves unable to reach nearby airports (Teterboro Airport being the closest), and Sully ditches the aircraft on the Hudson River. Though with mild injuries, the crew and passengers evacuate without any fatalities. Sully is hailed a hero, but the incident leaves him traumatized.

Growing up in Texas, Chris Kyle is taught by his father how to shoot a rifle and hunt deer. Years later, Kyle has become a ranch hand and rodeo cowboy, and returns home early, to find his girlfriend in bed with another man. After telling her to leave, he is mulling it over with his brother when he sees news coverage of the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings and decides to enlist in the Navy. He qualifies for special training and becomes a sniper with the U.S. Navy SEALs. Kyle meets Taya Studebaker at a bar, and the two soon marry. He is sent to Iraq after the September 11 attacks. His first kills are a woman and boy who attacked U.S. Marines on patrol with ...

In Belleville, New Jersey in 1951, Tommy DeVito performs together with his brother Nicky, and their friend Nick Massi, as The Variety Trio. He meets 16-year-old Frankie Castelluccio, a barber’s son, already well known in the neighborhood for his singing voice. Frankie has the admiration of Genovese Family mobster Angelo “Gyp” DeCarlo, who takes a personal interest in him. One night, the group attempts a robbery of a safe, resulting in the police later arresting them. In court, Frankie is let off with a slap on the wrist, while Tommy is sentenced to six months in prison. After his release, Tommy reunites with the group, and adds ...

In 1919, after anarchists fail to assassinate Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, he assigns his protégé J. Edgar Hoover to a division dedicated to purging radicals. He meets Helen Gandy, a new secretary at the Justice Department, and takes her to the Library of Congress to show her the card catalog system. While there, she rejects his awkward passes, but agrees to become his personal secretary. Hoover finds that the Department of Labor refuses to deport anyone without evidence of a crime. Learning that Anthony Caminetti, the Commissioner General of Immigration, dislikes the anarchist Emma Goldman, Hoover arranges to make her eligible for deportation and thereby creates a precedent ...

On assignment in India, French television journalist Marie Lelay is caught in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami. Pulled lifeless from the water, she is resuscitated but left for dead. She gasps back to life after glimpsing the afterlife. Marie is reunited with her lover Didier after and they return to Paris. The experience interferes with her work, so Didier (also her producer) gives her a leave of absence. In San Francisco, George Lonegan reluctantly agrees to perform a psychic reading for Christos, a wealthy client of his brother Billy. An actual medium, George quit as a psychic due to the emotional, disturbing impact of communicating with the dead. George asks if “June” means anything, ...

On 11 February 1990, Nelson Mandela is released from Victor Verster Prison after having spent 27 years in jail. Four years later, Mandela is elected the first black President of South Africa. His presidency faces enormous challenges in the post-Apartheid era, including rampant poverty and crime, and Mandela is particularly concerned about racial divisions between black and white South Africans, which could lead to violence. The ill will which both groups hold towards each other is seen even in his own security detail where relations between the established white officers, who had guarded Mandela’s predecessors, and the black ANC additions to the security detail, are frosty and ...

In Los Angeles in 1928, single mother Christine Collins returns home to discover that her nine-year-old son, Walter, is missing. Reverend Gustav Briegleb publicizes Christine’s plight and rails against the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for its incompetence, corruption, and the extrajudicial punishment meted out by its “Gun Squad”, led by Chief James E. Davis. Several months after Walter’s disappearance, the LAPD tells Christine that the boy has been found alive. Believing the positive publicity will negate recent criticism of the department, the LAPD organizes a public reunion. Although “Walter” claims he is Christine’s son, she says he ...

Cantankerous, bigoted Korean War veteran and retired Ford factory worker Walt Kowalski is widowed after 50 years of marriage. His aging neighborhood in Highland Park in Metro Detroit was formerly populated by working-class white families but has become filled with gang violence and poor southeast Asian immigrants, including Walt’s next-door neighbors, the Vang Lor family. Adding to his isolation, Walt is emotionally detached from his family; he rejects his son’s suggestion he move to a retirement community and lives alone with his elderly Labrador, Daisy. A chronic tobacco user, Walt suffers from coughing fits, occasionally with blood, which he conceals from his family. ...

In 2005, Japanese archaeologists explore tunnels on Iwo Jima, where they find something in the dirt. The scene changes to Iwo Jima in 1944. Private First Class Saigo and his platoon are digging beach trenches on the island. Meanwhile, Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi arrives to take command of the garrison and immediately begins an inspection of the island defenses. He saves Saigo and his friend Kashiwara from a beating by Captain Tanida for ‘unpatriotic speeches’, and orders the men to begin tunneling underground defenses into Mount Suribachi. Kuribayashi and Lieutenant Colonel Baron Takeichi Nishi, a famous Olympic gold medalist show jumper, clash with some of ...

As three US servicemen – Marine Private First Class Ira Hayes, Private First Class Rene Gagnon, and Navy Pharmacist’s Mate 2nd Class John “Doc” Bradley – are feted as heroes in a war bond drive, they reflect on their experiences via flashback. After training at Camp Tarawa in Hawaii, the 28th Marine Regiment 5th Marine Division sails to invade Iwo Jima. The Navy bombards suspected Japanese positions for three days. Sergeant Mike Strank is put in charge of Second Platoon. The next day, February 19, 1945, the Marines land in Higgins boats and LVTs. The beaches are silent and Private First Class Ralph “Iggy” Ignatowski wonders if the defenders are all dead ...

Margaret “Maggie” Fitzgerald, a waitress from the Ozarks, shows up at the Hit Pit, a rundown Los Angeles gym owned and operated by Frankie Dunn. Dunn is a cantankerous Irish-American trainer, revealed to be estranged by his own daughter. Maggie asks Frankie to train her, but he refuses as he does not train women and she is too old to begin a boxing career. Eddie “Scrap-Iron” Dupris, Frankie’s friend and employee — the film’s narrator — encourages and helps Maggie. Frankie’s prize prospect, “Big Willie” Little, signs with successful manager Mickey Mack after becoming impatient with Frankie rejecting offers for a championship bout. ...

The panoramic tale of Savannah’s eccentricities focuses on a murder and the subsequent trial of Jim Williams, a self-made man, art collector, antiques dealer, bon vivant, and semi-closeted homosexual. John Kelso, a magazine reporter with one book — Before the Fall — to his name, arrives in Savannah, amid beautiful architecture and odd doings, to write a feature for Town & Country on one of Williams’ famous Christmas parties. After being unable to find a taxi, Kelso gets a ride from a tour-bus driver to Jones Street. After a tour of Savannah’s tourist hotspots, Kelso alights at Forsyth Park. Making his way to his lodging in ...

The Blues is a 2003 documentary film series produced by Martin Scorsese, dedicated to the history of blues music. In each of the seven episodes, a different director explores a stage in the development of the blues. The series originally aired on PBS (Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States. All project participants – Wim Wenders, Richard Pierce, Charles Barnett, Mike Figgis,

During a federal investigation into a local homicide, FBI Special Agent Terry McCaleb goes outside to address the media, but spots the so-called “code murderer” in the crowd. He chases the man and wounds him, but the chase ends when McCaleb suffers a heart attack. Retired, McCaleb lives in a houseboat on the Long Beach bay. He receives a second chance at life with a heart transplant. He is approached by Graciella Rivers; her sister, Gloria, was murdered during a robbery and she asks him to solve the case. He discovers that the heart transplanted into him was Gloria’s. He has nightmares of the robbery during which Gloria was murdered.

In 1958, two U.S. Air Force pilots and aspiring astronauts, William “Hawk” Hawkins and Frank Corvin, are testing a modified Bell X-2 when Hawk decides to break a height record. The plane stalls and they are forced to eject, narrowly missing a Boeing B-50 Superfortress flying with navigator “Tank” Sullivan. On the ground, Frank punches Hawk, but their fight is broken up by flight engineer Jerry O’Neill. Their boss, Bob Gerson, chastises Hawk, before taking them to a press conference, where he announces that the newly created NASA, rather than the USAF, will be conducting space flight tests. In the present day, NASA is ...

Steve Everett, an Oakland journalist recovering from alcoholism, is assigned to cover the execution of convicted murderer Frank Beechum following the death of Everett’s colleague, Michelle Ziegler, who had originally been assigned to the story. Everett investigates the background to the case and comes to suspect that Beechum has been wrongly convicted of murdering Amy Wilson. He gets permission from his editor’s boss to investigate, and is told that the top editor would call the Governor, and that would do the job, if Everett gets hard proof. He thus has a little over 12 hours to confirm his hunch and save Beechum. Everett interviews a ...