Film

Fenton Meeks (Matthew McConaughey), comes forth to tell the FBI that his brother Adam may be the serial killer who calls himself God’s Hands, who the FBI has been searching for. The film uses flashbacks to show Meeks’ childhood with a father (Bill Paxton) who believed he was on a mission from God to destroy demons that inhabit human bodies. Fenton saw his dad as evil, while Adam saw him as a hero.

Shortly after the Second World War, Max, a transplanted American, visits an English pawn shop to sell his trumpet. The shopkeeper recognizes the tune Max plays as one on a wax master of an unreleased recording, discovered and restored from shards found in a piano salvaged from a cruise ship turned hospital ship, now slated for demolition. This chance discovery prompts a story from Max, which he relates both to the shopkeeper and later to the official responsible for the doomed vessel, for Max is a born storyteller. Though now down on his luck and disillusioned by his wartime experiences, the New Orleans-born Max was once an enthusiastic and gifted young jazz musician, whose longest gig was several years with the house band aboard the Virginian, a posh cruise ship. While gaining his sea legs, he was befriended by another young man, the pianist in the same band, whose long unlikely name was Danny Boodman T.D. Lemons 1900, though everyone just called him 1900, the year of his birth. Abandoned in first class by his immigrant parents, 1900 was found and adopted by Danny, a stoker, and raised in the engine rooms, learning to read by reading horseracing reports to his adoptive dad. After Danny’s death in an accident, 1900 remained on the ship. Increasingly lured by the sound of the piano in the first-class ballroom, he eventually became a gifted pianist, a great jazz improvisationist, a composer of rich modern music inspired by his intense observation of the life around him, the stories passengers on all levels of the ship trusted him enough to tell. He also grew up to be a charming, iconoclastic young man, at once shrewd and oddly innocent. His talent earned him such accolades that he was challenged by, and bested Jelly Roll Morton in an intense piano duel that had poor Max chewing paper on the sofa in agonies of suspense. And yet for all the richness and variety of his musical expression, he never left the ship, except almost, once, in the aftermath of his infatuation with a beautiful young woman immigrant who inspired the music committed to the master Max discovers in the pawnshop. Max realizes that 1900 must still be on the ship, and determines to find him, and to find out once and for all why he has so consistently refused to leave.

In Italy, the American writer Sam Dalmas (Tony Musant) witnesses an attempt of murder of the owner of an art gallery, a couple of days before his foreseen return to the United States of America. He decides to stay with his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) and help the police in the investigation, while the serial killer stalks Julia and him.

Following the death of his father in Mexico, St?phane Miroux, a shy insecure young man, agrees to come to Paris to draw closer to his widowed mother Christine. He lands a boring job at a calendar-making firm and falls in love with his charming neighbor St?phanie. But conquering her is no bed of roses for the young man and the only solution he finds to put up with the difficulties he is going through is escape into a dream world…

In the bourgeois circles of Europe after the Great War, can anything save the modern man? Harry Haller, a solitary intellectual, has all his life feared his dual nature of being human and being a beast. He’s decided to die on his 50th birthday, which is soon. He’s rescued from his solipsism by the mysterious Hermine, who takes him dancing, introduces him to jazz and to the beautiful and whimsical Maria, and guides him into the hallucinations of the Magic Theater, which seem to take him into Hell. Can humor, sin, and derision lead to salvation?

The story of five aristocratic families in Russia during the the Napoleonic Era.

A freelance villain called ‘The Black Lily’ (Umberto Raho) has stolen a new, ultra-powerful type of bomb (’the bloody mary’) from the British Army, and plans to sell it to the highest bidder, with the Chinese being particularly interested. The American Secret Service, though, isn’t happy with this, so call up their top agent, Dick Malloy, to get it back (and deal with villains while doing so). Bizarrely, Malloy seems to know exactly who ‘the black lily’ is, a plastic surgeon who runs a clinic in the French countryside, and luckily enough there’s another agent, Elsa Freeman (Helga Line), who happens to be working undercover there.

With Elsa’s help, Malloy discovers that the bomb is to be shipped from Barcelona to Athens, where it is to be collected by the Chinese. Seizing his chance, Malloy grabs himself a berth on the liner and sets about stealing it back… However, his plans don’t allow for the involvement of a number of Russian agents (who are equally interested in obtaining ‘the bloody mary’) and a traitor in his own camp.

After the bankruptcy of their father’s stonemasonry firm, brothers Nicola and Andrea emigrate to America to restore their fortunes. After many adventures and near-disasters, they end up in Hollywood designing sets for D.W.Griffith and marry beautiful actresses, but tragedy strikes with the arrival of World War I, which finds the brothers fighting on opposite sides…

Jimi, a successful computer game designer, finds that his latest product has been infected by a virus which has given consciousness to the main character of the game, Solo. Tormented by the memory of his fled girlfriend Lisa and begged by Solo to end its useless “life”, Jimi begins a search for people who can help him both to discover what happened to Lisa and to delete his game before it is released.

Top detective Lou Torrey is transferred to Los Angeles and uncovers a plot by a Sicilian mafioso to use Vietnam veterans to murder all his enemies in a rerun of the “Sicilian Vespers” when the previous generation of Sicilian mafiosi were all killed on a single day. Torrey gets various clues that something big is about to happen but will he discover what is planned before the big day ?