Movies @ Passando Mal

Cole Trickle enters the high-pressure world of Nascar racing. He’s a hot driver with a hot temper, and this attitude gets him into trouble not only with other drivers, but members of his own team as well.

When the New York child performer CC Bloom and San Fransisco rich kid Hillary meet in a holiday resort in Atlantic City, it marks the start of a lifetime friendship between them. The two keep in touch through letters for a number of years until Hillary, now a successful lawyer moves to New York to stay with struggling singer CC. The movie shows the various stages of their friendship and their romances including their love for the same man.

A chronicle on the life and presidency of George W. Bush.

Frank Galvin is a down-on-his luck lawyer, reduced to drinking and ambulance chasing. Former associate Mickey Morrissey reminds him of his obligations in a medical malpractice suit that he himself served to Galvin on a silver platter: all parties willing to settle out of court. Blundering his way through the preliminaries, he suddenly realizes that perhaps after all the case should go to court: to punish the guilty, to get a decent settlement for his clients, and to restore his standing as a lawyer.

Considered by many to be the best film ever made, this is the story of Charles Foster Kane. The film opens with a long shot of Xanadu - the private estate of one of the world’s richest men. In the middle of the estate is a castle. We see, inside the castle, a dying man examining a winter scene within a crystal ball. As he drops it, it smashes, and one word is heard - “Rosebud…” What follows are pieces of newsreel-like footage detailing how Kane amassed his fortune, and turning around full circle at the end.

Consummate entertainer Bobby Darin (1936-1973) is making a movie about his life. He’s volatile, driven by the love of performing, ambition, perfectionism, and belief that he’s living on borrowed time. He begins in the Bronx: a fatherless lad learning music and dance from his mom. His career starts slowly, then “Splish Splash” puts him at the top of the charts and on “Bandstand.” He wants to be an entertainer, not a pop star, so he aims for the Copacabana; then it’s on to the movies, where he meets and marries Sandra Dee. After, it’s balancing career, health, marriage and family life, balances he doesn’t always keep. Throughout, conversations with his boyhood self give him perspective.

A witty, romantic look at life in the corporate jungle: Tess McGill is an ambitious secretary with a unique approach for climbing the ladder to success. When her classy, but villainous boss breaks a leg skiing, Tess simply takes over her office, her apartment, even her wardrobe. She then creates a deal with a handsome investment banker that will either take her straight to the top - or finish her off for good.

A young man has dropped out of Queens College but desperately wants to please his father, a federal judge who’s harsh with his son. At his father’s insistence, Seth Davis closes a casino he operates in his own house, mostly for college students. Thinking he’ll please dad, he takes a job in a small brokerage house, an hour from Manhattan, where trainees make cold calls to lists of well-paid men, and then apply high-pressure tactics to sell initial public offerings exclusive to the firm. He’s terrific at sales. Once training is over, the pay is phenomenal, and Seth wonders why. Curiosity leads him to ethical dilemmas, encounters with the Feds, and new territory with his father.

Miranda Priestley, of “Runway” magazine tears up the landscape as a demanding fashion editor. She is a terror to everyone who is around her as is quickly depicted in the opening scenes of the movie. Her first assistant strives to please her and tries to emulate her, but one can sense that she is not quite as hard as she tries to put on. Into this mix comes a young woman who knows nothing of the fashion industry, has never read the magazine, and doesn’t know who Miranda Priestley is. She only sees this as a stepping stone to another journalism position. Showing no fashion sense and immediately scorned by everyone, Miranda nonetheless hires her as the second assistant. When Miranda demands that she obtain the next unpublished Harry Potter manuscript, you can sense that she is trying to force her to quit, but it makes the young woman dig in to please her boss. With the help of one of the magazine’s fashion editors, she gets a complete makeover and a new security. However, with her new appearance and the demands placed on her, she starts to lose her friends, family and her live-in boy friend. As she is whisked away to Paris with Miranda and faces all of the glamor that could be hers, including a flashy if not artificial freelance journalist, she is forced to make the decision of where she wants to be in her life.

Jerry Maguire used to be a typical sports agent: willing to do just about anything he could to get the biggest possible contracts for his clients, plus a nice commission for himself. Then, one day, he suddenly has second thoughts about what he’s really doing. When he voices these doubts, he ends up losing his job and all of his clients, save Rod Tidwell, an egomaniacal football player. Can Jerry resurrect his career while still staying true to himself?

Contact, based on the novel of the same name by Carl Sagan, is the story of a free thinking radio astronomer (Jodie Foster) who discovers an intelligent signal broadcast from deep space. She and her fellow scientists are able to decipher the Message and discover detailed instructions for building a mysterious Machine. Will the Machine spell the end of our world, or the end of our superstitions? Will we take our place among the races of the Galaxy, or are we just an upstart species with a long way to go?