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The screenplay as text: academic scriptwriting as creative research

Screenwriting in the academy is an emerging research area. To date, it has been difficult to study screenwriting activity in higher education settings, not least because few academic journals publish screenplays. This is largely because scripts written in the academy have not been seen as research or as fully-fledged creative works worthy of publication. There has been a persistent idea that scripts are not stand-alone works but merely “blueprints” for the films or television programs based on them. This situation is now changing, with a number of academic journals publishing screenplays as creative research and treating scripts as texts in themselves, irrespective of production. This article explores the reasons behind the marginal position of screenwriting in the academy, which includes discipline bias, and argues for the repositioning of screenwriting as a valid and valuable creative and research practice. The article argues that the outcomes of this creative research, the screenplays themselves, should be treated as creative research texts in their own right that are deserving of publication irrespective of any staging or production. The article also discusses future directions of Screenwriting Studies as a scholarly discipline.

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It is an unusual step to publish a collection of unproduced scripts. Rarely, if ever, are scripts treated as texts in their own right and seen as deserving of publication, irrespective of any staging or production. This perceived unpublishable status of unproduced scripts fosters a sense that such scripts are not a suitable focus of scholarly discussion. They are dismissed as somehow amateur or unworthy; this despite the fact that many of the most successful scriptwriters have written at least one script, usually many more, that never 'made it' to stage or screen. Are these works somehow less worthy of critical discussion, or weaker examples of the writer's creative and research processes, than their produced works? I would argue that they are not.

Journal of British Cinema and Television vol. 5 no. 2

Andrew Spicer

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Steven Maras

Submitted Thesis This thesis is a practice-led inquiry into the practice of screenwriting with the intention of comparing and contrasting the actual process of screenwriting with the methods and rules espoused by both commercial screenwriting manuals and the approach adopted within the Academy. After establishing the theoretical framework for the approach towards the practice-led research and its relationship to the form and content of the exegesis, I will review the conventions and ideas that inform and govern the approach towards the teaching and training of screenwriters. This will be followed by an analysis of the process of conceiving and writing an original screenplay, through the interrogation of a detailed development journal that was maintained throughout the development of the screenplay, including those moments where as writer I followed directions and ideas that ultimately had to be discarded. Throughout this section I will identify and share the variety of influences that informed me as a writer, with the intent of providing an exploration of the writer at work, revealing the self as writer, and the writer as researcher. I will also explore specific aspects of the manualist approach towards screenwriting with particular reference to the ‘hero’s’ journey and to genre. An essential element of the inquiry is an exploration of the status of the screenplay itself, and the status of the screenwriter within the industry and within film theory. Finally, I will consider firstly how my own practice as a screenwriting tutor has altered as a response to the practice-led inquiry, and in consequence how this might inform the development of a different approach towards the education of screenwriters, particularly within the Academy.

This thesis is a practice-led inquiry into the practice of screenwriting with the intention of comparing and contrasting the actual process of screenwriting with the methods and rules espoused by both commercial screenwriting manuals and the approach adopted within the Academy. After establishing the theoretical framework for the approach towards the practice-led research and its relationship to the form and content of the exegesis, I will review the conventions and ideas that inform and govern the approach towards the teaching and training of screenwriters. This will be followed by an analysis of the process of conceiving and writing an original screenplay, through the interrogation of a detailed development journal that was maintained throughout the development of the screenplay, including those moments where as writer I followed directions and ideas that ultimately had to be discarded. Throughout this section I will identify and share the variety of influences that informed me as a writer, with the intent of providing an exploration of the writer at work, revealing the self as writer, and the writer as researcher. I will also explore specific aspects of the manualist approach towards screenwriting with particular reference to the ‘hero’s’ journey and to genre. An essential element of the inquiry is an exploration of the status of the screenplay itself, and the status of the screenwriter within the industry and within film theory. Finally, I will consider firstly how my own practice as a screenwriting tutor has altered as a response to the practice-led inquiry, and in consequence how this might inform the development of a different approach towards the education of screenwriters, particularly within the Academy.

Douglas Winston

The genre of screenwriting began right from the days of cinematographic history and so is over a hundred years old. Yet many people scoff at the idea of defending the screenplay as a form of literature and serious critics maintain that it is not an end-product, that it is just a stop-gap measure. A brief survey of this art-form shows that in the first few decades of this century, instead of according literary recognition to the screenplays of that day, critics were concerned in discussing not the individual merits of the writer but instead their literary motivations. Did they write for the screen in order to express themselves in a way impossible in any order medium, yet with the same dedication and meticulousness as writers in the more traditional literary arts? Or did they consider their screen writing endeavours as mere "hack" assignments, undertaken only to give them the financial support necessary to embark on a real "labor of love," such as writing a good n...

David A Shaerf

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Sentiment Analysis on Movie Scripts and Reviews

Paschalis frangidis.

School of Informatics, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece

Konstantinos Georgiou

Stefanos papadopoulos.

In recent years, many models for predicting movie ratings have been proposed, focusing on utilizing movie reviews combined with sentiment analysis tools. In this study, we offer a different approach based on the emotionally analyzed concatenation of movie script and their respective reviews. The rationale behind this model is that if the emotional experience described by the reviewer corresponds with or diverges from the emotions expressed in the movie script, then this correlation will be reflected in the particular rating of the movie. We collected a dataset consisting of 747 movie scripts and 78.000 reviews and recreated many conventional approaches for movie rating prediction, including Vector Semantics and Sentiment Analysis techniques ran with a variety of Machine Learning algorithms, in order to more accurately evaluate the performance of our model and the validity of our hypothesis. The results indicate that our proposed combination of features achieves a notable performance, similar to conventional approaches.

Introduction

Movie scripts are an interesting source of text, due to the diverse display of sentiments expressed in them. In principle, they are a storytelling device where the screenwriter is trying to convey something meaningful. The script’s “emotional charge” is usually a tool to achieve the aforementioned goal or a byproduct of the process- and indeed a very important and powerful one. It is probably the most immediate point of resonance and communication with the audience. Movies usually contain scenes where emotions alter dynamically, between happiness and sadness, calmness and anger in order to aid the narrative progression, while some works are characterized by an overarching emotional ‘weight’, such as sadness in a tragedy-based film. In order to achieve this goal, the script needs to be written in a manner that captures the appropriate sentiments and allows the actors to portray it in their performances. It is very common nowadays, for the audience and critics alike to express their enjoyment of a movie or lack thereof, in the form of online reviews. In sites like “Metacritic” or “Rotten Tomatoes” reviews, analyses and criticisms are collected to create an average estimation of how popular and well-received a movie is. This information has already been exploited in many applications including movie recommendations and genre classification systems. However, most reviewers do not simply state their like or dislike of a movie and instead tend to focus on the different feelings that the movie evoked in them. It would be an interesting inquiry to analyze the intended emotion of a movie’s script, compare it to the received emotional response of the reviewer and study whether the unison or dissonance between the two are correlated or not. The primary goal of this study is to accumulate movie scripts and their respective reviews in order to examine the validity of the aforementioned statement and examine whether the relationship between the intended emotional weight of the movie and the received emotion of the reviewer can help in accurately predicting movie ratings. Our proposed model was tested in conjunction with more conventional approaches by running multiple experiments with different combinations of features like Vector Semantics, typical Sentiment Analysis and using different Machine Learning algorithms.

The remaining chapters are structured as follows: in Sect.  2 , we present some related work and pinpoint our contribution to the topic. In Sect.  3 , we analyze the dataset and present our key features, and in Sect.  4 the methodology applied is explained. In Sect.  5 , the basic results of our study are presented and discussed, while in Sect.  6 we provide our main conclusions, accompanied by some interesting future work suggestions.

Background and Related Work

Sentiment analysis, as a field of study, has met a significant increase in its applicability in various sectors, as it can easily become cross disciplinary and facilitate different processes [ 8 , 15 , 16 ]. Its simplicity and straightforward approach have established it as a respected factor of text analysis. Indicative sectors where sentiment analysis is implemented are business systems, marketing campaigns and recommender systems [ 3 ].

In recent years, sentiment analysis in conjunction with NLP and ML techniques have been used in an array of different applications concerning movie scripts and their reviews. They have been used in order to identify patterns in movie structures [ 2 ] and learn to predict the following emotional state based on the previous [ 6 ], showing respectively that ‘successful’ movies follow specific narrative progressions and have a certain “flow” and consistency in the way that emotional states unfold. Additionally, it has been observed that existing binary (“positive/negative”) sentiment analysis techniques have a ‘positivity bias’, favoring the learning of positive emotions over negative ones, hence “underestimating” the latter’s existence. This can create a significant discrepancy in accuracy of around 10 to 30%. It is shown that taking into consideration meta-features (capital letters, punctuation and parts of speech) helps mitigate this problem [ 4 ].

Other approaches have tried to classify reviews based on semantically similar words [ 3 ] in order to detect communities of reviewers via clustering. Some interesting alternatives propose the identification of the driving aspects of a movie, them being mainly associated with the screenplay, the acting and the plot or some more particular characteristics (e.g. music, effects) [ 7 ], and how they are reflected on the reviews in sentiments. Results indicate that the acting and the plot are usually the most important factors that influence a review. However, variations in these studies which examine the same aspects in different movie genres may alter the driving factors in respective reviews. Typically, the methodology implemented to perform sentiment analysis, directly involves classic text mining solutions such as N-Gram extraction or Part-of-Speech tagging in combination with Naïve Bayes (NB) or Recurrent Neural Networks (RNN) [ 9 ]. However, different techniques, such as the use of a Gini Index or Support Vector Machine (SVM) approaches [ 10 , 11 ] have increased the accuracy of results. The Skip Gram and Continuous Bag of Words (CBOW) models [ 3 ] have also shown promising results.

A recent research venture [ 1 ] has tried a mixture of techniques to extract the emotion out of reviews. Using a combination of emotion lexicon and word embeddings in order to extract reviews’ sentiment, they acquire a satisfactory level of prediction to the reviewers’ binary score of the movie. Moreover, it provides solutions for both English and Greek datasets. This particular approach is going to be extended in the current research. Regarding the classification of movie scripts based on NLP, there have been attempts in using subtitle files of different movies to ultimately predict their genre [ 8 ]. The premise is that via sentiment analysis of the subtitles’ context, sentiment can be extracted and thus, the genre of the movie can be identified. Initial findings show that these techniques yield better results when applied to action, romance or horror movies. However, further analysis could strengthen the prediction margin.

The arising importance of sentiment analysis in movie and review evaluation has also prompted well known and respected online competition networks like Kaggle [ 11 ] to organize initiatives in order to suggest innovative solutions to the problem. It is evident, though, that in order to produce a well-documented solution, features have to be carefully selected, taking into consideration the variance of terms, the handling of negation and the treatment of opinion words [ 10 ].

Our paper contributes to the current scientific framework by exploiting data both from movie scripts and their corresponding reviews and by applying two specialized lexicons in order to conduct sentiment and emotion analysis. We believe our research to be of notable importance as it can indicate a new approach to the problem which treats the review text and the movie script as coexisting entities and merges them for optimal results.

Data Collection and Preprocessing

In order to gather data for movie scripts and movie reviews, we used simple scrapers in Python to crawl specific web pages. For the movie scripts, we used the IMSDB website, which contains more than 1100 movie scripts and drafts. Our reviews were gathered from the Rotten Tomatoes website, a well-known source for reviewing films, also by using a web scraper. The scripts gathered were in.txt format and the reviews were saved in a CSV file. Before continuing to the preprocessing phase, we noticed a significant imbalance in our review dataset which contained 55.886 fresh/positive movies and 22.193 rotten/negative. This imbalance would create inaccurate predictions in our model and in order to correct it, we performed undersampling, keeping all of the “rotten” and 25.000 of the “fresh” reviews. “Fresh/Rotten” values were transformed into 0 and 1 and were used as the model’s target variable.

The scraper utilized for obtaining the movie scripts has a quite simple and easy to understand structure. It uses the Beautiful Soup package and redirects to the IMSDB website, locating all the script titles, categorized in alphabetical order. The scraper’s first operation is to store all the <a> tags, corresponding to movie titles, in a list. Afterwards, it iterates the list of titles and redirects to the corresponding URLs, where it loads scripts in.txt files and creates a directory to store them. The scraper keeps only data present in <body> tags and opts to ignore tags like <head> or <footer>.

To obtain the corresponding movie reviews, we modified a Beautiful Soup based scraper which collected review texts and stored them to a shared CSV file. Our data were limited due to the reason that Rotten Tomatoes only contains an excerpt of the original review. During the collection phase, we filtered reviews which contained no text, as we deemed them unsuitable for our model.

In the preprocessing phase, we applied sentence splitting and word tokenization. Punctuation marks and stop-words were removed but only after experimenting and keeping track of the results with their inclusion. We then created a punctuation-removal list which consisted of all the punctuation marks we aimed to remove. At first, only exclamation marks were excluded from the punctuation list and the words “not” and “but” from the stopword-removal list in order to study their effects on the VADER sentiment analysis, as discussed in the next section. Their effect on the predictive accuracy was considered negligible, hence all stop words and punctuation marks were eventually removed. Finally, we applied part-of-speech tagging and lemmatization because we noticed that the lexicon-based sentiment analysis tools we selected lacked many derivatives and would lose out on a significant segment of our dataset.

Methodology

Our proposed model is based on calculating the emotional weight of a movie’s script and combining it with the emotion expressed by the reviewer. For Sentiment and Emotion Analysis, we considered many different tools but ended up selecting VADER and NRC. VADER (or Valence Aware Dictionary and sEntiment Reasoner) is a binary Sentiment Analysis tool using a dictionary approach, containing 7.518 uni-grams including punctuation, slang words, initialisms, acronyms and emoticons. VADER receives a sentence as input and returns 4 values, negative, neutral, positive and compound which is the ‘normalized weighted composite score’. Each output is ranging from −1,5 to +1,5, from ‘Very Negative’ to ‘Very Positive’, but we normalized them into a range of {0 to 1}. VADER is widely used [ 12 , 13 ] and preferred as a sentiment analysis tool because of its advanced heuristics. It includes 5 built-in and pre-trained heuristics taking into consideration punctuation marks (especially exclamation points), capitalization, degree modifiers (boosters and dampeners) Shift Polarity (with words like “but”) and Negation Handling using tri-grams.

NRC, on the other hand, is an emotion analysis tool, categorizing a sentence into eight emotions (anger, fear, anticipation, trust, surprise, sadness, joy, disgust) and two sentiments (positive, negative). Regarding the selected emotions in the NRC lexicon, there is a consensus among Psychology Researchers about Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, Surprise and Fear being categorized as ‘Basic Human emotions’ showing their importance and universal nature [ 14 ]. In addition to these six emotions, the NRC contains words about Trust and Anticipation and although they may not be considered as ‘basic emotions’ by everyone, we believe them to be important especially for analyzing texts of movie scripts and their reviews. This lexicon contains more than 14000 words, with each one being scored on every emotion. We had to calculate the average of these ten emotion scores for every review, after having summed the scores for every word. We hypothesize that NRC is better suited for the model we are trying to build due to the complexity of movie scripts but both sentiment analysis tools were tested empirically.

Our model requires the concatenation of the emotionally analyzed of both the movie scripts and their reviews using the NRC lexicon (Fig.  1 ). In order to evaluate our model more reliably, we reproduced many different conventional methods for movie rating predictions. As features we used Vector Semantics like CountVectorizer and TF-IDF in combination with NRC and VADER. Indicatively, the experimental combinations that were tested on the movie reviews alone were:

• CountVectorizer.
• VADER combined with NRC.
• VADER (including stop words ‘not and but’) combined with NRC.
• CountVectorizer (CV) combined with VADER.
• CV combined with NRC.
• CV combined with VADER and NRC.

Applied workflow

The dataset was split into train and test data, by 75% and 25% respectively. Finally, regarding the selection of machine learning algorithms we experimented with the following algorithms: Multinomial Naive Bayes (MNB), Logistic Regression (LR), SVM and Multilayer Perceptron (MLP). All algorithms were able to return satisfactory results but MNB was selected because it consistently resulted in higher predictive accuracy (Table  1 ) and was significantly faster computationally. We selected to test the four machine learning models against two feature combinations, CV as a representative of Vector Semantic approaches and CV in combination with NRC to add information about the emotions into the equation.

Table 1.

F1-scores of the four compared ML models.

The evaluation of the aforementioned experiments was conducted with the use of Accuracy, Precision, Recall and F1 as the selected metrics. The bar plot below (Fig.  2 ), presents an indicative selection of experiments, from the total that were performed, which we considered to be the most important. Based on the visualized results, it seems that the CountVectorizer method produces slightly better results than TF-IDF method, possibly because of better document representation. The VADER lexicon showed the worst performance when used on its own. Additionally, it appears that its heuristics, despite increasing the intensity of the sentiment, did not play a crucial role in improving the predictive accuracy. VADER’s low performance was expected, as we initially hypothesized that binary sentiment analysis (positive/negative) was too simplistic to capture the complexity of a movie’s script. We believe that the problem lies in the interpretive ambiguity of binary sentiment approaches. A negative sentiment score for a review can have two very different meanings. It may show legitimate dislike for the movie or it may express the reviewer’s experience of sadness or horror which can technically be considered as “negative” emotions but are expected in an effective and well-made drama or horror movie respectively. Furthermore, confirming our hypothesis, the NRC lexicon greatly outperforms VADER by 10%, proving the importance of taking into consideration a multitude of emotions.

Evaluation scores of the proposed model and the baseline methods. The proposed model is referred as “Script + Review (NRC only)”.

An unexpected finding is that the combination of Vector Semantics approaches with sentiment lexicons yields significantly different results based on which lexicon is applied. The VADER lexicon slightly enhances the performance of the CountVectorizer - if only by 0.1% - while the NRC lexicon reduces the performance. This can possibly be attributed to the relative increase in complexity of the model when combined with the multiple emotions of the NRC lexicon, which led to constrained results. Finally, our proposed model, which took into consideration both the review and the script emotions without any other NLP technique, managed to reach impressive precision percentages, only 0.8% lower than the best performing model but didn’t quite reach the same level of accuracy. While not being the best performing model, it indicates the potential and validity of our initial hypothesis which dictated that the relationship between the expressed emotion of the movie and the received emotion by the reviewer can be a potent predictor for movie’s rating.

Generally, Vector Semantics approaches (TF-IDF and CountVectorizer) performed much better than simply using sentiment and emotional lexicons. They seem better at identifying the importance of each word inside the text which helps the machine learning model to comprehend its structure and any possible hidden patterns. Sentiment analysis tools are already being used in a variety of cases, but they are still in a transitional stage. NRC, especially, doesn’t take at all into consideration the context of a word - it simply returns its pre-classified score - which we believe to be the most important reason for its lacking performance. Another factor that probably contributed to our model’s restrained performance was the absence of the totality of each review. We only had a small excerpt from the whole review provided by Rotten Tomatoes. By analyzing the review in its totality it’s possible that our model’s predictive accuracy would have improved.

Conclusions – Future Work

This paper explored the effect of incorporating emotion and sentiment analysis in predicting movie ratings and more specifically, the combinations of the movie script’s intended emotion and the emotional response of the reviewer. Data were collected from relevant sources and contained a fair amount of scripts and reviews. We tried several machine learning models and experimented with the usage of sentiment and emotion analysis with two well-known lexicons, one intended for sentiment analysis and one for emotion analysis. We examined their performance on their own and in combination with Vector Semantics tools. The performance of our proposed model was actually quite impressive, almost reaching the best performing model in precision but we believe that the results were limited by the lack of negation handling and the fact that we used only excerpts of the reviews, provided by Rotten Tomatoes, and not the whole text. We believe that the accuracy of the model would improve if we were able to obtain the whole body of the reviews and thus have a larger corpus for analysis. However, the results may still end up being unsatisfying, due to the absence of negation handling and polarity shift which should also be tested. Of course, such enhancements would require different preprocessing of the data by keeping appropriate stop words or applying different representation methods.

Regarding suggestions for improving similar models in the future, we thought it would be useful to incorporate character and contextual analysis. Although sentiment can indeed be extracted from simple words, there should be additional weight to some character names. For example, the names of some famous villains can easily be associated with a specific sentiment, like fear, and thus should be considered non neutral words when conducting an analysis of sentiment. This can lead to better results in many cases and better characterization of the script’s context as a whole.

Another possible expansion of the model would be the implementation of different document representation methods, such as Word2Vec embeddings or the use of N-Grams. It would be interesting to explore how different methods affect the quality of results and whether the combinations of lexicons and approaches would have similar outputs. Finally, we considered that a possible practical use of our model would be to expand its use not only in reviews but other forms of criticism like YouTube Comments or Tweets and apply the same methodology to give an early estimation of a movie’s box office success or failure. It is obvious that such predictions will only be vague, as a movie’s gross depends on a variety of factors (marketing, production, cast, merchandise etc.) but this model can certainly serve as a supplementary tool for further assurance of success.

Acknowledgements

This paper was directly based on an assignment we completed during our “Text Mining and Natural Language Processing” Course in the Data and Web Science MSc program of the School of Informatics of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. We would like to personally thank Dr. Grigorios Tsoumakas, our supervising professor, who provided direction, reviewed the project and encouraged us to submit it as a conference paper.

Contributor Information

Ilias Maglogiannis, Email: rg.ipinu@olgami .

Lazaros Iliadis, Email: rg.htud.livic@sidailil .

Elias Pimenidis, Email: [email protected] .

Paschalis Frangidis, Email: rg.htua.dsc@sidignarf .

Konstantinos Georgiou, Email: rg.htua.dsc@akuoigroeg .

Stefanos Papadopoulos, Email: rg.htua.dsc@ipsonafets .

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Generate accurate MLA citations for free

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• How to cite a movie in MLA

How to Cite a Movie in MLA Style | Format & Examples

Published on August 1, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on March 5, 2024.

To cite a film in MLA, include the title, the director, any other relevant contributors, the production or distribution company, and the year of release. If there are multiple versions of a film, you also need to identify the version.

To cite a movie from Netflix (and similar online streaming services), add the name of the website or app (e.g. “Netflix app”). If you watched the movie on an unofficial website or video-sharing platform like YouTube, add the website name, the uploader, the date of upload, and the URL.

In the MLA in-text citation , include the title (or a shortened version of it) and the time range.

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Table of contents

Mla movie citation format, citing online movies, mla in-text citations for movies.

You build an MLA Works Cited entry by filling in the relevant elements. An MLA citation usually starts with the author’s name, but because films are created by many different people, you start the citation with the film’s title instead. The director appears after the title as a contributor.

Other contributors

If relevant, you can also add other contributors, as with TV shows . For example, if your paper mentions specific performances, you can include the actors in your citation; if you discuss the film’s visuals, you can include the cinematographer.

Identify the role of each contributor and separate them with commas.

If your discussion of the movie focuses mainly on one contributor (e.g. the director or a performer), you can choose to include that name at the start of the citation instead, where the author would normally go.

In this case, make sure to use the same name in your in-text citation.

If there are different versions of a film, you need to state which one you used so the reader can find the correct source (e.g. extended version, director’s cut).

If this version was released later than the original, you can also add the year of the original release after the title. This is optional, but it is often helpful to give the historical context of the source.

Films are often produced and distributed by several different companies, which can make it difficult to determine the publisher .

Try to identify the organization that had primary responsibility for the movie’s production or distribution. If multiple production companies and/or distributors were equally involved, you can separate them with a forward slash.

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If the film was republished on a website unconnected to the producers or official distributors (such as YouTube, where anyone can upload a copy of a movie), you should generally include this information in the citation.

After giving full details of the movie, add the name of the website , the uploader , the date it was published, and the URL .

Note that this format only applies to full movies uploaded to YouTube. If you are citing a clip or other material on YouTube, follow the format for citing a YouTube video instead.

The in-text citation must always correspond with the first word of the Works Cited entry. For movie citations, this is usually the title in italics. If the title is longer than a few words, shorten it to the first word or phrase.

Instead of a page number, add the time range of the part you are quoting or referring to.

If you have already mentioned the title in the sentence, the parenthetical citation only needs to include the time range.

If you are referring to the movie as a whole, it is acceptable to mention only the title with no time range.

If you start the Works Cited entry with the name of a contributor , make sure to use this name in the in-text citation so that the reader can easily locate it in the alphabetized list.

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Film Analysis

What this handout is about.

This handout introduces film analysis and and offers strategies and resources for approaching film analysis assignments.

Writing the film analysis essay

Writing a film analysis requires you to consider the composition of the film—the individual parts and choices made that come together to create the finished piece. Film analysis goes beyond the analysis of the film as literature to include camera angles, lighting, set design, sound elements, costume choices, editing, etc. in making an argument. The first step to analyzing the film is to watch it with a plan.

Watching the film

First it’s important to watch the film carefully with a critical eye. Consider why you’ve been assigned to watch a film and write an analysis. How does this activity fit into the course? Why have you been assigned this particular film? What are you looking for in connection to the course content? Let’s practice with this clip from Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). Here are some tips on how to watch the clip critically, just as you would an entire film:

• Give the clip your undivided attention at least once. Pay close attention to details and make observations that might start leading to bigger questions.
• Watch the clip a second time. For this viewing, you will want to focus specifically on those elements of film analysis that your class has focused on, so review your course notes. For example, from whose perspective is this clip shot? What choices help convey that perspective? What is the overall tone, theme, or effect of this clip?
• Take notes while you watch for the second time. Notes will help you keep track of what you noticed and when, if you include timestamps in your notes. Timestamps are vital for citing scenes from a film!

For more information on watching a film, check out the Learning Center’s handout on watching film analytically . For more resources on researching film, including glossaries of film terms, see UNC Library’s research guide on film & cinema .

Brainstorming ideas

Once you’ve watched the film twice, it’s time to brainstorm some ideas based on your notes. Brainstorming is a major step that helps develop and explore ideas. As you brainstorm, you may want to cluster your ideas around central topics or themes that emerge as you review your notes. Did you ask several questions about color? Were you curious about repeated images? Perhaps these are directions you can pursue.

If you’re writing an argumentative essay, you can use the connections that you develop while brainstorming to draft a thesis statement . Consider the assignment and prompt when formulating a thesis, as well as what kind of evidence you will present to support your claims. Your evidence could be dialogue, sound edits, cinematography decisions, etc. Much of how you make these decisions will depend on the type of film analysis you are conducting, an important decision covered in the next section.

After brainstorming, you can draft an outline of your film analysis using the same strategies that you would for other writing assignments. Here are a few more tips to keep in mind as you prepare for this stage of the assignment:

• Make sure you understand the prompt and what you are being asked to do. Remember that this is ultimately an assignment, so your thesis should answer what the prompt asks. Check with your professor if you are unsure.
• In most cases, the director’s name is used to talk about the film as a whole, for instance, “Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo .” However, some writers may want to include the names of other persons who helped to create the film, including the actors, the cinematographer, and the sound editor, among others.
• When describing a sequence in a film, use the literary present. An example could be, “In Vertigo , Hitchcock employs techniques of observation to dramatize the act of detection.”
• Finding a screenplay/script of the movie may be helpful and save you time when compiling citations. But keep in mind that there may be differences between the screenplay and the actual product (and these differences might be a topic of discussion!).
• Go beyond describing basic film elements by articulating the significance of these elements in support of your particular position. For example, you may have an interpretation of the striking color green in Vertigo , but you would only mention this if it was relevant to your argument. For more help on using evidence effectively, see the section on “using evidence” in our evidence handout .

Also be sure to avoid confusing the terms shot, scene, and sequence. Remember, a shot ends every time the camera cuts; a scene can be composed of several related shots; and a sequence is a set of related scenes.

Different types of film analysis

As you consider your notes, outline, and general thesis about a film, the majority of your assignment will depend on what type of film analysis you are conducting. This section explores some of the different types of film analyses you may have been assigned to write.

Semiotic analysis

Semiotic analysis is the interpretation of signs and symbols, typically involving metaphors and analogies to both inanimate objects and characters within a film. Because symbols have several meanings, writers often need to determine what a particular symbol means in the film and in a broader cultural or historical context.

For instance, a writer could explore the symbolism of the flowers in Vertigo by connecting the images of them falling apart to the vulnerability of the heroine.

Here are a few other questions to consider for this type of analysis:

• What objects or images are repeated throughout the film?
• How does the director associate a character with small signs, such as certain colors, clothing, food, or language use?
• How does a symbol or object relate to other symbols and objects, that is, what is the relationship between the film’s signs?

Many films are rich with symbolism, and it can be easy to get lost in the details. Remember to bring a semiotic analysis back around to answering the question “So what?” in your thesis.

Narrative analysis

Narrative analysis is an examination of the story elements, including narrative structure, character, and plot. This type of analysis considers the entirety of the film and the story it seeks to tell.

For example, you could take the same object from the previous example—the flowers—which meant one thing in a semiotic analysis, and ask instead about their narrative role. That is, you might analyze how Hitchcock introduces the flowers at the beginning of the film in order to return to them later to draw out the completion of the heroine’s character arc.

To create this type of analysis, you could consider questions like:

• How does the film correspond to the Three-Act Structure: Act One: Setup; Act Two: Confrontation; and Act Three: Resolution?
• What is the plot of the film? How does this plot differ from the narrative, that is, how the story is told? For example, are events presented out of order and to what effect?
• Does the plot revolve around one character? Does the plot revolve around multiple characters? How do these characters develop across the film?

When writing a narrative analysis, take care not to spend too time on summarizing at the expense of your argument. See our handout on summarizing for more tips on making summary serve analysis.

Cultural/historical analysis

One of the most common types of analysis is the examination of a film’s relationship to its broader cultural, historical, or theoretical contexts. Whether films intentionally comment on their context or not, they are always a product of the culture or period in which they were created. By placing the film in a particular context, this type of analysis asks how the film models, challenges, or subverts different types of relations, whether historical, social, or even theoretical.

For example, the clip from Vertigo depicts a man observing a woman without her knowing it. You could examine how this aspect of the film addresses a midcentury social concern about observation, such as the sexual policing of women, or a political one, such as Cold War-era McCarthyism.

A few of the many questions you could ask in this vein include:

• How does the film comment on, reinforce, or even critique social and political issues at the time it was released, including questions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality?
• How might a biographical understanding of the film’s creators and their historical moment affect the way you view the film?
• How might a specific film theory, such as Queer Theory, Structuralist Theory, or Marxist Film Theory, provide a language or set of terms for articulating the attributes of the film?

Take advantage of class resources to explore possible approaches to cultural/historical film analyses, and find out whether you will be expected to do additional research into the film’s context.

Mise-en-scène analysis

A mise-en-scène analysis attends to how the filmmakers have arranged compositional elements in a film and specifically within a scene or even a single shot. This type of analysis organizes the individual elements of a scene to explore how they come together to produce meaning. You may focus on anything that adds meaning to the formal effect produced by a given scene, including: blocking, lighting, design, color, costume, as well as how these attributes work in conjunction with decisions related to sound, cinematography, and editing. For example, in the clip from Vertigo , a mise-en-scène analysis might ask how numerous elements, from lighting to camera angles, work together to present the viewer with the perspective of Jimmy Stewart’s character.

To conduct this type of analysis, you could ask:

• What effects are created in a scene, and what is their purpose?
• How does this scene represent the theme of the movie?
• How does a scene work to express a broader point to the film’s plot?

This detailed approach to analyzing the formal elements of film can help you come up with concrete evidence for more general film analysis assignments.

Reviewing your draft

Once you have a draft, it’s helpful to get feedback on what you’ve written to see if your analysis holds together and you’ve conveyed your point. You may not necessarily need to find someone who has seen the film! Ask a writing coach, roommate, or family member to read over your draft and share key takeaways from what you have written so far.

Works consulted

We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.

Aumont, Jacques, and Michel Marie. 1988. L’analyse Des Films . Paris: Nathan.

Media & Design Center. n.d. “Film and Cinema Research.” UNC University Libraries. Last updated February 10, 2021. https://guides.lib.unc.edu/filmresearch .

Oxford Royale Academy. n.d. “7 Ways to Watch Film.” Oxford Royale Academy. Accessed April 2021. https://www.oxford-royale.com/articles/7-ways-watch-films-critically/ .

You may reproduce it for non-commercial use if you use the entire handout and attribute the source: The Writing Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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Home / Guides / Citation Guides / APA Format / How to Cite a Movie in APA

How to Cite a Movie in APA

Movies are a great source of information for many different types of papers. In this guide, you will learn how to write citations for various types of movies using APA 7th edition format.

Guide Overview

In this guide, you will find the following information:

Citing a movie

Citing a movie in another language, troubleshooting.

It doesn’t matter how you watched the movie (e.g., DVD, on a streaming service, in the theater, etc.), you cite all movies the same way as shown below.

APA movie citation structure:

Director Last Name, F.M. (Director). (Release Year). Title of motion picture [Film]. Studio.

Note:  If you cannot locate certain bibliographic data from the film’s cover, consult IMDB.com or a similar website.

APA movie citation example:

Ayoade, R. (Director). (2011). Submarine [Film]. Film4 Productions.

In-text citations for movies

Parenthetical citation: (Ayoade, 2011)

Narrative citations: Ayoade (2011)

Note: If no director cannot be identified, someone in a similar role can be credited in the director’s place as the author. 

When a film is in another language, simply include the translation in brackets after its original title. If the film’s title is in a language that does not use the Roman alphabet, transliterate the title.

Last name, F. M. (Director). (Year of release). Original title in sentence case  [Translated in title case] [Film]. Studio.

Derbez, E. (Director). (2013). No se aceptan devoluciones [Instructions not included] [Film]. Pantelion Films.

Structure: (Last name, date, timestamp [hour: minute: second])

Parenthetical citation: (Derbez, 2013, 1:15:38)

Narrative citations: Derbez (2013, 1:15:38)

Solution #1: Specifying editions of a movie

While you do not need to specify how you watched a movie, it is sometimes necessary to include the version or edition of the film in brackets next to the word “Film.”

Structure & Example:

Director Last Name, F. M. (Director). (Release Year). Title of motion picture [Film; Edition description]. Studio.

Lucas, G. (Director). (1983). Star wars episode V: The empire strikes back [Film; widescreen 2-disc special edition]. 20th Century Fox.

APA Formatting Guide

APA Formatting

• Annotated Bibliography
• Block Quotes
• et al Usage
• In-text Citations
• Multiple Authors
• Paraphrasing
• Page Numbers
• Parenthetical Citations
• Reference Page
• Sample Paper
• APA 7 Updates
• View APA Guide

Citation Examples

• Book Chapter
• Journal Article
• Magazine Article
• Newspaper Article
• Website (no author)
• View all APA Examples

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To cite a movie or film in APA style, it is important that you know some basic information such as the director’s name, the year, the full movie title, and the production company’s name. The templates for in-text citations and a reference list entry of a movie or film and their examples are given below:

In-text citation template and example:

Director Surname (Year)

Joon-ho (2006)

Parenthetical:

(Director Surname, Year)

(Joon-ho, 2006)

Reference list entry template and example:

Surname name, F. M. (Director). (Year). Movie title [Film]. Production Company.

Joon-ho, B. (Director). (2006). The host [Film]. Chungeorahm Film Sego Entertainment.

To cite a movie in APA style on your reference page, it is important that you know the name of the director, release date of the movie, title of the movie, and name of the production company.

In the in-text citation, use the movie director’s surname along with the release date. If you are including a direct quote, you should also include the time stamp for the beginning of the quotation. Templates and examples for the in-text citation of a movie are given below.

Director’s Surname (release date)

Stephenson (1999)

(Director’s Surname, release date)

(Stephenson, 1999)

With a Direct Quote:

“Quote” (Director’s Surname, release date, time stamp)

“I can work harder” (Stephenson, 1999, 1:05:42).

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• DOI: 10.2991/ICOBEST-18.2018.104
• Corpus ID: 192467592

Ontological Metaphor in Arrival Movie Script

• Assyfa Octaviyani Istiqomah , T. Tawami
• Published 1 November 2018
• Linguistics, Art

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Movie/Script: Alignment and Parsing of Video and Text Transcription

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• Timothee Cour 4 ,
• Chris Jordan 4 ,
• Eleni Miltsakaki 4 &
• Ben Taskar 4  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNIP,volume 5305))

Included in the following conference series:

• European Conference on Computer Vision

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Movies and TV are a rich source of diverse and complex video of people, objects, actions and locales “in the wild”. Harvesting automatically labeled sequences of actions from video would enable creation of large-scale and highly-varied datasets. To enable such collection, we focus on the task of recovering scene structure in movies and TV series for object tracking and action retrieval. We present a weakly supervised algorithm that uses the screenplay and closed captions to parse a movie into a hierarchy of shots and scenes. Scene boundaries in the movie are aligned with screenplay scene labels and shots are reordered into a sequence of long continuous tracks or threads which allow for more accurate tracking of people, actions and objects. Scene segmentation, alignment, and shot threading are formulated as inference in a unified generative model and a novel hierarchical dynamic programming algorithm that can handle alignment and jump-limited reorderings in linear time is presented. We present quantitative and qualitative results on movie alignment and parsing, and use the recovered structure to improve character naming and retrieval of common actions in several episodes of popular TV series.

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These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Huang, G., Jain, V., Learned-Miller, E.: Unsupervised joint alignment of complex images. In: International Conference on Computer Vision, pp. 1–8 (2007)

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Everingham, M.R., Sivic, J., Zisserman, A.: Hello! my name is buffy: Automatic naming of characters in tv video. In: BMVC, vol. III, p. 899 (2006)

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University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA

Timothee Cour, Chris Jordan, Eleni Miltsakaki & Ben Taskar

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Computer Science Department, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, 3310 Siebel Hall, IL 61801, Urbana, USA

David Forsyth

Department of Computing, Wheatley, Oxford Brookes University, OX33 1HX, Oxford, UK

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Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford, Parks Road, OX1 3PJ, Oxford, UK

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Cour, T., Jordan, C., Miltsakaki, E., Taskar, B. (2008). Movie/Script: Alignment and Parsing of Video and Text Transcription. In: Forsyth, D., Torr, P., Zisserman, A. (eds) Computer Vision – ECCV 2008. ECCV 2008. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5305. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-88693-8_12

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Screenplays in Print

There is no completely accurate way to locate screenplays in Orbis.  In many cases you can simply search the film's title. The results may include a novel (if the film is an adaptation) or even titles that aren't relevant to the film at all, but you can browse the list for the screenplay.

However, that approach won't work well if you're looking for scripts of highly popular films such as the  Star Wars  series: a search for the title  Star Wars  brings up over 100 entries, including videos, novels, scholarly analyses, and so forth.

Consequently you may find it more effective to do an  Advanced Keyword   search that excludes videos.  You can click the links in the examples below in order to see the search results (will open a new window or tab).

• Star Wars [treat as a phrase, not as a videorecording] To see how this search was constructed, after you run it, click on the Edit Search button above the result list.

You can narrow the search still further by including terms that might capture works with "screenplay" or "script" in the Orbis record.  Be aware that "screenplay" might be written as "screen play."  However, if the record doesn't include  either  term, this approach will miss it.

• Star Wars [treat as a phrase, and as a screenplay or script, not as a videorecording] To see how this search was constructed, after you run it, click on the Edit Search button above the result list.

You can narrow even further by performing an Advanced search in Orbis.

Screenplays Online

• Daily Script
• Drew's Script-o-rama
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• Internet Movie Script Database (IMSDb)
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• The Screenplay Database

Resources of Screenplays and Screenwriting

For books about screenplays in the Yale Library, including guides to writing screenplays, try these subject searches:

• Motion picture plays--Technique
• Motion picture plays--History and criticism
• Motion picture authorship
• Storyboards

Some books about screenplays are also under these subject headings:

• Motion picture plays
• Film adaptations

Additional Resources for Screenplays in Print

• Beinecke Western Americana Filmscript Collection Database The database of Western movie scripts in the Yale Collection of Western Americana contains information about more than 430 scripts. The records include information about script titles, authors, the directors, producers, production companies, actors and distributors associated with the films, dates and settings as well as shelf locations.
• L'Avant-scène - Cinéma Publication Date: 1961 - present
• Motion picture scripts: a union list Publication Date: 1998

You can find more screenplays (including collections) in the Yale Library by using these subject searches:

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Generating Animations from Screenplays

In this paper, we develop a text-to-animation system which is capable of handling complex sentences..

June 1, 2019 *SEM 2019

Yeyao Zhang (Disney Research/ETH Joint M.Sc.)

Eleftheria Tsipidi (Disney Research)

Sasha Schriber (Disney Research)

Mubbasir Kapadia (Disney Research/Rutgers University)

Markus Gross (Disney Research/ETH Zurich)

Ashutosh Modi (Disney Research)

Automatically generating animation from natural language text finds application in a number of areas e.g. movie script writing, instructional videos, and public safety. How- ever, translating natural language text into animation is a challenging task. Existing text-to-animation systems can handle only very simple sentences, which limits their applications. In this paper, we develop a text-to-animation system which is capable of handling complex sentences. We achieve this by introducing a text simplification step into the process. Build- ing on an existing animation generation system for screenwriting, we create a robust NLP pipeline to extract information from screen- plays and map them to the system’s knowledge base. We develop a set of linguistic trans- formation rules that simplify complex sentences. Information extracted from the simplified sentences is used to generate a rough storyboard and video depicting the text. Our sentence simplification module outperforms exist- ing systems in terms of BLEU and SARI metrics.We further evaluated our system via a user study: 68% participants believe that our system generates reasonable animation from input screenplays.

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Explore and Read the Best Free Movie Scripts Online (with PDF Downloads)

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I ntroducing StudioBinder’s screenplay library — your one-stop-shop for reading, downloading, and analyzing the best movie scripts online. Our collection contains all the feature-length screenplays in our database as well as scripts that we have broken down by plot, character, ending, quotes, and more. Our hope is that screenwriters everywhere can have access to these iconic screenplays and that the lessons therein can make us all better writers. Enjoy!

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12 Years A Slave

Written By: John Ridley (screenplay), based on the book by Solomon Northup

Synopsis : In the antebellum United States, Solomon Northup, a free black man from upstate New York, is abducted and sold into slavery.

crime, drama

12 angry men.

Written By: Reginald Rose

Synopsis : A jury holdout attempts to prevent a miscarriage of justice by forcing his colleagues to reconsider the evidence.

Written By: Danny Boyle & Simon Beaufoy (screenplay), based on the book by Aron Ralston

Synopsis : A mountain climber becomes trapped under a boulder while canyoneering alone near Moab, Utah and resorts to desperate measures in order to survive.

horror, thriller

Written By:   Matt Greenberg and Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski (screenplay), based on the short story by Stephen King

Synopsis : A man who specializes in debunking paranormal occurrences checks into the fabled room 1408 in the Dolphin Hotel. Soon after settling in, he confronts genuine terror.

Written By: Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns

Synopsis : April 6th, 1917. As a regiment assembles to wage war deep in enemy territory, two soldiers are assigned to race against time and deliver a message that will stop 1,600 men from walking straight into a deadly trap.

sci-fi, Drama

2001: a space odyssey.

Written By: Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke 

Synopsis : After discovering a mysterious artifact buried beneath the Lunar surface, mankind sets off on a quest to find its origins with help from intelligent supercomputer H.A.L. 9000.

comedy, Action

21 jump street.

Written By: Michael Bacall

Synopsis : A pair of underachieving cops are sent back to a local high school to blend in and bring down a synthetic drug ring.

Action, War

Written By: Zack Snyder & Kurt Johnstad and Michael B. Gordon (screenplay), based on the graphic novel by Frank Miller & Lynn Varley

Synopsis : King Leonidas of Sparta and a force of 300 men fight the Persians at Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

comedy, romance

The 40 year-old virgin.

Written By:  Judd Apatow, Steve Carell 

Synopsis : Goaded by his buddies, a nerdy guy who's never "done the deed" only finds the pressure mounting when he meets a single mother.

romance, comedy

(500) days of summer.

Written By: Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber

Synopsis : An offbeat romantic comedy about a woman who doesn't believe true love exists, and the young man who falls for her.

drama, musical

Written By:  Scott Silver 

Synopsis : A young rapper, struggling with every aspect of his life, wants to make it big but his friends and foes make this odyssey of rap harder than it may seem.

sci-fi, thriller

Written By: James Gray & Ethan Gross

Synopsis : Astronaut Roy McBride undertakes a mission across an unforgiving solar system to uncover the truth about his missing father and his doomed expedition that now, 30 years later, threatens the universe.

drama, comedy

How Charlie Kaufman Twist Real Life  •   Subscribe on YouTube

Written By: Charlie Kaufman (screenplay), based on the book by Susan Orlean 

Synopsis : A lovelorn screenwriter becomes desperate as he tries and fails to adapt 'The Orchid Thief' by Susan Orlean for the screen.

comedy, fantasy

The addams family.

Written By: Charles Addams & Caroline Thompson and Larry Wilson

Synopsis : Con artists plan to fleece an eccentric family using an accomplice who claims to be their long-lost uncle.

animation, action

The adventures of tintin.

Written By: Steven Moffat and Edgar Wright & Joe Cornish (screenplay), based on "The Adventures of Tintin" by Hergé 

Synopsis : Intrepid reporter Tintin and Captain Haddock set off on a treasure hunt for a sunken ship commanded by Haddock's ancestor.

sci-fi, horror

Written By: Dan O'Bannon

Synopsis : After a space merchant vessel receives an unknown transmission as a distress call, one of the crew is attacked by a mysterious life form and they soon realize that its life cycle has merely begun.

comedy, drama

Almost famous.

Written By: Cameron Crowe

Synopsis : A high-school boy is given the chance to write a story for Rolling Stone Magazine about an up-and-coming rock band as he accompanies them on their concert tour.

American Beauty

Written By: Alan Ball 

Synopsis : A sexually frustrated suburban father has a mid-life crisis after becoming infatuated with his daughter's best friend.

drama, crime

American history x.

Written By: David McKenna

Synopsis : A former neo-nazi skinhead tries to prevent his younger brother from going down the same wrong path that he did.

American Pie

Written By: Adam Herz

Synopsis : Four teenage boys enter a pact to lose their virginity by prom night.

American Psycho

Written By: Mary Harron & Guinevere Turner (screenplay), based on the novel by Bret Easton Ellis

Synopsis : A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.

Written By: Will Ferrell & Adam McKay

Synopsis : Ron Burgundy is San Diego's top-rated newsman in the male-dominated broadcasting of the 1970s, but that's all about to change for Ron and his cronies when an ambitious woman is hired as a new anchor.

Written By: Woody Allen & Marshall Brickman

Synopsis : Alvy Singer, a divorced Jewish comedian, reflects on his relationship with ex-lover Annie Hall, an aspiring nightclub singer, which ended abruptly just like his previous marriages.

animation, romance

Written By: Charlie Kaufman

Synopsis : A man crippled by the mundanity of his life experiences something out of the ordinary.

The Apartment

Written By: Billy Wilder & I.A.L. Diamond

Synopsis : A man tries to rise in his company by letting its executives use his apartment for trysts, but complications and a romance of his own ensue.

Written By: Eric Heisserer (screenplay), based on the novel by Ted Chiang

Synopsis : A linguist works with the military to communicate with alien lifeforms after twelve mysterious spacecraft appear around the world.

sci-fi, action

Written By: James Cameron

Synopsis : A paraplegic Marine dispatched to the moon Pandora on a unique mission becomes torn between following his orders and protecting the world he feels is his home.

action, sci-fi

The avengers.

Written By: Joss Whedon

Synopsis : Earth's mightiest heroes must come together and learn to fight as a team if they are going to stop the mischievous Loki and his alien army from enslaving humanity.

Avengers: Endgame

Written By: Christopher Markus & Stephen McFeely

Synopsis : After the devastating events of Avengers: Infinity War, the universe is in ruins. With the help of remaining allies, the Avengers assemble once more in order to reverse Thanos' actions and restore balance to the universe.

action, crime

Baby driver.

Written By: Edgar Wright

Synopsis : After being coerced into working for a crime boss, a young getaway driver finds himself taking part in a heist doomed to fail.

Back to the Future

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Written By: Robert Zemeckis & Bob Gale

Synopsis : Marty McFly, a 17-year-old high school student, is accidentally sent thirty years into the past in a time-traveling DeLorean invented by his close friend, the eccentric scientist Doc Brown.

The Babadook

Written By: Jennifer Kent 

Synopsis : A single mother and her child fall into a deep well of paranoia when an eerie children's book titled "Mister Babadook" manifests in their home.

comedy, crime, drama, tv

Barry (pilot).

Written By: Alec Berg & Bill Hader

Synopsis : A hit man from the Midwest moves to Los Angeles and gets caught up in the city's theatre arts scene.

action, fantasy

Batman begins.

Written By: Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer (screenplay), based on the comics by Bob Kane

Synopsis : After training with his mentor, Batman begins his fight to free crime-ridden Gotham City from corruption.

Being John Malkovich

Synopsis : A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of movie star John Malkovich.

romance, fantasy

Beauty and the beast.

Written By: Stephen Chbosky & Evan Spiliotopoulos (screenplay), based on the 1991 animated film "Beauty and the Beast" animation screenplay by Linda Woolverton

Synopsis : A selfish Prince is cursed to become a monster for the rest of his life, unless he learns to fall in love with a beautiful young woman he keeps prisoner.

The Big Bang Theory (S2 EP4)

Written By: Stephen Engel & Tim Doyle (teleplay), based on the story by Bill Prady & Chuck Lorre 

Synopsis : The guys struggle to cope with Raj's arrogance after he is featured in a People magazine article.

drama, fantasy

Written By: John August (screenplay), based on the novel by Daniel Wallace

Synopsis : A frustrated son tries to determine the fact from fiction in his dying father's life.

comedy, crime

The big lebowski.

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Written By: Joel Coen & Ethan Coen

Synopsis : Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski, mistaken for a millionaire of the same name, seeks restitution for his ruined rug and enlists his bowling buddies to help get it.

The Big Sick

Written By:  Emily V. Gordon & Kumail Nanjiani

Synopsis : Pakistan-born comedian Kumail Nanjiani and grad student Emily Gardner fall in love but struggle as their cultures clash. When Emily contracts a mysterious illness, Kumail finds himself forced to face her feisty parents, his family's expectations, and his true feelings.

crime, comedy, drama

The big short.

Written By: Charles Randolph & Adam McKay (screenplay), based on the book by Michael Lewis

Synopsis : In 2006-2007 a group of investors bet against the US mortgage market. In their research they discover how flawed and corrupt the market is.

Written By: Alejandro G. Iñárritu and Nicolás Giacobone & Alexander Dinelaris, Armando Bo

Synopsis : A washed-up superhero actor attempts to revive his fading career by writing, directing, and starring in a Broadway production.

Black Panther

Written By: Ryan Coogler & Joe Robert Cole (screenplay), based on the comics by Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Synopsis : T'Challa, heir to the hidden but advanced kingdom of Wakanda, must step forward to lead his people into a new future and must confront a challenger from his country's past.

BlacKkKlansman

Written By: Charlie Wachtel & David Rabinowitz & Kevin Willmott & Spike Lee (screenpaly), based on the book by Ron Stallworth

Synopsis : Ron Stallworth, an African American police officer from Colorado Springs, CO, successfully manages to infiltrate the local Ku Klux Klan branch with the help of a Jewish surrogate who eventually becomes its leader. Based on actual events.

Blade Runner

Written By: Hampton Fancher & David Webb Peoples (screenplay), based on the novel by Philip K. Dick

Synopsis : A blade runner must pursue and terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space, and have returned to Earth to find their creator.

Blade Runner 2049

Written By: Hampton Fancher & Michael Green (screenplay), based on the novel by Philip K. Dick

Synopsis : Young Blade Runner K's discovery of a long-buried secret leads him to track down former Blade Runner Rick Deckard, who's been missing for thirty years.

action, thriller

The bourne ultimatum.

Written By: Tony Gilroy and Scott Z. Burns & George Nolfi (screenplay), based on the novel by Robert Ludlum

Synopsis : Jason Bourne dodges a ruthless C.I.A. official and his Agents from a new assassination program while searching for the origins of his life as a trained killer.

The Breakfast Club

Written By: John Hughes

Synopsis : Five high school students meet in Saturday detention and discover how they have a lot more in common than they thought.

DRAMA, tv, crime

Breaking bad - pilot (s1e1).

Written By: Vince Gilligan and Sam Catlin & Moira Walley-Beckett

Synopsis :  Diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, chemistry teacher Walter White teams up with former student Jesse Pinkman to cook and sell crystal meth.

drama, tv, crime

Breaking bad - the fly (s3e10).

Written By: Vince Gilligan and Sam Catlin & Moira Walley-Beckett 

Synopsis : There is a fly loose in the lab. Walt and Jesse must do whatever they can to kill it before it contaminates the meth.

COMEDY, romance

Bridesmaids.

Written By: Kristen Wiig & Annie Mumolo 

Synopsis : Competition between the maid of honor and a bridesmaid, over who is the bride's best friend, threatens to upend the life of an out-of-work pastry chef.

crime, western

Butch cassidy and the sundance kid.

Written By: William Goldman 

Synopsis : Wyoming, early 1900s. Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid are the leaders of a band of outlaws. After a train robbery goes wrong they find themselves on the run with a posse hard on their heels. Their solution - escape to Bolivia.

romance, drama

Call me by your name.

Written By: James Ivory (screenplay), based on the novel by André Aciman

Synopsis : In 1980s Italy, romance blossoms between a seventeen-year-old student and the older man hired as his father's research assistant.

Written By: Lawrence D. Cohen (screenplay by), based on the novel by Stephen King

Synopsis : Carrie White, a shy, friendless teenage girl who is sheltered by her domineering, religious mother, unleashes her telekinetic powers after being humiliated by her classmates at her senior prom.

romance, war

Written By:  Julius J. Epstein & Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch 

Synopsis : A cynical American expatriate struggles to decide whether or not he should help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape French Morocco.

Catch Me If You Can

Written By:  Jeff Nathanson (screenplay), based on the book by Frank Abagnale Jr & Stan Redding

Synopsis : Barely 21 yet, Frank is a skilled forger who has passed as a doctor, lawyer and pilot. FBI agent Carl, becomes obsessed with tracking down the con man. But Frank not only eludes capture, he revels in the pursuit.

Written By:  William Broyles Jr.

Synopsis : A FedEx executive undergoes a physical and emotional transformation after crash landing on a deserted island.

Citizen Kane

Written By:  Herman J. Mankiewicz & Orson Welles

Synopsis : Following the death of publishing tycoon Charles Foster Kane, reporters scramble to uncover the meaning of his final utterance; 'Rosebud'.

Chernobyl (Episode 1)

Written By:  Craig Mazin

Synopsis : In April 1986, an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics becomes one of the world's worst man-made catastrophes.

Written By:  Robert Towne 

Synopsis : A private detective hired to expose an adulterer finds himself caught up in a web of deceit, corruption, and murder.

A Chrismas Story

Written By:  Jean Shepherd & Leigh Brown and Bob Clark

Synopsis : In the 1940s, a young boy named Ralphie attempts to convince his parents, his teacher and Santa that a Red Ryder BB gun really is the perfect Christmas gift.

A Clockwork Orange

Written By:  Stanley Kubrick (screenplay), based on the novel by Anthony Burgess

Synopsis : In the future, a sadistic gang leader is imprisoned and volunteers for a conduct-aversion experiment, but it doesn't go as planned.

Written By: Adrian Molina & Matthew Aldrich

Synopsis : Aspiring musician Miguel, confronted with his family's ancestral ban on music, enters the Land of the Dead to find his great-great-grandfather, a legendary singer.

thriller, crime

Written By:  Stuart Beattie

Synopsis : A cab driver finds himself the hostage of an engaging contract killer as he makes his rounds from hit to hit during one night in Los Angeles.

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind

Written By:  Charlie Kaufman (screenplay), based on the novel by Chuck Barris 

Synopsis : An adaptation of the cult memoir of game show impresario Chuck Barris (Sam Rockwell), in which he purports to have been a C.I.A. hitman.

The Conjuring

Written By:  Chad Hayes & Carey W. Hayes

Synopsis : Paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren work to help a family terrorized by a dark presence in their farmhouse.

Crazy Rich Azians  

Written By:  Peter Chiarelli & Adele Lim (screenplay), based on the novel by Kevin Kwan

Synopsis : This contemporary romantic comedy, based on a global bestseller, follows native New Yorker Rachel Chu to Singapore to meet her boyfriend's family.

Written By:  Ryan Coogler & Aaron Covington

Synopsis : The former World Heavyweight Champion Rocky Balboa serves as a trainer and mentor to Adonis Johnson, the son of his late friend and former rival Apollo Creed.

Written By:  Juel Taylor & Sylvester Stallone 

Synopsis : Under the tutelage of Rocky Balboa, newly crowned heavyweight champion Adonis Creed faces off against Viktor Drago, the son of Ivan Drago.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

Written By:  Hui-Ling Wang and James Schamus & Kuo Jung Tsai (screenplay), based on the book by Du Lu Wang

Synopsis : A young Chinese warrior steals a sword from a famed swordsman and then escapes into a world of romantic adventure with a mysterious man in the frontier of the nation.

thriller, romance

The crying game.

Written By:  Neil Jordan

Synopsis : A British soldier kidnapped by IRA terrorists soon befriends one of his captors, who then becomes drawn into the soldier's world.

CSI (S4EP15)

Written By:  Anthony E. Zuiker & Carol Mendelsohn (teleplay), based on the story by Elizabeth Devine

Synopsis : Two masked men show up at a house and kill the husband and wife execution-style with two bullets at the back of the head.

action, THRILLER

The dark knight.

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Written By: Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer (screenplay), based on the original comics by Bob Kane

Synopsis : When the menace known as the Joker wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham, Batman must accept one of the greatest psychological and physical tests of his ability to fight injustice.

The Dark Knight Rises

Written By: Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan (screenplay), based on the story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer, based on the characters by Bob Kane

Synopsis : Eight years after the Joker's reign of anarchy, Batman, with the help of the enigmatic Catwoman, is forced from his exile to save Gotham City from the brutal guerrilla terrorist Bane.

action, comedy

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Written By: Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick 

Synopsis : A wisecracking mercenary gets experimented on and becomes immortal but ugly, and sets out to track down the man who ruined his looks.

western, tv

Deadwood (s1 e5).

Written By:  David Milch & John Belluso

Synopsis : Swearengen transforms the Gem into a courtroom as Deadwood is forced to make its own laws to try a cowardly murderer. With Calamity Jane off on a bender, Trixie is enlisted by Swearengen to help Alma with the orphaned child and to keep her pliable to his purposes. Fearing Andy's illness might threaten his business, Cy banishes him to the woods, where he is discovered by Jane.

The Departed

Written By:  William Monahan (screenplay), based on the movie Infernal Affairs  by Alan Mak & Felix Chong

Synopsis : An undercover cop and a mole in the police attempt to identify each other while infiltrating an Irish gang in South Boston.

The Detectorists (S1. E2.)

Written By:  Mackenzie Crook

Synopsis : The lives of two eccentric metal detectorists, who spend their days plodding along ploughed tracks and open fields, hoping to disturb the tedium by unearthing the fortune of a lifetime.

Dexter (Pilot)

Written By:  James Manos Jr. (teleplay), based on the novel by Jeff Lindsay

Synopsis : By day, mild-mannered Dexter is a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami police. But at night, he is a serial killer who only targets other murderers.

Written By:  Jeb Stuart & Steven E. de Souza (screenplay), based on the novel by Roderick Thorp

Synopsis : An NYPD officer tries to save his wife and several others taken hostage by German terrorists during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles.

western, action

Django unchained.

Written By:  Quentin Tarantino

Synopsis : With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal Mississippi plantation owner.

Dog Day Afternoon

Written By:  Frank Pierson 

Synopsis : Three amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a bank. A nice simple robbery: Walk in, take the money, and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does.

sci-fi, fantasy

Donnie darko.

Written By:  Richard Kelly 

Synopsis : After narrowly escaping a bizarre accident, a troubled teenager is plagued by visions of a man in a large rabbit suit who manipulates him to commit a series of crimes.

Written By:  John Patrick Shanley

Synopsis : A Catholic school principal questions a priest's ambiguous relationship with a troubled young student.

comedy, war

Dr. strangelove.

Written By:  Stanley Kubrick & Terry Southern and Peter George

Synopsis : An insane general triggers a path to nuclear holocaust that a War Room full of politicians and generals frantically tries to stop.

Written By:  Alex Garland (screenplay), based on the characters by   John Wagner & Carlos Ezquerra

Synopsis : In a violent, futuristic city where the police have the authority to act as judge, jury and executioner, a cop teams with a trainee to take down a gang that deals the reality-altering drug, SLO-MO.

Written By:  Hossein Amini (screenplay), based on the book by   James Sallis

Synopsis :  An action drama about a mysterious Hollywood stuntman and mechanic moonlighting as a getaway driver finding himself in trouble when he helps out his neighbor.

action, war

Written By:  Christopher Nolan

Synopsis : Allied soldiers from Belgium, the British Empire, and France are surrounded by the German Army, and evacuated during a fierce battle in World War II.

fantasy, romance

Edward scissorhands.

Written By:  Caroline Thompson (screenplay),  based on the story by Tim Burton & Caroline Thompson

Synopsis : An artificial man, who was incompletely constructed and has scissors for hands, leads a solitary life. Then one day, a suburban lady meets him and introduces him to her world.

ROMANCE, sci-fi

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind.

Written By:  Charlie Kaufman

Synopsis : When their relationship turns sour, a couple undergoes a medical procedure to have each other erased from their memories.

Written By:  Alex Garland

Synopsis : A young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid A.I.

The Exorcist

Written By:  William Peter Blatty 

Synopsis : When a 12-year-old girl is possessed by a mysterious entity, her mother seeks the help of two priests to save her.

Euphoria (Pilot)

Written By:  Sam Levinson (teleplay), based on the Israeli Series from HOT that was created by Ron Leshem & Daphna Levin

Synopsis : A look at life for a group of high school students as they grapple with issues of drugs, sex, and violence.

action, sci-fi, comedy

Everything everywhere all at once.

Written By:  Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert

Synopsis : An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, in which she alone can save the world by exploring other universes connecting with the lives she could have led.

The Favorite

Written By:  Deborah Davis & Tony McNamara 

Synopsis : In early 18th century England, a frail Queen Anne occupies the throne and her close friend, Lady Sarah, governs the country in her stead. When a new servant, Abigail, arrives, her charm endears her to Sarah.

crime, thriller

Written By:  Ethan Coen & Joel Coen 

Synopsis : Jerry Lundegaard's inept crime falls apart due to his and his henchmen's bungling and the persistent police work of the quite pregnant Marge Gunderson.

The Farewell

Written By:  Lulu Wang 

Synopsis : A Chinese family discovers their grandmother has only a short while left to live and decide to keep her in the dark, scheduling a wedding to gather before she dies.

Written By:  August Wilson 

Synopsis : A working-class African-American father tries to raise his family in the 1950s, while coming to terms with the events of his life.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Written By:  John Hughes 

Synopsis : A high school wise guy is determined to have a day off from school, despite what the Principal thinks of that.

thriller, drama

Written By: Jim Uhls (screenplay), based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk

Synopsis : An insomniac office worker and a devil-may-care soapmaker form an underground fight club that evolves into something much, much more.

horror, sci-fi

Written By: Charles Edward Pogue & David Cronenberg (screenplay), based on the short story by George Langelaan 

Synopsis : A brilliant but eccentric scientist begins to transform into a giant man/fly hybrid after one of his experiments goes horribly wrong.

The Fifth Element

Written By: Luc Besson & Robert Mark Kamen 

Synopsis : In the colorful future, a cab driver unwittingly becomes the central figure in the search for a legendary cosmic weapon to keep Evil and Mr. Zorg at bay.

Written By:  Christopher Nolan 

Synopsis :  A young writer who follows strangers for material meets a thief who takes him under his wing.

Ford v Ferrari

Written By: Jez Butterworth & John-Henry Butterworth and Jason Keller 

Synopsis : American car designer Carroll Shelby and driver Ken Miles battle corporate interference and the laws of physics to build a revolutionary race car for Ford in order to defeat Ferrari at the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1966.

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Forrest Gump

Written By:  Eric Roth (screenplay), based on the novel Winston Groom

Synopsis : The presidencies of Kennedy and Johnson, the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal and other historical events unfold from the perspective of an Alabama man with an IQ of 75, whose only desire is to be reunited with his childhood sweetheart.

animation, musical

Written By:  Jennifer Lee (screenplay), based on the story by Hans Christian Andersen

Synopsis : When the newly crowned Queen Elsa accidentally uses her power to turn things into ice to curse her home in infinite winter, her sister Anna teams up with a mountain man, his playful reindeer, and a snowman to change the weather condition.

Friends S1E8

Written By:  Marta Kauffman & David Crane

Synopsis : Monica and Ross mourn the loss of their grandmother. Chandler is shocked to find that people think he is gay.

Game of Thrones (Pilot)

Written By:  David Benioff & D.B. Weiss (screenplay), based on the book by George Martin

Synopsis : Nine noble families fight for control over the lands of Westeros, while an ancient enemy returns after being dormant for millennia.

horror, THRILLER

Written By:  Jordan Peele 

Synopsis : A young African-American visits his white girlfriend's parents for the weekend, where his simmering uneasiness about their reception of him eventually reaches a boiling point.

thriller, mystery

The girl on the train.

Written By:  Erin Cressida Wilson (screenplay), based on the novel by Paula Hawkins

Synopsis : A divorcee becomes entangled in a missing persons investigation that promises to send shockwaves throughout her life.

Written By:  Kenya Barris & Tracy Oliver 

Synopsis : When four lifelong friends travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there's enough dancing, drinking, brawling, and romancing to make the Big Easy blush.

comedy, sci-fi

Ghostbusters.

Written By:  Dan Aykroyd & Harold Ramis

Synopsis : Three former parapsychology professors set up shop as a unique ghost removal service.

The Godfather

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Written By:  Mario Puzo & Francis Ford Coppola 

Synopsis : The aging patriarch of an organized crime dynasty transfers control of his clandestine empire to his reluctant son.

Written By:  Gillian Flynn

Synopsis : With his wife's disappearance having become the focus of an intense media circus, a man sees the spotlight turned on him when it's suspected that he may not be innocent.

Written By:  Nicholas Pileggi & Martin Scorsese

Synopsis : The story of Henry Hill and his life in the mob, covering his relationship with his wife Karen Hill and his mob partners Jimmy Conway and Tommy DeVito in the Italian-American crime syndicate.

Good Will Hunting

Written By:  Matt Damon & Ben Affleck

Synopsis : Will Hunting, a janitor at M.I.T., has a gift for mathematics, but needs help from a psychologist to find direction in his life.

The Goonies

Written By:  Chris Columbus (screenplay), based on the story by Steven Spielberg

Synopsis : A group of young misfits called The Goonies discover an ancient map and set out on an adventure to find a legendary pirate's long-lost treasure.

romance, comedy, drama

The graduate.

Written By:  Calder Willingham & Buck Henry

Synopsis : A disillusioned college graduate finds himself torn between his older lover and her daughter.

Written By:  Alfonso Cuarón & Jonás Cuarón

Synopsis : Two astronauts work together to survive after an accident leaves them stranded in space.

The Green Mile

Written By:  Frank Darabont (screenplay), based on the novel by Stephen King

Synopsis : The lives of guards on Death Row are affected by one of their charges: a black man accused of child murder and rape, yet who has a mysterious gift.

romance, comedy, fantasy

Groundhog day.

Written By:  Danny Rubin & Harold Ramis

Synopsis : A weatherman finds himself inexplicably living the same day over and over again.

Grown Ups 3

Written By:  Tom Scharpling

Synopsis : Five years after the events of Grown Ups 2 , Lenny, Kurt, Eric and Marcus  reunite with their old friend Rob at a nightclub.

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

Written By:  James Gunn

Synopsis : The Guardians struggle to keep together as a team while dealing with their personal family issues, notably Star-Lord's encounter with his father the ambitious celestial being Ego.

The Hangover

Written By:  Jon Lucas & Scott Moore

Synopsis : Three buddies wake up from a bachelor party in Las Vegas, with no memory of the previous night and the bachelor missing. They make their way around the city in order to find their friend before his wedding.

Hannibal S1E7

Written By: Jennifer Schuur &   Bryan Fuller (teleplay), based on characters from the book "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris 

Synopsis : Lecter's patient Franklin Froideveaux worries that his friend Tobias may be a psychopath, but Franklin's growing obsession with Lecter is what concerns the latter more. 

Written By:  John Carpenter & Debra Hill 

Synopsis : Fifteen years after murdering his sister on Halloween night 1963, Michael Myers escapes from a mental hospital and returns to the small town of Haddonfield, Illinois to kill again.

western, crime

The hateful eight.

Synopsis : In the dead of a Wyoming winter, a bounty hunter and his prisoner find shelter in a cabin currently inhabited by a collection of nefarious characters.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

Written By:  Steve Kloves (screenplay), based on the novel by J.K. Rowling

Synopsis : An orphaned boy enrolls in a school of wizardry, where he learns the truth about himself, his family and the terrible evil that haunts the magical world.

Written By:  John Hughes

Synopsis : An eight-year-old troublemaker must protect his house from a pair of burglars when he is accidentally left home alone by his family during Christmas vacation.

animation, fantasy

How to train your dragon 3.

Written By:  Dean DeBlois

Synopsis : When Hiccup discovers Toothless isn't the only Night Fury, he must seek "The Hidden World", a secret Dragon Utopia before a hired tyrant named Grimmel finds it first.

comedy, action

Written By:  Edgar Wright & Simon Pegg 

Synopsis : A skilled London police officer is transferred to a small town with a dark secret.

romance, sci-fi

Written By:  Spike Jonze

Synopsis : In a near future, a lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need.

horror, drama

Written By:  Ari Aster

Synopsis : A grieving family is haunted by tragic and disturbing occurrences.

Human Nature

Written By:  Charlie Kaufman 

Synopsis : A woman is in love with a man in love with another woman, and all three have designs on a young man raised as an ape.

crime, comedy

Written By:  Martin McDonagh

Synopsis : Guilt-stricken after a job gone wrong, hitman Ray and his partner await orders from their ruthless boss in Bruges, Belgium, the last place in the world Ray wants to be.

Synopsis : A thief who steals corporate secrets through the use of dream-sharing technology is given the inverse task of planting an idea into the mind of a C.E.O.

The Incredibles

Written By:  Brad Bird 

Synopsis : A family of undercover superheroes, while trying to live the quiet suburban life, are forced into action to save the world.

Raider of the Lost Ark

Written By:  Lawrence Kasdan

Synopsis : In 1936, archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones is hired by the U.S. government to find the Ark of the Covenant before Adolf Hitler's Nazis can obtain its awesome powers.

Inherent Vice

Written By:  Paul Thomas Anderson (screenplay), based on the novel by Thomas Pynchon 

Synopsis : In 1970, drug-fueled Los Angeles private investigator Larry "Doc" Sportello investigates the disappearance of a former girlfriend.

animation, comedy

Written By:  Pete Docter & Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley

Synopsis : After young Riley is uprooted from her Midwest life and moved to San Francisco, her emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness - conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, and school.

crime, Drama

The irishman.

Written By:  Steven Zaillian (screenplay), based on the book by Charles Brandt

Synopsis : An aging hitman recalls his time with the mob and the intersecting events with his friend, Jimmy Hoffa, through the 1950-70s.

Action, sci-fi

Written By:  Mark Furgus & Hawk Otsby & Art Marcum & Matt Holloway 

Synopsis : After being held captive in an Afghan cave, billionaire engineer Tony Stark creates a unique weaponized suit of armor to fight evil.

Written By:  Steven Rogers 

Synopsis : Competitive ice skater Tonya Harding rises amongst the ranks at the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, but her future in the activity is thrown into doubt when her ex-husband intervenes.

Inglourious Basterds

Synopsis : In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a plan to assassinate Nazi leaders by a group of Jewish U.S. soldiers coincides with a theatre owner's vengeful plans for the same.

The Insider

Written By:  Eric Roth & Michael Mann 

Synopsis : A research chemist comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a 60 Minutes exposé on Big Tobacco.

Written By:  Hillary Seitz (screenplay), based on the 1997 screenplay by Nikolaj Frobenius & Erik Skjoldbjærg

Synopsis : Two Los Angeles homicide detectives are dispatched to a northern town where the sun doesn't set to investigate the methodical murder of a local teen.

sci-fi, action, drama

Interstellar.

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Written By:  Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan 

Synopsis : A team of explorers travel through a wormhole in space in an attempt to ensure humanity's survival.

Written By:  David Robert Mitchell 

Synopsis : When a sports agent has a moral epiphany and is fired for expressing it, he decides to put his new philosophy to the test as an independent agent with the only athlete who stays with him and his former colleague.

Jerry Maguire

Written By:  Cameron Crowe 

Jojo Rabbit

Written By:  Taika Waititi (screenplay), based on the novel by Christine Leunens

Synopsis : A young boy in Hitler's army finds out his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their home.

Written By:  Todd Phillips & Scott Silver

Synopsis : In Gotham City, mentally troubled comedian Arthur Fleck is disregarded and mistreated by society. He then embarks on a downward spiral of revolution and bloody crime. This path brings him face-to-face with his alter-ego: the Joker.

Written By:  Derek Kolstad 

Synopsis : An ex-hit-man comes out of retirement to track down the gangsters that killed his dog and took everything from him.

Written By:  Diablo Cody 

Synopsis : Faced with an unplanned pregnancy, an offbeat young woman makes an unusual decision regarding her unborn child.

Jurassic Park

Written By:  Michael Crichton & David Koepp (screenplay), based on the novel by Michael Crichton 

Synopsis : A pragmatic paleontologist visiting an almost complete theme park is tasked with protecting a couple of kids after a power failure causes the park's cloned dinosaurs to run loose.

Written By: Rian Johnson

Synopsis : A detective investigates the death of a patriarch of an eccentric, combative family.

ACTION, crime

Kill bill vol. 1.

Written By:  Quentin Tarantino 

Synopsis : After awakening from a four-year coma, a former assassin wreaks vengeance on the team of assassins who betrayed her.

Kill Bill Vol. 2

Synopsis : The Bride continues her quest of vengeance against her former boss and lover Bill, the reclusive bouncer Budd, and the treacherous, one-eyed Elle.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang

Written By: Shane Black (screenplay),   based on the novel by   Brett Halliday

Synopsis : A murder mystery brings together a private eye, a struggling actress, and a thief masquerading as an actor.

fantasy, musical

Written By:  Terry Jones

Synopsis : Sixteen-year-old Sarah is given thirteen hours to solve a labyrinth and rescue her baby brother Toby when her wish for him to be taken away is granted by the Goblin King Jareth.

L.A. Confidential

Written By:  Brian Helgeland & Curtis Hanson

Synopsis : As corruption grows in 1950s Los Angeles, three policemen - one strait-laced, one brutal, and one sleazy - investigate a series of murders with their own brand of justice.

romance, musical

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Written By:  Damien Chazelle 

Synopsis : While navigating their careers in Los Angeles, a pianist and an actress fall in love while attempting to reconcile their aspirations for the future.

Last Action Hero

Written By:  Shane Black & David Arnott (screenplay), based on the story by Zak Penn & Adam Leff 

Synopsis : With the help of a magic ticket, a young movie fan is transported into the fictional world of his favorite action movie character.

The Last Boy Scout

Written By:  Shane Black (screenplay), based on the story by Shane Black & Greg Hicks

Synopsis : A private detective's protected female witness is murdered, prompting him and the victim's boyfriend to investigate the crime that leads to a corrupt politician and a crooked football team owner.

Legally Blonde

Written By:  Karen McCullah & Kirsten Smith (screenplay), based on the novel by Amanda Brown

Synopsis : Elle Woods (Reese Witherspoon), a fashionable sorority queen is dumped by her boyfriend. She decides to follow him to law school, while she is there, she figures out that there is more to her than just looks.

Lethal Weapon

Written By:  Shane Black 

Synopsis : Two newly paired cops who are complete opposites must put aside their differences in order to catch a gang of drug smugglers.

Lethal Weapon II

Written By:  Jeffrey Boam (screenplay), based on the story by Shane Black & Warren Murphy 

Synopsis : Riggs and Murtaugh are on the trail of South African diplomats who are using their immunity to engage in criminal activities.

The Lobster

Written By:  Yorgos Lanthimos & Efthymis Filippou 

Synopsis : In a dystopian near future, single people, according to the laws of The City, are taken to The Hotel, where they are obliged to find a romantic partner in forty-five days or are transformed into beasts and sent off into The Woods.

Written By:  Luke Davies (screenplay), based on the novel by Saroo Brierley

Synopsis : A five-year-old Indian boy is adopted by an Australian couple after getting lost hundreds of kilometers from home. 25 years later, he sets out to find his lost family.

drama, horror

The lighthouse.

Written By:  Robert Eggers & Max Eggers

Synopsis : Two lighthouse keepers try to maintain their sanity whilst living on a remote and mysterious New England island in the 1890s.

Written By:  Irene Mecchi and Jonathan Roberts & Linda Woolverton 

Synopsis : After the murder of his father, a young lion prince flees his kingdom only to learn the true meaning of responsibility and bravery.

Little Miss Sunshine

Written By:  Michael Arndt 

Synopsis : A family determined to get their young daughter into the finals of a beauty pageant take a cross-country trip in their VW bus.

Little Women

Written By:  Greta Gerwig (screenplay by), based on the novel by Louisa May Alcott 

Synopsis : Jo March reflects back and forth on her life, telling the beloved story of the March sisters - four young women, each determined to live life on her own terms.

Written By:  Scott Frank and James Mangold & Michael Green

Synopsis : In a future where mutants are nearly extinct, an elderly and weary Logan leads a quiet life. But when Laura, a mutant child pursued by scientists, comes to him for help, he must get her to safety.

The Long Kiss Goodnight

Written By:  Shane Black

Synopsis : Samantha Caine lives in a small town with her daughter. Eight years ago she emerged, two months pregnant, from a nearby river with no memory of her past or who she is. However, she's getting closer to finding out about her past.

Written By:  Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio (screenplay), based on the book by Dr. Seuss

Synopsis : A 12-year-old boy searches for the one thing that will enable him to win the affection of the girl of his dreams. To find it he must discover the story of the Lorax, the grumpy yet charming creature who fights to protect his world.

FANTASY, action

Lotr: the fellowship of the ring.

Written By: Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens & Peter Jackson (screenplay), based on the novel by   J.R.R. Tolkien

Synopsis : A meek Hobbit from the Shire and eight companions set out on a journey to destroy the powerful One Ring and save Middle-earth from the Dark Lord Sauron.

fantasy, action

Lotr: the two towers.

Written By:  Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens & Stephen Sinclair & Peter Jackson (screenplay), based on the novel by J.R.R. Tolkien

Synopsis : While Frodo and Sam edge closer to Mordor with the help of the shifty Gollum, the divided fellowship makes a stand against Sauron's new ally, Saruman, and his hordes of Isengard.

LOTR: Return of the King

Synopsis : Gandalf and Aragorn lead the World of Men against Sauron's army to draw his gaze from Frodo and Sam as they approach Mount Doom with the One Ring.

Lost in Translation

Written By:  Sofia Coppola

Synopsis : A faded movie star and a neglected young woman form an unlikely bond after crossing paths in Tokyo.

Love Actually

Written By:  Richard Curtis 

Synopsis : Follows the lives of eight very different couples in dealing with their love lives in various loosely interrelated tales all set during a frantic month before Christmas in London, England.

The Tragedy of Macbeth

Written By:  Todd Louiso and Jacob Koskoff & Michael Lesslie (screenplay), based on the play by William Shakespeare

Synopsis : Macbeth, the Thane of Glamis, receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders his king and takes the throne for himself.

Mad Men (Pilot)

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Written By:  Matthew Weiner 

Synopsis : A drama about one of New York's most prestigious ad agencies at the beginning of the 1960s, focusing on one of the firm's most mysterious but extremely talented ad executives, Donald Draper.

Manchester By The Sea

Written By:  Kenneth Lonergan 

Synopsis : A depressed uncle is asked to take care of his teenage nephew after the boy's father dies.

The Martian

Written By:  Drew Goddard (screenplay), based on the novel by Andy Weir

Synopsis : An astronaut becomes stranded on Mars after his team assume him dead, and must rely on his ingenuity to find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.

drama, romance

Marriage story.

Written By:  Noah Baumbach

Synopsis : Noah Baumbach's incisive and compassionate look at a marriage breaking up and a family staying together.

Written By:  Lana Wachowski & Lilly Wachowski 

Synopsis : A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against its controllers.

Written By:  Tina Fey (screenplay), based on the book by Rosalind Wiseman

Synopsis : Cady Heron is a hit with The Plastics, the A-list girl clique at her new school, until she makes the mistake of falling for Aaron Samuels, the ex-boyfriend of alpha Plastic Regina George.

Midnight in Paris

Written By:  Woody Allen 

Synopsis : While on a trip to Paris with his fiancée's family, a nostalgic screenwriter finds himself mysteriously going back to the 1920s every day at midnight.

Written By:  Ari Aster 

Synopsis : A couple travels to Sweden to visit a rural hometown's fabled mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult.

Written By:  Lee Isaac Chung 

Synopsis : A Korean family starts a farm in 1980s Arkansas.

Written By:  William Goldman (screenplay), based on the novel by Stephen King 

Synopsis : After a famous author is rescued from a car crash by a fan of his novels, he comes to realize that the care he is receiving is only the beginning of a nightmare of captivity and abuse.

Written By:  Frank Darabont (screenplay), based on the novel by Stephen King 

Synopsis : A freak storm unleashes a species of bloodthirsty creatures on a small town, where a small band of citizens hole up in a supermarket and fight for their lives.

Mission: Impossible

Written By:  David Koepp & Robert Towne (screenplay), based on the story by David Koepp & Steven Zaillian

Synopsis : An American agent, under false suspicion of disloyalty, must discover and expose the real spy without the help of his organization.

Written By:  Christopher Nolan (screenplay), based on the short story "Memento Mori' by Jonathan Nolan

Synopsis :  A man with short-term memory loss attempts to track down his wife's murderer.

horror, fantasy

Monster squad.

Written By:  Shane Black & Fred Dekker

Synopsis : A young group of monster fanatics attempt to save their hometown from Count Dracula and his monsters.

Modern Family

Written By:  Steven Levitan & Christopher Lloyd 

Synopsis : Three different but related families face trials and tribulations in their own uniquely comedic ways.

Written By:  Barry Jenkins & Tarell Alvin McCraney 

Synopsis : A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation

Synopsis : The Griswold family's plans for a big family Christmas predictably turn into a big disaster.

Written By:  Paddy Chayefsky 

Synopsis : A television network cynically exploits a deranged former anchor's ravings and revelations about the news media for its own profit.

The Nice Guys

Written By:  Shane Black & Anthony Bagarozzi 

Synopsis : In 1970s Los Angeles, a mismatched pair of private eyes investigate a missing girl and the mysterious death of a porn star.

Nightcrawler

Written By:  Dan Gilroy 

Synopsis : When Louis Bloom, a con man desperate for work, muscles into the world of L.A. crime journalism, he blurs the line between observer and participant to become the star of his own story.

Night of the Living Dead

Written By:  John A. Russo & George A. Romero 

Synopsis :  A ragtag group of Pennsylvanians barricade themselves in an old farmhouse to remain safe from a horde of flesh-eating ghouls that are ravaging the East Coast of the United States.

Written By:  Bob Nelson 

Synopsis : An aging, booze-addled father makes the trip from Montana to Nebraska with his estranged son in order to claim a million-dollar Mega Sweepstakes Marketing prize.

No Country for Old Men

Written By:  Joel Coen & Ethan Coen (screenplay), based on the novel by  Cormac McCarthy 

Synopsis : Violence and mayhem ensue after a hunter stumbles upon a drug deal gone wrong and more than two million dollars in cash near the Rio Grande.

Ocean's Eleven

Written By:  Ted Griffin

Synopsis : Danny Ocean and his ten accomplices plan to rob three Las Vegas casinos simultaneously.

The Office (Pilot)

Written By:  Ricky Gervais & Stephen Merchant 

Synopsis : A mockumentary on a group of typical office workers, where the workday consists of ego clashes, inappropriate behavior, and tedium.

biopic, drama

Oppenheimer.

Written By:  Christopher Nolan (screenplay), based on the book by Kai Bird Martin Sherwin

Synopsis : The story of American scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and his role in the development of the atomic bomb.

On the Waterfront

Written By:  Budd Schulberg 

Synopsis : An ex-prize fighter turned longshoreman struggles to stand up to his corrupt union bosses.

war, action

The patriot.

Written By:  Robert Rodat

Synopsis : Peaceful farmer Benjamin Martin is driven to lead the Colonial Militia during the American Revolution when a sadistic British officer murders his son.

The Parasite

Written By:  Bong Joon Ho & Jin Won Han 

Synopsis : Greed and class discrimination threaten the newly formed symbiotic relationship between the wealthy Park family and the destitute Kim clan.

Peaky Blinders (S1 E1)

Written By:  Steven Knight 

Synopsis : A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England; centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby.

Pet Sematary

Written By:  Stephen King (screenplay), based on the book by Stephen King

Synopsis : After tragedy strikes, a grieving father discovers an ancient burial ground behind his home with the power to raise the dead.

Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl

Written By:  Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio, Stuart Beattie and Jay Wolpert (screeplay),

Synopsis : Blacksmith Will Turner teams up with eccentric pirate "Captain" Jack Sparrow to save his love, the governor's daughter, from Jack's former pirate allies, who are now undead.

Written By:  Steve Coogan & Jeff Pope (screenplay), based on the book by  Martin Sixsmith 

Synopsis : A world-weary political journalist picks up the story of a woman's search for her son, who was taken away from her decades ago after she became pregnant and was forced to live in a convent.

The Postman

Written By:  Eric Roth & Brian Helgeland (screenplay), based on the novel by David Brin

Synopsis : A nameless drifter dons a postman's uniform and bag of mail as he begins a quest to inspire hope to the survivors living in post-apocalyptic America.

The Princess Bride

Written By:  William Goldman 

Synopsis : While home sick in bed, a young boy's grandfather reads him the story of a farmboy-turned-pirate who encounters numerous obstacles, enemies and allies in his quest to be reunited with his true love.

The Predator

Written By:   Fred Dekker & Shane Black (screnplay), based on the characters by Jim Thomas & John Thomas 

Synopsis : When a young boy accidentally triggers the universe's most lethal hunters' return to Earth, only a ragtag crew of ex-soldiers and a disgruntled scientist can prevent the end of the human race.

The Prestige

Written By:   Jonathan Nolan & Christopher Nolan (screenplay), based on the novel by Christopher Priest

Synopsis : After a tragic accident, two stage magicians engage in a battle to create the ultimate illusion while sacrificing everything they have to outwit each other.

The Producers

Written By:  Mel Brooks

Synopsis : A stage-play producer devises a plan to make money by producing a sure-fire flop.

Pulp Fiction

Written By:  Quentin Tarantino & Roger Avary

Synopsis : The lives of two mob hitmen, a boxer, a gangster and his wife, and a pair of diner bandits intertwine in four tales of violence and redemption.

A Quiet Place

Written By:  Bryan Woods and Scott Beck & John Krasinski

Synopsis : In a post-apocalyptic world, a family is forced to live in silence while hiding from monsters with ultra-sensitive hearing.

Written By: Ronald Bass & Barry Morrow (screenplay), based on the short story by Barry Morrow

Synopsis : Selfish yuppie Charlie Babbitt's father left a fortune to his savant brother Raymond and a pittance to Charlie; they travel cross-country.

Ratatouille

Written By:  Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava & Jim Capobianco

Synopsis : A rat who can cook makes an unusual alliance with a young kitchen worker at a famous restaurant.

Rear Window

Written By:  John Michael Hayes (screenplay), based on the short story by Cornell Woolrich

Synopsis : A wheelchair-bound photographer spies on his neighbors from his Greenwich Village courtyard apartment window, and becomes convinced one of them has committed murder, despite the skepticism of his fashion-model girlfriend.

Written By: Scott Z. Burns 

Synopsis : Idealistic Senate staffer Daniel J. Jones, tasked by his boss to lead an investigation into the CIA's post 9/11 Detention and Interrogation Program, uncovers shocking secrets.

Reservoir Dogs

Synopsis : When a simple jewelry heist goes horribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant.

Rick and Morty (S1. E5.)

Written By:  Justin Roiland & Dan Harmon

Synopsis : An animated series that follows the exploits of a super scientist and his not-so-bright grandson.

Road To Perdition

Written By:  David Self (screenplay), based on the graphic novel by Max Allan Collins & Richard Piers Rayner

Synopsis : A mob enforcer's son witnesses a murder, forcing him and his father to take to the road, and his father down a path of redemption and revenge.

musical, drama

Written By:  Lee Hall

Synopsis : A musical fantasy about the fantastical human story of Elton John's breakthrough years.

Written By:  Sylvester Stallone

Synopsis : A small-time boxer gets a supremely rare chance to fight a heavy-weight champion in a bout in which he strives to go the distance for his self-respect.

Rosemary's Baby

Written By:  Roman Polanski (screenplay), based onthe novel by Ira Levin 

Synopsis : A young couple trying for a baby move into an aging, ornate apartment building on Central Park West, but find themselves surrounded by peculiar neighbors.

comedy, romance, drama

Written By:  Tommy Wiseau

Synopsis : Johnny is a successful bank executive who lives quietly in a San Francisco townhouse with his future wife, Lisa. One day, putting aside any scruple, she seduces Johnny's best friend, Mark. From there, nothing will be the same again.

The Royal Tenenbaums

Written By:  Wes Anderson & Owen Wilson 

Synopsis : The eccentric members of a dysfunctional family reluctantly gather under the same roof for various reasons.

Saving Private Ryan

Written By:  Robert Rodat 

Synopsis : Following the Normandy Landings, a group of U.S. soldiers go behind enemy lines to retrieve a paratrooper whose brothers have been killed in action.

Crime, drama

Written By:  Oliver Stone 

Synopsis : In 1980 Miami, a determined Cuban immigrant takes over a drug cartel and succumbs to greed.

School of Rock

Written By:  Mike White

Synopsis : After being kicked out of his rock band, Dewey Finn becomes a substitute teacher of an uptight elementary private school, only to try and turn his class into a rock band.

comedy, action, romance

Scott pilgrim vs the world.

Written By:  Michael Bacall & Edgar Wright (screenplay), based on the graphic novels by Bryan Lee O'Malley 

Synopsis : In a magically realistic version of Toronto, a young man must defeat his new girlfriend's seven evil exes one by one in order to win her heart.

Written By:  Kevin Williamson

Synopsis : A year after the murder of her mother, a teenage girl is terrorized by a new killer, who targets the girl and her friends by using horror films as part of a deadly game.

thriller, horror

Secret window.

Written By:  David Koepp (screenplay), based on the novel by Stephen King

Synopsis : A successful writer in the midst of a painful divorce is stalked at his remote lake house by a would-be scribe who accuses him of plagiarism.

Seinfeld (S.6 E.11)

Written By:  Bruce Kirschbaum & Sam Kass 

Synopsis : The continuing misadventures of neurotic New York City stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld and his equally neurotic New York City friends.

Written By:  Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio & Joe Stillman & Roger S.H. Schulman (screenplay), based on the book Willaim Steig 

Synopsis : A mean lord exiles fairytale creatures to the swamp of a grumpy ogre, who must go on a quest and rescue a princess for the lord in order to get his land back.

Written By:  Andrew Adamson and Joe Stillman & J. David Stem & and David N. Weiss (screenplay), based on the book  William Steig 

Synopsis : Shrek and Fiona travel to the Kingdom of Far Far Away, where Fiona's parents are King and Queen, to celebrate their marriage. When they arrive, they find they are not as welcome as they thought they would be.

Written By:  Taylor Sheridan 

Synopsis : An idealistic FBI agent is enlisted by a government task force to aid in the escalating war against drugs at the border area between the U.S. and Mexico.

Silence of the Lambs

Written By:  Ted Tally (screenplay), based on the novel by Thomas Harris 

Synopsis : A young F.B.I. cadet must receive the help of an incarcerated and manipulative cannibal killer to help catch another serial killer, a madman who skins his victims.

The Simpsons S8E2

Written By:  John Swartzwelder (written by), based on the characters by James L. Brooks & Matt Groening & Sam Simon  

Synopsis : After moving to another town for a new job, Homer must decide whether or not to stay when the family have a hard time with the transfer.

The Sixth Sense

Written By:  M. Night Shyamalan 

Synopsis : A boy who communicates with spirits seeks the help of a disheartened child psychologist.

The Shape of Water

Written By:  Guillermo del Toro & Vanessa Taylor 

Synopsis : At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.

Shawshank Redemption

Written By:  Frank Darabont (screenplay), based on the short story "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King 

Synopsis : Two imprisoned men bond over a number of years, finding solace and eventual redemption through acts of common decency.

horror, comedy

Shaun of the dead.

Written By:  Simon Pegg & Edgar Wright 

Synopsis : A man's uneventful life is disrupted by the zombie apocalypse.

The Shining

Written By:  Stanley Kubrick & Diane Johnson (screenplay), based on the novel by Stephen King 

Synopsis : A family heads to an isolated hotel for the winter where a sinister presence influences the father into violence, while his psychic son sees horrific forebodings from both past and future.

The Sopranos (Pilot)

Written By:  David Chase 

Synopsis : New Jersey mob boss Tony Soprano deals with personal and professional issues in his home and business life that affect his mental state, leading him to seek professional psychiatric counseling.

Written By:  Pete Docter & Mike Jones & Kemp Powers 

Synopsis : After landing the gig of a lifetime, a New York jazz pianist suddenly finds himself trapped in a strange land between Earth and the afterlife.

The Spectacular Now

Written By:  Scott Neustadter & Michael H. Weber (screenplay), based on the novel Tim Tharp 

Synopsis : A hard-partying high school senior's philosophy on life changes when he meets the not-so-typical "nice girl."

Written By:  Graham Yost 

Synopsis : A young police officer must prevent a bomb exploding aboard a city bus by keeping its speed above 50 mph.

Written By:  David Koepp (screenplay), based on the comics by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko 

Synopsis : When bitten by a genetically modified spider, a nerdy, shy, and awkward high school student gains spider-like abilities that he eventually must use to fight evil as a superhero after tragedy befalls his family.

ACTION, FANTASY

Spider man 2.

Written By:  Alfred Gough (screenplay), based on the comics by Stan Lee & Steve Ditko

Synopsis : Peter Parker is beset with troubles in his failing personal life as he battles a brilliant scientist named Doctor Otto Octavius.

ANIMATION, ACTION, FANTASY

Spider-man: into the spider-verse.

Written By:  Phil Lord & Rodney Rothman 

Synopsis : Teen Miles Morales becomes Spider-Man of his reality, crossing his path with five counterparts from other dimensions to stop a threat for all realities.

fantasy, horror

Sleepy hollow.

Written By:  Andrew Kevin Walker 

Synopsis : Ichabod Crane is sent to Sleepy Hollow to investigate the decapitations of three people, with the culprit being the legendary apparition, The Headless Horseman.

action, drama

Stand by me.

Written By:  Raynold Gideon & Bruce A. Evans (screenplay), based on the novel by Stephen King

Synopsis : After the death of one of his friends, a writer recounts a childhood journey with his friends to find the body of a missing boy.

Star Wars: A New Hope

Written By:  George Lucas

Synopsis : Luke Skywalker joins forces with a Jedi Knight, a cocky pilot, a Wookiee and two droids to save the galaxy from the Empire's world-destroying battle station, while also attempting to rescue Princess Leia from the mysterious Darth Vader.

ACTION, SCI-FI

Star wars: the empire strikes back.

Written By:  Leigh Brackett and Lawrence Kasdan & George Lucas 

Synopsis : After the Rebels are brutally overpowered by the Empire on the ice planet Hoth, Luke Skywalker begins Jedi training with Yoda, while his friends are pursued by Darth Vader and a bounty hunter named Boba Fett all over the galaxy.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

Written By:  Lawrence Kasdan and J.J. Abrams & Michael Arndt

Synopsis : As a new threat to the galaxy rises, Rey, a desert scavenger, and Finn, an ex-stormtrooper, must join Han Solo and Chewbacca to search for the one hope of restoring peace.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace

Written By:  George Lucas 

Synopsis : Two Jedi escape a hostile blockade to find allies and come across a young boy who may bring balance to the Force, but the long dormant Sith resurface to claim their old glory.

Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith

Synopsis : Three years into the Clone Wars, the Jedi rescue Palpatine from Count Dooku. As Obi-Wan pursues a new threat, Anakin acts as a double agent between the Jedi Council and Palpatine and is lured into a sinister plan to rule the galaxy.

Step Brothers

Written By:  Will Ferrell & Adam McKay (screenplay), based on the story by John C. Reilly

Synopsis : Two aimless middle-aged losers still living at home are forced against their will to become roommates when their parents marry.

Straight Outta Compton

Written By:  Jonathan Herman and Andrea Berloff & S. Leigh Savidge & Alan Wenkus & Andrea Berloff

Synopsis : The rap group NWA emerges from the mean streets of Compton in Los Angeles, California, in the mid-1980s and revolutionizes Hip Hop culture with their music and tales about life in the hood.

drama, tv, sci-fi

Stranger things (pilot).

Written By:  Matt Duffer & Ross Duffer 

Synopsis : When a young boy disappears, his mother, a police chief and his friends must confront terrifying supernatural forces in order to get him back.

Written By:  Seth Rogen & Evan Goldberg

Synopsis : Two co-dependent high school seniors are forced to deal with separation anxiety after their plan to stage a booze-soaked party goes awry.

noir, drama

Sunset boulevard.

Written By:  Charles Brackett & Billy Wilder & D.M. Marshman Jr. 

Synopsis : A screenwriter develops a dangerous relationship with a faded film star determined to make a triumphant return.

Synecdoche, New York

Synopsis : A theatre director struggles with his work, and the women in his life, as he creates a life-size replica of New York City inside a warehouse as part of his new play.

Taxi Driver

Written By:  Paul Schrader 

Synopsis : A mentally unstable veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City, where the perceived decadence and sleaze fuels his urge for violent action by attempting to liberate a presidential campaign worker and an underage prostitute.

Training Day

Written By:  David Ayer 

Synopsis : A rookie cop spends his first day as a Los Angeles narcotics officer with a rogue detective who isn't what he appears to be.

The Terminator

Written By:  James Cameron & William Wisher 

Synopsis : A human soldier is sent from 2029 to 1984 to stop an almost indestructible cyborg killing machine, sent from the same year, which has been programmed to execute a young woman whose unborn son is the key to humanity's future salvation.

Terminator 2: Judgment Day

Synopsis : A cyborg, identical to the one who failed to kill Sarah Connor, must now protect her teenage son, John Connor, from a more advanced and powerful cyborg.

Synopsis : Armed with only one word, Tenet, and fighting for the survival of the entire world, a Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time.

Written By:  James Cameron 

Synopsis : A seventeen-year-old aristocrat falls in love with a kind but poor artist aboard the luxurious, ill-fated R.M.S. Titanic.

There Will Be Blood

Written By:  Paul Thomas Anderson (screenplay), based on the novel by Upton Sinclair

Synopsis : A story of family, religion, hatred, oil and madness, focusing on a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business.

Thor: Ragnarok

Written By:  Eric Pearson and Craig Kyle & Christopher L. Yost

Synopsis : Imprisoned on the planet Sakaar, Thor must race against time to return to Asgard and stop Ragnarök, the destruction of his world, at the hands of the powerful and ruthless villain Hela.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Written By:  Martin McDonagh 

Synopsis : A mother personally challenges the local authorities to solve her daughter's murder when they fail to catch the culprit.

Written By:  Kevin Jarre

Synopsis : A successful lawman's plans to retire anonymously in Tombstone, Arizona are disrupted by the kind of outlaws he was famous for eliminating.

Written By:  John Lasseter & Pete Docter and Andrew Stanton

Synopsis : A cowboy doll is profoundly threatened and jealous when a new spaceman figure supplants him as top toy in a boy's room.

Toy Story 2

Synopsis : When Woody is stolen by a toy collector, Buzz and his friends set out on a rescue mission to save Woody before he becomes a museum toy property with his roundup gang Jessie, Prospector, and Bullseye.

Toy Story 3

Written By:  John Lasseter & Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich 

Synopsis : The toys are mistakenly delivered to a day-care center instead of the attic right before Andy leaves for college, and it's up to Woody to convince the other toys that they weren't abandoned and to return home.

Toy Story 4

Written By:  Andrew Stanton & Stephany Folsom  

Synopsis : When a new toy called "Forky" joins Woody and the gang, a road trip alongside old and new friends reveals how big the world can be for a toy.

western, drama

Written By:  Ethan Coen & Joel Coen (screenplay), based on the novel by Charles Portis

Synopsis : A stubborn teenager enlists the help of a tough U.S. Marshal to track down her father's murderer.

romance, crime

True romance.

Synopsis : In Detroit, a lonely pop culture geek marries a call girl, steals cocaine from her pimp, and tries to sell it in Hollywood. Meanwhile, the owners of the cocaine, the Mob, track them down in an attempt to reclaim it.

drama, sci-fi

The truman show.

Written By:  Andrew Niccol 

Synopsis : An insurance salesman discovers his whole life is actually a reality TV show.

Written By:  Melissa Rosenberg (screenplay), based on the book by Stephenie Meyer 

Synopsis : Bella Swan moves to Forks and encounters Edward Cullen, a gorgeous boy with a secret.

The Two Popes

Written By:  Anthony McCarten 

Synopsis : Behind Vatican walls, the conservative Pope Benedict XVI and the liberal future Pope Francis must find common ground to forge a new path for the Catholic Church.

Written By:  Ronald Bronstein and Josh Safdie & Benny Safdie

Synopsis : With his debts mounting and angry collectors closing in, a fast-talking New York City jeweler risks everything in hope of staying afloat and alive.

Written By:  Pete Docter & Bob Peterson

Synopsis : 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen travels to Paradise Falls in his house equipped with balloons, inadvertently taking a young stowaway.

Up in the Air

Written By:  Jason Reitman & Sheldon Turner (screenplay), based on the novel by Walter Kirn

Synopsis : Ryan Bingham enjoys living out of a suitcase for his job, travelling around the country firing people, but finds that lifestyle threatened by the presence of a potential love interest, and a new hire.

Written By:  Jordan Peele

Synopsis : A family's serene beach vacation turns to chaos when their doppelgängers appear and begin to terrorize them.

The Usual Suspects

Written By:  Christopher McQuarrie

Synopsis : A sole survivor tells of the twisty events leading up to a horrific gun battle on a boat, which began when five criminals met at a seemingly random police lineup.

Written By:  Alec Coppel & Samuel A. Taylo

Synopsis : A former police detective juggles wrestling with his personal demons and becoming obsessed with a hauntingly beautiful woman.

Storytelling Without Dialogue in WALL-E

Written By:  Andrew Stanton & Jim Reardon (screenplay), based on the story by Andrew Stanton & Pete Docter 

Synopsis : In the distant future, a small waste-collecting robot inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind.

War for the Planet of the Apes

Written By:  Mark Bomback & Matt Reeves (screenplay), based on the characters by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver 

Synopsis : After the apes suffer unimaginable losses, Caesar wrestles with his darker instincts and begins his own mythic quest to avenge his kind.

Wedding Crashers

Written By:  Steve Faber & Bob Fisher

Synopsis : John Beckwith and Jeremy Grey, a pair of committed womanizers who sneak into weddings to take advantage of the romantic tinge in the air, find themselves at odds with one another when John meets and falls for Claire Cleary.

The Wizard of Oz

Written By: Noel Langley and Florence Ryerson & Edgar Allan Woolf & Noel Langley (screenplay), based on the book by L. Frank Baum Synopsis: Dorothy Gale is swept away from a farm in Kansas to a magical land of Oz in a tornado and embarks on a quest with her new friends to see the Wizard who can help her return home to Kansas and help her friends as well.

ROMANCE, comedy

When harry met sally.

Written By:  Nora Ephron Synopsis : Harry and Sally have known each other for years, and are very good friends, but they fear sex would ruin the friendship.

Synopsis : A promising young drummer enrolls at a cut-throat music conservatory where his dreams of greatness are mentored by an instructor who will stop at nothing to realize a student's potential.

The World's End

Synopsis : Five friends who reunite in an attempt to top their epic pub crawl from twenty years earlier unwittingly become humanity's only hope for survival.

Wreck-It Ralph

Written By:  Rich Moore and Phil Johnston & Jim Reardon & Phil Johnston & Jennifer Lee

Synopsis : A video game villain wants to be a hero and sets out to fulfill his dream, but his quest brings havoc to the whole arcade where he lives.

Written By:  Rhett Reese & Paul Wernick 

Synopsis : A shy student trying to reach his family in Ohio, a gun-toting tough guy trying to find the last Twinkie, and a pair of sisters trying to get to an amusement park join forces to travel across a zombie-filled America.

Written By:  Jared Bush & Phil Johnston 

Synopsis : In a city of anthropomorphic animals, a rookie bunny cop and a cynical con artist fox must work together to uncover a conspiracy.

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