Promotional Poster

Movie Title

Plot

The Namesake (2006)

The Namesake depicts the struggles of Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli (Irrfan Khan and Tabu), two first-generation immigrants from West Bengal, India to the United States, and their American-born children Gogol (Kal Penn) and Sonia (Sahira Nair). The film takes place primarily in Kolkata, India; New York City; and various New York state suburbs.
The story begins as Ashoke and Ashima leave Calcutta and settle in New York City. Through a series of miscues, their son's nickname, Gogol (named after Russian author Nikolai Gogol), becomes his official birth name, an event which will shape many aspects of his life. The film chronicles Gogol's cross-cultural experiences and his exploration of his Indian heritage, as the story shifts between the United States and India. Gogol eventually meets and falls in love with two women, Maxine (Jacinda Barrett) and Moushumi (Zuleikha Robinson), while his parents struggle to understand his modern, American perspectives on dating, marriage and love.
As much as Gogol/Nikhil's experiences, the film tenderly describes the courtship and marriage of Ashima and Ashoke, and the effect of Ashoke's early death of a massive heart attack. Ashima's decision to move on with her life, selling the suburban family home and returning to Calcutta, unifies and ends the film.

Crash
(2004)

Set in Los Angeles, the film presents several stories that interweave during two days in Los Angeles involving a collection of inter-related characters, a police detective with a drugged out mother and a thieving younger brother, two car thieves who are constantly theorizing on society and race, the white district attorney and his irritated and pampered wife, a racist white veteran cop (caring for a sick father at home) who disgusts his more idealistic younger partner, a successful Hollywood director and his wife who must deal with the racist cop, a Persian-immigrant father who buys a gun to protect his shop, a Hispanic locksmith and his young daughter who is afraid of bullets, and more.  During the next 36 hours, they will all collide

What’s Love Got to Do With It?
(1993)

A 17-year old Anna Mae leaves the backwoods of Tennessee for St. Louis to be reunited with her stern mother and elder sister, Alline. One evening, Alline brings Anna Mae to the night club where a group led by singer-hearthrob Ike Turner plays. Ike makes a nightly ritual of passing the microphone around the dance hall and on one visit to the club Anna Mae grabs it and belts out a song. Soon Anna's whole life is in Ike's hands: he's changed her name to Tina and taken total control of her singing career. Though he's paternalistic and artistically demanding, she's fascinated by his forceful masculinity, stylistic charisma and creative vision. But not long after their quickie Mexican marriage, things turn sour. Ike viciously abuses Tina, who, eventually struggles to free herself of his psychotic reign of terror.

Better Luck Tomorrow (2003)

Everyone knows a guy like Ben--the perfect Asian American high school teen. He's an extremely intelligent perfectionist, an overachiever whose tunnel vision will lead to nothing less than graduation at the top of his class and acceptance to the best Ivy league University. Ben lives in an upper-middle class conservative L.A. suburb. As he struggles to achieve social acceptance in high school, we discover his darker side. Along with his two friends Virgil and Virgil's cousin Hal, Ben leads a double life of mischief and petty crimes that alleviate the pressures of perfection and only become worse when he meets up with Daric, the senior valedictorian who is also a time bomb ready to explode. With Daric at the helm, this gang of misfits band together to form a suburban gang who tumble into a downward spiral of excitement, excess and lurking danger.

Imitation of Life
(1959)

In Douglas Sirk's emotionally and visually extravagant final film IMITATION OF LIFE, a life's work of subverted melodrama and razor-sharp social commentary are brought to a resounding and baroque climax. In a role that closely resembles and perhaps parodies her own life, Lana Turner plays Lora Meredith, an aspiring actress and single mother who meets Annie Johnson (Juanita Moore), a black and similarly single and struggling mother. When they move in together, Annie assumes the role of domestic servant and the two women struggle together to raise their two daughters. Annie's daughter, Sarah Jane (Susan Kohner), favors her father whose skin tone resembles her own extremely light skin, and she slowly comes to resent her mother's black identity. Transcending the feminist labeling that IMITATION OF LIFE risked, the film freely mixes Meredith's rags to riches (with a hefty moral price tag) tale with Annie's scarring struggles to teach her daughter to accept her identity. As Meredith climbs higher and higher in her glamorous rise to stage and screen stardom, she ignores her vulnerable daughter Susie (Sandra Dee) and creates a devastating contrast for the racial and social tragedy that transpires in her own household. With a deft mixture of icy detachment and morose sentimentality rendered through a transcendent art direction, Sirk leads the film onto an inimitable crescendo of highly adorned emotion and tragedy.