'Starting from childhood attempts at illustration, young Jerome (Max Minghella) pursues his true obsession to art school. But as he learns how the art world really works, he finds that he must adapt his vision to the reality that confronts him.' red more on Wikipedia
'Bachelors and lifelong best friends, John Beckwith (Owen Wilson) and Jeremy Grey (Vince Vaughn) are business partners in divorce mediation in Washington D.C.. The friends frequently "crash" wedding parties to meet women, working from a set of rules taught to them by a past ‘crasher,’ Chazz. The duo always have cover stories for inquisitive guests and inevitably become the hit of every reception, to charm their way into bed with ladies at the wedding for a one night stand.
After a sequence of successful ‘crashes,’ Jeremy spots the wedding of the daughter of the Secretary of the Treasury William Cleary and his wife, Kathleen. After infiltrating the lavish event as brothers, John and Jeremy set their sights on two bridesmaids, also daughters of Secretary Cleary: Claire (Rachel McAdams) and Gloria Cleary (Isla Fisher). While Jeremy manages to make it on the beach with "stage-five clinger" and supposed virgin Gloria, John works on Claire. While talking afterwards, John is blocked by Claire's hotheaded and controlling Ivy League graduate boyfriend Sack, whom as the film progresses, isn't such a loyal boyfriend when he brags of his sexual conquests to his buddies behind Claire's back and seems to only want to marry Claire so he can advance his future political career by marrying into the family of powerful political figure. John convinces a resistant Jeremy to break the rules and accept an invitation to an extended weekend party at the Cleary family compound.
Jeremy and John are convinced into playing touch football where Jeremy is hurt by Claire's obnoxious boyfriend. Gloria puts Band-Aids on Jeremy, hoping to have sex with him. However, Jeremy turns her down with a philosophical love speech. Jeremy is shown to not really like Gloria all that much, at least not initially. At dinner later that day with Jeremy's assistance, John proceeds to spike Sack's wine with eye-drops which makes him sick, letting John have some alone time with Claire. That night, Gloria ties up Jeremy while he sleeps and then has her way with him. Jeremy is then visited by the girl's brother Todd later that night, thinking the two had "had a moment" earlier at the dinner table to which his advances are quickly rebuffed by a terrified Jeremy. ' read more on Wikipedia
Tatsu is an artist and hermit who is convinced that his lover has been turned into a Dragon. He spends his time painting pictures in the wilderness of the beautiful scenery, always including an image of his lover as a dragon. His work is brought to the attention of an old master painter who and is very taken with it. The older painter decides he must have Tatsu as his apprentice to pass on his skills to him. He allows his own daughter to pose for Tatsu's paintings as the reincarnation of the dragon. Having found a new love in his new model he no longer feels a passion for painting.
The film's plot and narrative structure interweave the stories of several characters whose lives cross paths during events set against the backdrop of the turbulent middle/late 1960s. The story apparently takes place from about late 1965 to mid 1969.[1]
The story begins in Liverpool, England with a young shipyard worker named Jude (Jim Sturgess). Against the wishes of both his mother and his girlfriend, Jude enlists in the merchant navy and travels by ship to the United States of America ("All My Loving"). He jumps ship in New Jersey to search for his American G.I. father, Wes Huber (Robert Clohessy), whom he has never met and who does not know he exists. As Jude is landing in New York, Lucy's G.I. boyfriend's truck passes an Ohio football field where a Cheerleader (Prudence) sings to herself her feelings towards a fellow cheerleader ("I Wanna Hold Your Hand"). After Jude learns that his father works at Princeton as a janitor, he goes to meet him, but then Jude has nowhere else to go.
He befriends a Princeton student, Maxwell (Max) Carrigan (Joe Anderson), a rebellious and eccentric young man from a privileged background. Max and his friends come from upper class families who pay for their schooling, so they mess around, drink, and smoke marijuana ("With a Little Help From My Friends"). Meanwhile, Lucy gets a letter from her boyfriend, who's away at war, and daydreams about when she'll see him again ("It Won't Be Long"). When Max goes home for Thanksgiving, bringing Jude with him, Jude meets Max's younger sister Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood) ("I've Just Seen A Face"). After a heated argument with his parents about his future, Max drops out of college and moves to New York City, accompanied by Jude. Max works as a taxi driver, while Jude pursues work as a freelance artist. They become roommates in a bohemian enclave in Greenwich Village, where they share an apartment with others, most notably Sadie (Dana Fuchs), their landlady, who is an aspiring singer and a representation of Janis Joplin. Other residents include Jojo (Martin Luther McCoy), a guitarist representing Jimi Hendrix, who arrives from Detroit, Michigan after the death of his younger brother during the 12th Street Riot ("Let It Be") ("Come Together"); and Prudence (T. V. Carpio) a young woman who has hitchhiked to New York City from Dayton, Ohio, and recently escaped an abusive "boyfriend" who lives in a nearby apartment. After Lucy's boyfriend, Daniel (Spencer Liff), is killed in Vietnam, she goes to New York City to visit Max ("Why Don't We Do It in the Road?") before she starts college, despite the fact that her parents are against the idea.
Romantic relationships develop between Lucy and Jude ("If I Fell"), and between Sadie and Jojo, while Max visits the Army draft board and cannot avoid recruitment ("I Want You"). One night, Prudence (who seemingly has a crush on Sadie) becomes depressed, and hides in a closet. Upon realizing where she is, her friends coax her out of the closet ("Dear Prudence"). Prudence mysteriously leaves the group after wandering off enthralled by street performers at a peace rally. As Sadie and Max discuss Prudence's now-empty room, Max uses a hammer to bang out the first seven notes of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer".
Sadie and her band, the Po Boys (referencing a line in "Down on the Corner"), with Jojo as her lead guitarist, are courted by a prospective manager, who invites them to a book function for an existential drug guru named Doctor Robert (Bono), based on Ken Kesey. After serving punch that appears to be laced with LSD (aka Kesey's Electric Kool-Aid), Doctor Robert lectures that the New Yorkers are two years behind the new agers of California, and urges everyone that "time is of the essence, we have to transcend fast" ("I Am the Walrus").
The friends embark with Doctor Robert and his followers on an epic journey inside a psychedelically painted bus named "Beyond", an allusion to Ken Kesey's real-life bus "Furthur". They wake up not knowing where they are or how they got there. They learn Doctor Robert has taken them to the spiritual retreat compound of Dr. Frank Geary, a fellow psychonaut "Navigator", and leader of a cult called the "League of Spiritual Deliverance" (Geary is an allusion to Timothy Leary, who headed the International Foundation for Internal Freedom, from his estate in Millbrook). Mirroring the real-life refusal of Leary to commune with Kesey when the latter showed up unexpectedly at Leary's rural retreat house, Geary refuses to see Doctor Robert who, resigned to this news, retires to California. The friends, however, are stranded.
At the cult compound, the friends are reunited with Prudence, who now is a performer in the circus of "Mr. Kite," (Eddie Izzard) a merry entertainer, who wants to challenge the world of show business with his "blue people" (a reference to the Blue Meanies from the Beatles 1968 film Yellow Submarine). The Marry Pranksters can also be seen playing the instrumental part of the song "Mr. Kite" ("Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite") ("Because").
When Max is drafted and sent to Vietnam, Lucy becomes increasingly involved in the anti-war movement, while Jude (who, despite potentially having U.S. citizenship due to his American father, is still living without a visa and thus cannot be drafted) remains comparatively apolitical, but ever enamored by Lucy ("Something"). Jude becomes unhappy with the amount of time Lucy spends with a political group, "Students for a Democratic Republic" (SDR), an allusion to the real life group Students for a Democratic Society suspecting that its leader, Paco, is a lothario. Jude's art and his relationship with Lucy both start to falter ("Strawberry Fields"). read more on Wikipedia
Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) meets a prostitute, covertly filming her with a camera hidden under his coat. Shown from the point-of-view of the camera viewfinder, tension builds as he follows the girl into her house, murders her and later watches the film in his den as the credits roll on the screen.
Lewis is a member of a film crew who aspires to become a film-maker himself. He works part-time photographing lurid pictures of women. He is a shy, reclusive young man who hardly ever socializes outside of his workplace. He lives in his father's house, leasing part of it and acting as the landlord, while posing as a tenant himself. Mark is fascinated by the boisterous family living downstairs and especially by Helen (Anna Massey), a vivacious sweet-natured young woman who pities him. A friendship deepens into a serious relationship between them.
Mark reveals to Helen through home movies taken by his father (played by director Powell in a cameo) that, as a child, he was used as a guinea pig for his father's psychological experiments in fear and the nervous system. Mark's father would study his son's reaction to various stimuli, such as lizards he put on his bed and would film the boy in all sorts of situations, even going as far as recording his son's reactions as he sat with his mother on her deathbed. He kept his son under constant watch and even wired all the rooms so that he could spy on him. The father's studies made his reputation as a psychologist.
Mark arranges with Vivian (Moira Shearer), a stand-in at the studio, to make a film after the set is closed. He kills her and stuffs her into a prop trunk. The body is discovered later by the horrified film crew. The police link the two murders and notice that each victim died with a look of utter terror on her face. They interview everyone on the set and become suspicious of Mark, who has his camera always running, always recording and who claims that he's making a documentary.
A psychiatrist, called to the set to console the upset star of the movie, chats with Mark and tells him that he is familiar with his father's work. The psychiatrist relates the details of the conversation to the police, noting that Mark had 'his father's eyes.'
Mark is tailed by the police who follow him to the building where he takes photographs of the pin-up model Milly (real-life glamour queen Pamela Green). Two versions of this scene were shot. The more risqué version is credited as being the first female nude scene in a major British feature (although even on the racier version, Milly only exposes one breast for a few seconds). Mark kills Milly and then returns home.
Helen, who is curious about Mark's films, finally runs one of them. She becomes visibly upset and frightened when he catches her. Mark reveals that he makes the movies so that he can capture the fear of his victims. He has mounted a round mirror atop his camera, so that he can capture the reactions of his victims as they see their impending deaths.
The police arrive and Mark realizes that he is finished. As he had planned from the very beginning, he impales himself with a knife attached to one of the camera's tripod legs, killing himself the same way he dispatched his victims, and with the camera running, providing the finale for his documentary. read more on Wikipedia
'From childhood, Brooklyn teenager Natalie Miller, with upper front teeth that are slightly bucked and a nose too large for her face, has considered herself homely, and she never has subscribed to her mother's determined belief that she will grow up to be pretty. Her father, a druggist who doesn't share his wife's optimistic outlook, bribes myopic optometrist Morris to marry her, hoping his nearsightedness will prevent him from seeing she's no beauty.
After she discovers her father's plan, Natalie leaves home and moves to Greenwich Village, where she rents an apartment from eccentric Miss Dennison and sets out to enjoy a Bohemian lifestyle. She finds employment as a cocktail waitress at the Topless Bottom Club and befriends drug-addicted go-go dancer Shirley Norton. Although she contemplates suicide after discovering her aspiring artist lover David Harris is married, he finally convinces her she's a worthwhile human being and not the ugly duckling she imagines herself to be.' read more on Wikipedia
.jpg)