Directed by Charlie Kaufman • 2008 • United States
Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Samantha Morton, Jennifer Jason Leigh
Philip Seymour Hoffman stars in Charlie Kaufman’s magnum opus as Caden Cotard, a theater director whose life catering to suburban blue-hairs at the local regional theater in Schenectady, New York, is looking bleak. His wife (Catherine Keener) has left him to pursue her painting in Berlin. His therapist (Hope Davis) is better at plugging her bestseller than she is at counseling him. A new relationship with the alluringly candid Hazel (Samantha Morton) has prematurely run aground. And a mysterious condition is systematically shutting down each of his autonomic functions. Worried about the transience of life, he gathers an ensemble cast at a New York warehouse, hoping to create a work of brutal honesty. As the years fold into each other and Caden buries himself deeper into his masterpiece, the textured tangle of real and theatrical relationships blurs the line between the world of the play and that of Caden’s own deteriorating reality.
Up Next in 21st Century Cinema
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Computer Chess
Directed by Andrew Bujalski • 2013 • United States
Starring Patrick Riester, Myles Paige, James CurrySet over the course of a weekend tournament for chess-software programmers forty-some years ago, COMPUTER CHESS transports viewers to a nostalgic moment when the contest between technology and t...
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No Home Movie
Directed by Chantal Akerman • 2015 • France, Belgium
Starring Natalia Akerman, Chantal Akerman, Sylvaine AkermanThe final film from groundbreaking auteur Chantal Akerman is a deeply personal, heart-woundingly intimate portrait of her relationship with her mother, Natalia, a Holocaust survivor a...
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Rat Pack Rat
Directed by Todd Rohal • 2014 • United States
Starring Eddie Rouse, Steve Little, Margie BeegleA Sammy Davis Jr. impersonator, hired to visit with a loyal Rat Pack fan, finds himself delivering last rites at the boy’s bedside.