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Arthur Miller: Writer

The Murder of Mary Phagan


            The movie opens with Catherine (Gwyneth Paltrow) talking to her father Robert (Anthony Hopkins) after he startles her watching TV in the middle of the night. He gives her a bottle of champagne for her birthday, which she starts drinking from the bottle, commenting on how bad it is. They chat for a while about the nature of insanity and how he is crazy, but then she challenges his admission that he is crazy, pointing out that he had just admitted that the nature of insanity is that you can't acknowledge your own insanity. He reminds her that he's not just crazy he died last week and his funeral is tomorrow.Awoken from this dream, Catherine realizes that there is someone still upstairs -- Hal (Jake Gyllenhaal), a former student of Robert's. Robert was a professor in the University of Chicago's math department and Hal is a fledgling mathematician, struggling to advance in the field with any sort of developments of his own. In his younger years, Robert had made many advances in mathematics, revolutionizing the field twice before 22, and is quite famous and well regarded for it, but struggled with mental illness for the last 20+ years of his life.Catherine asks him why he is still there and he confesses that he thinks that somewhere in Robert's books of notes there has to be additional products of his mathematical genius. Catherine asks him what there has been in the notes he's made it through. Hal confirms that it was gibberish, but tells her that it would make a career for someone to find even a fraction of the advances Robert made in his early to mid twenties. She asks if he is trying to steal her father's work, and he says that, no, he would credit the discovery to her father. She demands to see his backpack and pulls it off of his back, dumping it out while trying to find any of her father's belongings. Nothing found, she apologizes and he gets ready to leave. As he's walking out the door she picks up his folded up coat from a chair, thinking he is forgetting the garment, but a notebook falls out. She yells at him, and calls the cops, but he tells her that he was going to give it to her as a present because it has something complimentary written about her in it. He leaves, and the cops pull up, but she sends them away.The next day, for the funeral, Catherine's sister Claire (Hope Davis) arrives in a town car. A huge contrast to the unkempt Catherine, Claire is an overly put together, bordering on completely neurotic New Yorker. Relations between the sisters are tense, and Catherine can't stand her sister's constant harping on appearance-related issues. Catherine is also upset that Claire didn't care for her father as much as Catherine did in his final years. Catherine's ultimately futile struggle to keep up with her own studies as her father ceases to be able to care for himself is documented in a series of flashbacks. She had started math grad school at Northwestern (Robert asks her: "You actually want to live in Evanston?") and fell behind in her coursework after she returned to check on her father and found him living amongst dirty dishes and sitting outside. He tells her that his brain is working again after the mental illness had interrupted it for a number of years, but she stays to take care of him.At the funeral, a lot of this frustration on Catherine's part comes out. She is upset at the high number of people there, in this very somber ceremony planned by others, and held in Rockefeller Chapel, a huge Gothic structure that is part of University of Chicago. She interrupts a string quartet and yells at everyone for not being there for her father while he was alive, and ends by saying she's glad her father died. After she storms out, Hal follows her and asks if she needs to be walked home. She declines his offer.Claire is set on selling Robert's house back to the University, and Catherine is upset that she will be kicked out, since this is where she's been living for the past few years. Claire wants to bring Catherine to New York, and it comes out that Catherine may be struggling with the same mental illnesses that her father struggled with. They have a wake at the house the night after the funeral, and Hal's band plays. Claire gets smashed drinking with a theoretical physicist from the University, and Catherine and Hal end up sleeping together.After they consummate their affections, Catherine is seemingly comfortable with Hal's intentions toward her family, and gives him a key to her father's desk. He goes up to the office and finds a notebook which contains a lengthy but apparently very important proof a mathematical discovery of sorts. He is very excited and shows the discovery to Catherine and Claire, saying that this discovery could get anyone tenure at any math department in the country. He asks Catherine how long she knew about this and why she didn't tell him about it. She tells him that she wrote it. This is met with silence from Hal and incredulity from Claire. The handwriting looks like Robert's, but Catherine claims it is her own. Claire pushes Hal into a corner and forces him to admit that he is somewhat doubtful that Catherine could have written the proof. She gets upset and tries to tear the book up, but Hal takes it to have people in the math department look at it and see if the proof is accurate.The next day as Claire and Catherine are packing up in separate parts of the house, Catherine suddenly goes berserk and starts throwing things before collapsing on her knees and crying. Claire comforts her and Catherine sobs "I stole it from him, I stole it from him." Claire says that it is okay and that she was living under a lot of stress with their father.Hal takes the proof to be examined by his colleagues, who believe the proof to be valid. He comes to the house as Claire and Catherine are leaving. Claire has convinced Catherine to come live in New York, and Catherine has apparently not said a word since her breakdown. Claire tells Hal to leave. He wants to see Catherine. She emerges from the house and appears completely depressed and broken. She is terse with him, but he tells her that the proof works, but that he doesn't think that her father wrote it because there is newer mathematics in it (he says it is a "hipper" proof than someone of her father's generation would have written). She is unmoved as he tells her that he thinks she wrote it and wants her to explain it to him sometime. The sisters get into a car and head to the airport. Hal sprints after the car and throws the book through the window and onto Catherine's lap.They arrive at the airport and are sitting in the terminal. In another flashback, it is revealed that after Catherine dropped out of school to care for her father he challenges her to work on math, which she does, and there are scenes of them sitting across from each other studying math books and writing. She becomes engrossed and doesn't heed his calls to come talk as promptly as she had. She is working on the proof and really was the one who wrote it. When she comes to show him, she realizes that her father has slipped back into his illness. When she walks into the room he is too excited to look at what she wants to show him, demanding that she read aloud a proof that he has written and says is ground breaking. She reads it aloud and begins crying as she does, as the "proof" is in fact complete nonsense. She locks her own proof, the truly ground breaking one, into his desk drawer, where it presumably stays until Hal discovers it, because she realizes that her father is now incapable of understanding what she has accomplished. So it seems that when she sobbed that she had stolen the proof from him, she was speaking of her guilt for doing her own work and not supporting her father as she worked on the proof. She is also troubled because she sees herself in her father, realizing that if she has his genius, then she might also slip into serious mental illness like him.Back in the airport, Catherine has begun to come to terms with her own genius and her own flaws, aided by Hal's confidence in her. She decides that she does not need to go with her sister to New York and runs out of the airport. She returns to University of Chicago, and the movie ends with her and Hal meeting up on some benches on campus and discussing the proof, as students mill around them.
    

Proof


            Jack Slavin (Daniel Day-Lewis), a Scottish farmer with a heart ailment, lives with his teenage daughter on an isolated island formerly occupied by a hippie commune, where he is struggling to keep landowners from building developments on the wetland. Daughter Rose (Camilla Belle) is a beautiful but isolated young woman with a passion for gardening. Since Rose's mother left them, Jack has homeschooled her and did not expose her to life beyond their island home.While Rose has no desire to change their lifestyle, Jack believes that they both "need a woman around." He travels to the mainland to ask his girlfriend Kathleen (Catherine Keener) to move in with him, along with her two sons. When she agrees and they show up, Jack breaks the news to a shocked Rose, who remains stoic and disdainful and from whom he had kept his relationship with Kathleen a secret.Kathleen struggles to adapt to the Slavins' rural lifestyle. Her sons Rodney (Ryan McDonald) and Thaddius (Paul Dano) are almost polar opposites: Thaddius is a sullen, rude delinquent, while Rodney is insecure and often overlooked. While she has a strained relationship with Kathleen, Rose develops unlikely bonds with her new "stepbrothers": Thaddius is attracted to her, but Rose does not like him. One night, after Rose spies on Jack and Kathleen in bed together, she decides to lose her virginity, and shocks Rodney by confronting him topless and asking him for sex. Rodney refuses, instead persuading her to let him give her a dramatic haircut, after which Rose calmly takes her father's shotgun and mis/fires it into Jack and Kathleen's bedroom as they sleep. A shocked Jack confronts Rose in disbelief, but the two end up giggling and seem to forget the event within minutes.Kathleen asks Jack about his relationship with his daughter, suggesting that Rose might have psychological problems that should be dealt with, which Jack denies. Meanwhile, Rose becomes friends with Rodney, the target of his mother's criticism for his being overweight. While the two fight constantly about his eating, Rose sees only Rodney's kindness and intelligence. However, still on a mission to lose her virginity, Rose's thoughts turn to Thaddius.While trapping a copperhead with which she intends to frighten Kathleen, Rose spies Thaddius and Red Berry, a visiting friend of Rodney's, having sex in the woods. Later that night, Thaddius enters Rose's room as she lies in bed. Though she dislikes him, she allows Thaddius to have sex with her, even offering a timid "thanks" afterwards.To irk her father, Rose hangs her bloodied bedsheet on the clothesline. Furious that his daughter has been "ruined", Jack gives Thaddius one day to leave. Meanwhile, Kathleen is cornered by the copperhead, which has escaped its cage in Rose's room, the resulting chaos putting the entire household on edge.That night, Rose holds a screening in her treehouse of a home movie about the hippie commune of which her dad had been a member. As the film rolls, Thaddius advances on Rose and is stopped by Jack. After a scuffle, Thadduis falls from the treehouse and is rushed to the hospital. Rose runs away to an unfinished development house where she hides out. Jack finally finds her, and offers to ask Kathleen to leave if it will bring Rose home. A distraught Kathleen demands $20,000 in exchange for leaving, which Jack pays.Jack returns to Rose's hideout, where she is overjoyed with his news that Kathleen is gone. That night, they share an incestuous kiss, with which Rose sees nothing wrong, but which causes Jack to break down in guilty tears.Jack's heart condition is worsening, and he gives up his struggle against the builders destroying the wetlands. He and Rose return home, where he dies within a few days. While Rose had originally planned to kill herself when her father died, after setting the house on fire and lying down next to Jack's body, she changes her mind and leaves the island.Two years later, we see Rose living in a commune, where she works in a greenhouse.
    

The Ballad of Jack and Rose

Personal Velocity

Saturday Church


            The plot revolves around Pippa's emotional issues that lead her toward an affair with Chris Nadeau (Keanu Reeves). Pippa and her husband Herb have sold their downtown apartment and moved to the suburbs. Their marriage has lost its spark and Herb is having heart problems.In an interesting twist the plot flashes back to a younger Pippa played by Blake Lively, that gets spanked by a dominatrix named Kit (Julianne Moore). Pippa is involved in lesbian bondage films before having a torrid love affair with Herb, who helps her to get her life together.There is also a rather dramatic flashback scene where Herb's wife at the time, Gigi Lee (Monica Bellucci), points a gun at Pippa, and then ends up committing suicide.Pippa finally finds out that Herb is having an affair with a friend to the family, Sandra Dulles. Herb has a fatal heart attack and Pippa leave to explore her new relationship with Chris, leaving her children, Ben and Grace, to organize the funeral.
    

The Private Lives of Pippa Lee

Angela


            The opening scene begins with Maggie (Greta Gerwig) helping a blind man across the street. She meets her friend, Tony (Bill Hader) in Washington Square Park (NYC) and talk about how she is about to be artificially inseminated by a guy she met in college. She says she wants to be a mother but alone because none of her romantic relationships last more than six months. Tony points out they dated for two years; she writes that off because they were in college. She mentions that the guy whose sperm she is using is the weird Math major they both knew who is now a pickle entrepreneur. Maggie meets the guy, named Guy (Travis Fimmel) at his pickle business in Brooklyn. Guy is a sort of hipster with a long beard; he points out has expanded his business to three employees and that Whole Foods may possibly sell their product in stores. She gives him the sterile cup for his semen sample and tells him to keep it warm until he can drop it off. He asks what kind of involvement she expects him to have in the child's life and she says none.Maggie goes to The New College where she works as a career advisor to art and design students. She stops by the secretary's office to tell her that she received two paychecks instead of one. This ends up being a mix-up because her birth name is very close to an adjunct anthropology professor named John Harding (Ethan Hawke) who happens to stop by, complaining that he hasn't received his check. The two leave and begin a conversation in the park, listening to a man recite Shakespeare for tips. John tells Maggie about his wife, Georgette, who is a professor at Columbia and a published author. He says that shes wonderful but she is destroying his life. John further explains that he has been trying to write a book but has put his dreams on hold in exchange for Georgette's career. John uses the analogy that in every relationship there is a gardener and there is a rose and he is the gardener. He then asks Maggie if shell read the first chapter of his book and she agrees, enthusiastically. He realizes he is running late and rushes off.John gets to Columbia where he joins his wife, Georgette (Julianne Moore) on stage at a discussion on ficto-critical anthropology, moderated by Wallace Shawn. Georgette speaks with a distinctive Danish accent and seems to revel in being intellectually superior to John. Back at The New College, Maggie spots John during a lunch break and asks Tony's wife, Felicia (Maya Rudolph) about him. She tells him that hes a panty melter.At home, John has dinner with his family but both Georgette and his two kids are too busy with their electronic devices to have a healthy conversation. So he responds to a text, too from Maggie, who said she finished reading the first chapter of his book. Maggie and John have another meeting in the park and she tells him she loved what shes read of his book so far. Her encouragement brings John happiness as hes used to having this part of his life neglected at home. Because of the cold weather, Maggie suggests going back to her place. Her apartment is filled with piles of books but she explains that they actually belong to the poet who she works for. John makes hot whiskey for the two of them using lemons and honey.Maggie talks to Tony and Felicia about how she is about to get the sperm sample from Guy and Tony mentions again how hes an idiot yet somehow a math genius. She rushes home to get her sperm sample from Guy. When he shows up, he tells her he is willing to give her his sperm the old-fashioned way. She politely declines. He has forgotten the sterile cup but luckily she has another one. He goes into her bathroom to produce a sperm sample and comes out almost immediately. After he leaves, Maggie goes to the bathtub and tries to artificially inseminate herself with a turkey baster. This process is interrupted as there is a buzzing at the intercom. She rushes over to respond, dropping some of the sample; it is John downstairs. She tells him it will be a moment and wipes up the floor. When she finally goes downstairs, he is still there. Up in her room, she begins telling him she likes the new chapters of his book, which seems to be slightly autobiographical in that she mentions the uptight wife character. He tells her that he has left Georgette and has nowhere to go. John gets on his knees and tells Maggie he is in love with her. He begins to undress her and they have sex.The film immediately cuts to three years later. John and Maggie are now married, living with their three-year-old daughter in a spacious apartment. When John gets a call that his son has hurt his leg and needs to be picked up from school early, Maggie and him debate about who should go. Both of them have meetings Maggie with a student who shes helping pitch an idea for an anatomically correct baby doll. She decides to cancel her meeting so John can go to his. Johns son is disappointed to see Maggie. They then have to wait a long time to pick up his sister from her school, wasting Maggie's afternoon. Annoyed by the noise that the boy is making towards her baby, Maggie asks him to go see why his sister is running late. She notices he rushes up the stairs, no longer faking an injury. Johns daughter arrives and explains that she couldn't find her shoes after gym class.When they get back home, John is on the phone with Georgette. He explains he ended up missing his meeting because Georgette was having trouble deciding which UK publisher to choose for her new book. Maggie complains that she missed out on her meeting so he could go to his and he didn't and all to talk to his ex-wife about her book which is about their divorce. She also points out that their son faked an injury because he was expecting his dad to pick him up since it was his visitation time and he wanted to spend more time with him.Maggie pushes her infant daughter in a stroller and passes Guy, selling pickles at a food stand outside Washington Square Park. He asks if the baby is his but she explains that she got married shortly after he dropped off the sperm. She mentions his math wizardry and Guy tells her how hes always had a brain for math. He then tells her that Whole Foods is going to now be selling their pickles and gives her a large jar, free of charge.At home, life becomes mundane for Maggie. John is more and more focused on his book and becomes distant towards her, completely self-consumed. It is the opposite of his marriage to Georgette in which he was the one doing all the work to keep the family in tact. The two of them have discussed going on a trip but Georgette has to go out of town so they will not be alone anymore (they'll have to watch Johns kids) so it is cancelled. When they have dinner, everyone at the table is texting, once again like Johns marriage to Georgette.Maggie complains to Tony and Felicia that she is now the gardener and John is the rose. She is working full-time while he has quit his job as a professor to work solely as a book. The book is now 500 pages and he doesnt seem to be stopping anytime soon he keeps adding and adding to it and she can no longer give notes because he seems to make it up as he goes.Georgette is having a book signing in the city so Felicia and Maggie crash the event to finally be able to study her Maggie has never met her, despite being the stepmother to her children. Georgette reads from her new book, Bring Back the Geisha, which is about how her husband had an affair with another woman and left her. Maggie is in awe of her and wonders if somehow they could do a switch John can go back to Georgette, as Maggie is not used to being in a long-term relationship and wants to be single again.Maggie drops the kids off at Georgette's house and is set to go inside. But she keeps loitering by the sidewalk. The children talk to each other in Danish about how weird they think Maggie is. They ask if shes coming inside. She tells them shes just shocked she found a legal parking spot in that area and keeps checking the sign. Inside, Maggie spots a picture of John on the wall. She suggests to Georgette that John and her might get back together. Georgette claims Maggie just feels guilty about being the other woman who convinced a man to leave his wife and this is her way of righting her wrong. Maggie leaves, discovering a parking ticket on her windshield.Later, at work, Georgette stops by the campus and tells Maggie shes thought it over and shes in. She tells Maggie that shell be attending an academic conference for Ficto-Critical Anthropologists in Quebec and suggests getting John to go. Georgette can get John invited to speak and points out that his favorite philosopher, Slavoj Zizek, will be there.At home, John mentions cavalierly that he got invited to speak at a conference but he is ready to rule it out in exchange for plans he had already made with Maggie. She convinces him to go and he tells her how excited he is because Slavoj Zizek will be there.John spots Georgette at dinner when he first arrives in Canada. He tries to have a conversation but she is not able to engage him, resorting back to her icy personality. But everything changes when all of the speakers go skiing together Georgette cannot walk in her snow shoes so she falls far behind the others. John is a gentleman and stays behind to assist her and soon they are completely separated from the pack. While they search for the lodge in the snow-filled woods, they rekindle the chemistry they had as a couple. Georgette asks to read Johns book as she knows he brought a copy. He agrees. When they get back to the resort, there is a power outage and they will be snowed in at the resort for several days. Georgette and John go back to his room and get romantic.When he returns to Manhattan, John tells Maggie straight up that he ran into Georgette and admits that they had sex. She is not angry with him but encouraging, telling him that maybe its best that they get back together. John becomes fixated on Georgette again. He visits his kids at his former home and they seem very confused to see him there. After he is supposed to have left, he stays upstairs to have sex with Georgette again but the kids keep calling out to their mom so he finally just leaves for real.Maggie continues to build a relationship with her three-year-old daughter, as the single mother as she always envisioned it. They have a cute scene in a bathtub where Maggie asks for advice on John.John visits Felicia to talk about things. Tony comes home, drunk. When John mentions he is getting back together with Georgette, John points out that Maggie's plan worked. That's when John realizes him falling back in love with Georgette was all constructed by Maggie. He confronts her at their home. She admits to the scheming but wonders if their relationship would have been rekindled without her involvement, being that they're such a natural pair.Georgette, John, and Maggie begin to co-exist with their children in Maggie and Johns apartment. Georgette likes Maggie because she considers her pure albeit a little stupid. Johns children are able to have a meal at the table without electronic devices and seem to respect Maggie's contribution to their lives more now. After John goes out and Maggie leaves to drop the kids off at school, Georgette stays behind to read his book. Without explanation, she puts the manuscript in a trash can and burns it.Georgette meets John for lunch and brings along the pieces of the charred manuscript. But instead of telling him she hates it, she explains that it can be improved and she is able to pinpoint exactly how he needs to focus more on the scientific analysis, which he is known for, rather than polluting the story with narrative, etc. He is impressed at her literary mind and how she always knows exactly what is best for him. She also offers to help him get published and knows which publisher is most suitable. Its obvious that they are a good yin and yang, especially now that Georgette respects Johns career and its an equal partnership.Georgette and John officially get back together but Maggie remains in their life. The trio go ice-skating with their three kids, as well as Tony and Felicia and their son. Maggie is glad that her plan to get John back with Georgette has worked but says she is done playing matchmaker. On the ice, Maggie's daughter begins counting and it is noted that she seems to have a rare understanding for math which doesn't seem to be genetic as its not a characteristic anyone in Maggie's or Johns family has. Just then, Guy appears on the ice and there is a spark between him and Maggie. The film ends... but it is implied that the artificial insemination that happened on the same night Maggie had sex with John might have been more effective than she assumed.THE END
    

Rebecca Miller

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