Drama Soundtracks 2011 List

A writer of teen literature returns to her small hometown to relive her glory days and attempt to reclaim her happily married high school sweetheart. When returning home proves more difficult than she thought, Mavis forms an unusual bond with a former classmate who hasn’t quite gotten over high school, either.

Michael Fassbender will play Brandon, a 30-something man living in New York, who is unable to manage his sex life.

A single dad decides his family needs a fresh start, so he and his two children move to the most unlikely of places: a zoo. With the help of an eclectic staff, and with many misadventures along the way, the family works to return the dilapidated zoo to its former wonder and glory.

A junior reporter follow stories to the ends of the earth, even though he often finds his own life in jeopardy. His able assistants include a white dog named Snowy, the lunatic Captain Haddock, the muddled genius Professor Calculus and the Thompson Twins.

Set in a luxury hotel in Dublin, "Albert Nobbs" is a Gosford Park-style “below stairs” drama featuring Glenn Close as a woman in Nineteenth Century Ireland who disguises herself as a man in order to survive.

Eleven-year-old Oskar Schell is an exceptional child: amateur inventor, Francophile, pacifist. And after finding a mysterious key that belonged to his father, who died in the World Trade Center on 9/11, he embarks on an urgent, secret search through the five boroughs of New York. As Oskar roams the city, he encounters a variety of individuals, all survivors in their own way. Ultimately, Oskar’s journey ends where it began, but with the solace of that most human experience: community.

A journalist-investigator and a precocious computer hacker become embroiled in life-threatening mysteries as they attempt to expose institutions that pull the strings behind the scenes.

A young communications director works for a fast-rising presidential candidate. During the course of the campaign, the idealistic young man falls prey to the backstabbing and other dirty trickery of seasoned rival politicos.

The ruthless King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke) leads his bloodthirsty army on a murderous rampage across Greece to find a deadly weapon that will destroy humanity. A mortal chosen by Zeus named Theseus (Henry Cavill) must lead the fight against Hyperion and his evil army with the fate of mankind and the Gods at stake.

Seduced by the challenge of an impossible case, the driven Dr. Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) takes the unbalanced yet beautiful Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley) as his patient in A Dangerous Method. Jung's weapon is the method of his master, the renowned Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen). Both men fall under Sabina's spell.

In the early summer of 1956, 23 year-old Colin Clark, just down from Oxford and determined to make his way in the film business, worked as a lowly assistant on the set of The Prince and the Showgirl, the film that united Sir Laurence Olivier with Marilyn Monroe, who, whilst shooting, was also on honeymoon with her new husband, the playwright Arthur Miller.

Set against a sweeping canvas of rural England and Europe during the First World War. War Horse begins with the remarkable friendship between a horse named Joey and a young man called Albert, who tames and trains him. When they are forcefully parted, the film follows the extraordinary journey of the horse as he moves through the war, changing and inspiring the lives of all those he meets--British cavalry, German soldiers, and a French farmer and his granddaughter--before the story reaches its emotional climax in the heart of No Man's Land. The First World War is experienced through the journey of this horse--an odyssey of joy and sorrow, passionate friendship and high adventure.

Tiring of the noise and madness of New York and the crushing conventions of late Eisenhower-era America, itinerant journalist Paul Kemp (Johnny Depp) travels to the pristine island of Puerto Rico to write for a local newspaper, The San Juan Star, run by downtrodden editor Lotterman (Richard Jenkins). Adopting the rum-soaked life of the island, Paul soon becomes obsessed with Chenault (Amber Heard), the wildly attractive Connecticut-born fiancée of Sanderson (Aaron Eckhart). Sanderson, a businessman involved in shady property development deals, is one of a growing number of American entrepreneurs who are determined to convert Puerto Rico into a capitalist paradise in service of the wealthy. When Kemp is recruited by Sanderson to write favorably about his latest unsavory scheme, the journalist is presented with a choice: to use his words for the corrupt businessmen’s financial benefit, or use them to take the bastards down.

Martin Sheen plays Tom, an American doctor who comes to St. Jean Pied de Port, France to collect the remains of his adult son, killed in the Pyrenees in a storm while walking The Camino de Santiago, also known as The Way of St. James. Driven by his profound sadness and desire to understand his son better, Tom decides to embark on the historical pilgrimage, leaving his "California bubble life" behind.

Hugh Jackman stars as Charlie Kenton, a washed-up fighter who lost his chance at a title when 2000-pound, 8-foot-tall steel robots took over the boxing ring. Now nothing but a small-time promoter, Charlie earns just enough money piecing together low-end bots from scrap metal to get from one underground boxing venue to the next. When Charlie hits rock bottom, he reluctantly teams up with his estranged son Max (Dakota Goyo) to build and train a championship contender. As the stakes in the brutal, no-holds-barred arena are raised, Charlie and Max, against all odds, get one last shot at a comeback.

A young boy befriends Winter, an injured dolphin who lost her tail in a crab trap, and motivates everyone around him to help save the dolphin by creating a prosthetic appendage to replace the dolphin's missing tail. Harry Connick Jr. plays a vet who rescues the mammal and brings her to runs the marine hospital he runs. Ashley Judd plays the boy's mother while Morgan Freeman is a doctor who creates a prosthetic limb for Winter.

Lisa (Witherspoon) is a woman whose athletic ability is the defining passion of her life, having been her focus since early childhood. When she is cut from her team, everything she has ever known is suddenly taken from her. Not knowing what to do, she stumbles toward regular life. In this mode, she begins a fling with Matty (Wilson), a major league baseball pitcher, a self-centered ladies man – a narcissist with a code of honor.

George Madison (Rudd) is a straight-arrow businessman whose complicated relationship with his father, Charles (Nicholson), takes a turn when George is accused of a financial crime, even though he’s done nothing wrong. Though he may be headed to jail, George’s honesty, integrity, and unceasing optimism may be his only path to keeping his sanity.

Before Lisa’s relationship with Matty takes root, she meets George for a first date on the worst evening of each of their lives: she has just been cut, and he has just been served. When everything else seems to be falling apart, they will discover what it means to have something wonderful happen.

A Hawaiian princess attempts to maintain the independence of the island against the threat of American colonization.

The story centers on a young girl who is abandoned by her drug-addicted, former-groupie mother at a concert and surprises the fading rock singer who’s performing with news that she is his daughter.

Four men, one calling: To serve and protect. When tragedy hits home, these men are left wrestling with their hopes, their fears, their faith, and their fathering. Can a newfound urgency help these dads draw closer to God … and to their children?

Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, was an accomplished poet and dramatist for Queen Elizabeth I in the 16th Century. In the 20th Century theories arose crediting Edward as the true author of Shakespeare's works.

In the wake of Abraham Lincoln's assassination, seven men and one woman are then arrested and charged with conspiring to kill the President, the Vice-President, and the Secretary of State. The lone woman charged, Mary Surratt, 42, owns a boarding house where John Wilkes Booth and others met and planned the simultaneous attacks.

Against the ominous back-drop of post-Civil War Washington, newly-minted lawyer, Frederick Aiken, a 28-year-old Union war-hero, reluctantly agrees to defend Surratt before a military tribunal. As the trial unfolds, Aiken realizes his client may be innocent and that she is being used as bait and hostage in order to capture the only conspirator to have escaped a massive manhunt, her own son.

The story centers on a long-distance relationship between a young American man and a young British woman who meet while in college.

A nameless Hollywood stuntman (Ryan Gosling) who moonlights as a freelance getaway driver during robberies. When a bank heist goes wrong, he ends up on the run with a contract on his head and an ex-con’s girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) in his car.

An ex-Marine haunted by a tragic past, Tommy Riordan returns to his hometown of Pittsburgh and enlists his father, a recovered alcoholic and his former coach, to train him for an MMA tournament awarding the biggest purse in the history of the sport. As Tommy blazes a violent path towards the title prize, his brother, Brendan, a former MMA fighter unable to make ends meet as a public school teacher, returns to the amateur ring to provide for his family. Even though years have passed, recriminations and past betrayals keep Brendan bitterly estranged from both Tommy and his father.

But when Brendan’s unlikely rise as an underdog sets him on a collision course with Tommy, the two brothers must finally confront the forces that tore them apart, all the while waging the most intense, winner-takes-all battle of their lives.

James Marsden as a Hollywood screenwriter who accompanies his wife (Kate Bosworth) as she returns to her hometown in Mississippi. Her ex-boyfriend (Alexander Skarsgard), a former high school football hero, sees her return as an opportunity to reclaim glory.

Taylor Lautner will star in "Abduction" as a teen who has long felt disconnected from his parents, and figures out why, which unleashes a chain of violent events.

Based on a true story, Moneyball is a movie for anybody who has ever dreamed of taking on the system. Brad Pitt stars as Billy Beane, the general manager of the Oakland A's and the guy who assembles the team, who has an epiphany: all of baseball's conventional wisdom is wrong. Forced to reinvent his team on a tight budget, Beane will have to outsmart the richer clubs. The onetime jock teams with Ivy League grad Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) in an unlikely partnership, recruiting bargain players that the scouts call flawed, but all of whom have an ability to get on base, score runs, and win games. It's more than baseball, it's a revolution - one that challenges old school traditions and puts Beane in the crosshairs of those who say he's tearing out the heart and soul of the game.

Chronicles a man's descent into madness. He fears an apocalyptic cloud he believes will engulf his town, and builds a storm shelter in his yard.

Sarah's Key is the story of an American journalist living in Paris, Julia Jarmond (Kristen Scott Thomas), whose research for an article about the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup in 1942 in France ends up turning her own world upside down. In July 1942, Sarah, a ten-year old girl, is taken with her parents by the French police as they go door-to-door in the middle of the night arresting Jewish families. Desperate to protect her younger brother, Sarah locks him in a bedroom cupboard – their secret hiding place – and promises to come back for him as soon as they are released. Nearly seventy years later, Julia stumbles on the terrible secret that the home Sarah's family was forced to leave is about to become her own. As Julia's life becomes entwined with Sarah's heart-breaking story she must tackle the complex issue of how to live with the past and keep moving forward.

1875. New Mexico Territory. A stranger (Daniel Craig) with no memory of his past stumbles into the hard desert town of Absolution. The only hint to his history is a mysterious shackle that encircles one wrist. What he discovers is that the people of Absolution don't welcome strangers, and nobody makes a move on its streets unless ordered to do so by the iron-fisted Colonel Dolarhyde (Harrison Ford). It's a town that lives in fear.

But Absolution is about to experience fear it can scarcely comprehend as the desolate city is attacked by marauders from the sky. Screaming down with breathtaking velocity and blinding lights to abduct the helpless one by one, these monsters challenge everything the residents have ever known.

Now, the stranger they rejected is their only hope for salvation. As this gunslinger slowly starts to remember who he is and where he's been, he realizes he holds a secret that could give the town a fighting chance against the alien force. With the help of the elusive traveler Ella (Olivia Wilde), he pulls together a posse comprised of former opponents—townsfolk, Dolarhyde and his boys, outlaws and Apache warriors—all in danger of annihilation. United against a common enemy, they will prepare for an epic showdown for survival.

Twenty years after World War II's end, three Mossad agents learn that a Nazi war criminal is still alive and set out to pursue him across Europe.

Set in 19th century remote China, the movie revolves around the lifelong friendship of Lily and Snow Flower and their imprisonment by rigid cultural codes of conduct for women.

Rhonda, an ambitious MIT astrophysics student, kills a man's family in a car accident after leaning out of the window to catch sight of a newly discovered planet. After she spends four years in prison, she returns home compelled to meet the bereaved husband and father.

The story centers on a family traveling to Paris for business. The party includes a young engaged couple forced to confront the illusion that a life different from their own is better.

Story follows a young white woman in the early 1960s in Mississippi who becomes interested in the plight of the African-American domestic servants that every family has working for them. She writes their stories about mistreatment, abuse and heartbreak, all just before the Civil Rights revolution.

A paralyzed DJ, "Delicious" Dean O'Dwyer, struggling to survive in his wheelchair on the streets of Los Angeles, turns to faith-healing and mysteriously acquires the ability to cure the sick -- although not himself. A Jesuit priest tries to help him come to terms with the limits of his gift, while a rock singer in a band tries to exploit the suddenly famous healer.

Liev Schreiber and Helen Hunt play a couple whose troubled marriage escalates into crisis when a sexy colleague, played by Carla Gugino, enters the mix.

Based on a true story, an 84-year-old Kenyan fights to go to school after the country introduces universal education.

While on a trip to Paris with her best friend and soon-to-be-stepsister, Grace is mistaken for a British socialite, resulting in all three young women flying to Monte Carlo for a charity ball, auction, and the chance for international romance. However, when a million-dollar necklace goes missing, Grace and her friends must scramble to find it before the auction is ruined and their identities are exposed.

When he's downsized from his job, Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) decides to reinvent himself by enrolling in college, where he forms some unexpected bonds with fellow students, while also catching the eye of Mercedes Tainot, a female professor played by Julia Roberts.

Arthur Bishop (Jason Statham) is a well-paid assassin who executes people at the request of the American government. But after assassinating a former close associate, Bishop does something that's unprofessional and out of control: he takes on a apprentice (Ben Foster), the son of the man he just killed.

Two estranged childhood friends channel their talent and passion for music into a cross-country road trip that brings them face to face with their past on a quest to confront the future.

The story of a Midwestern family in the 1950's. The film follows the life journey of the eldest son, Jack, through the innocence of childhood to his disillusioned adult years as he tries to reconcile a complicated relationship with his father (Brad Pitt). Jack (played as an adult by Sean Penn) finds himself a lost soul in the modern world, seeking answers to the origins and meaning of life while questioning the existence of faith.

A man walks around with a beaver puppet on his hand, treating it as something close to a human creature with human feelings.

Beginners explores the hilarity, confusion, and surprises of love through the evolving consciousness of Oliver (Ewan McGregor). Oliver meets the irreverent and unpredictable Anna (Mélanie Laurent) only months after his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) has passed away. This new love floods Oliver with memories of his father who – following 44 years of marriage – came out of the closet at age 75 to live a full, energized, and wonderfully tumultuous gay life.

Soul Surfer is the true story of teen surfer Bethany Hamilton, who lost her arm in a shark attack and courageously overcame all odds to become a champion again, through her sheer determination and unwavering faith.

To increase his family’s prestige, the Marquis de Mézières forces Marie to marry the Prince de Montpensier, whom she has never met.

A 90-year-old man reminisces about his life during the Depression, when he found work at a B-level circus taking care of the animals. He sees the brutality of circus life while falling for the wife of an abusive animal trainer.

A film that asks why the good times slip by so fast while the difficult times seem so sticky. It explores ideas of abundance, emptiness, human connection and abandonment while observing an interweaving web of awkward characters who maintain hope by inventing their own forms of communication and self-fulfillment.

Meteors shoot into the ocean a couple of miles off the coast of Los Angeles. Minutes later, beachgoers witness a strange alien like army oozing out of the water. These aliens are nasty, they're fast, and they kill on site. Within seconds they're shredding the suntanning populace to pieces and moving into the city of Santa Monica. Marine Sgt. Nantz leads his new platoon against a surprise attack on Los Angeles, attempting to rescue civilians in Santa Monica and destroy the hub of the enemy's mysterious power grid, while similar epic battles are waged across the world in other cities.

In the story, Jane Eyre (Mia Wasikowska) flees Thornfield House, where she works as a governess for wealthy Edward Rochester (Michael Fassbender). As she reflects upon the people and emotions that have defined her, it is clear that the isolated and imposing residence – and Mr. Rochester’s coldness – have sorely tested the young woman’s resilience, forged years earlier when she was orphaned. She must now act decisively to secure her own future and come to terms with the past that haunts her – and the terrible secret that Mr. Rochester is hiding and that she has uncovered.

Mickey Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is a Los Angeles criminal defense attorney who operates out of the back of his Lincoln Continental sedan. Haller has spent most of his career defending garden-variety criminals, until he lands the case of a lifetime: defending a Beverly Hills playboy accused of murder. But the seemingly straightforward case suddenly develops into a deadly game of survival for Haller.

"Sucker Punch" is that takes us into the vivid imagination of a young girl whose dream world provides the ultimate escape from her darker reality. Unrestrained by the boundaries of time and place, she is free to go where her mind takes her, and her incredible adventures blur the lines between what’s real and what is imaginary. She has been locked away against her will, but Babydoll (Emily Browning) has not lost her will to survive. Determined to fight for her freedom, she urges four other young girls—the outspoken Rocket (Jena Malone), the street-smart Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), the fiercely loyal Amber (Jamie Chung) and the reluctant Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish)—to band together and try to escape their terrible fate at the hands of their captors, Blue (Oscar Isaac), Madam Gorski (Carla Gugino) and the High Roller (Jon Hamm). Led by Babydoll, the girls engage in fantastical warfare against everything from samurais to serpents, with a virtual arsenal at their disposal. Together, they must decide what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive. But with the help of a Wise Man (Scott Glenn), their unbelievable journey—if they succeed—will set them free.

A 15-year-old boy has two objectives: To lose his virginity before his next birthday, and to stop his mother from leaving his father for her dance teacher.

Eight French monks live peacefully in a monastery perched in the mountains of Algeria until post-colonial tensions escalate.

In 140 AD, twenty years after the unexplained disappearance of the entire Ninth Legion in the mountains of Scotland, young centurion Marcus Aquila (Tatum) arrives from Rome to solve the mystery and restore the reputation of his father, the commander of the Ninth. Accompanied only by his British slave Esca (Bell), Marcus sets out across Hadrian's Wall into the uncharted highlands of Caledonia - to confront its savage tribes, make peace with his father's memory, and retrieve the lost legion's golden emblem, the Eagle of the Ninth.

As the summer of 1988 winds down, three friends on the verge of adulthood attend an out-of-control party in celebration of their last night of unbridled youth

When decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens (Jake Gyllenhaal) wakes up in the body of an unknown man, he discovers he’s part of a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. In an assignment unlike any he’s ever known, he learns he’s part of a government experiment called the “Source Code,” a program that enables him to cross over into another man's identity in the last 8 minutes of his life. With a second, much larger target threatening to kill millions in downtown Chicago, Colter re-lives the incident over and over again, gathering clues each time, until he can solve the mystery of who is behind the bombs and prevent the next attack.

Chronicles the journey of a father and son adjusting to cerebral trauma and a lifetime of missed opportunities.

On the far side of a once-passionate romance, Cindy (Michelle Williams) and Dean (Ryan Gosling) are married with a young daughter. Hoping to save their marriage, they steal away to a theme hotel. We then encounter them years earlier, when they met and fell in love—full of life and hope. The film begs the question, where did their love go?

Master diver Frank McGuire (Richard Roxburgh) has explored the South Pacific's Esa-ala Caves for months. But when his exit is cut off in a flash flood, Frank's team—including 17-year-old son Josh (Rhys Wakefield) and financier Carl Hurley (Ioan Gruffudd)—are forced to radically alter plans. With dwindling supplies, the crew must navigate an underwater labyrinth to make it out.

The film details the story of a dying breed of stage entertainer whose thunder is being stolen by emerging rock stars. Forced to accept increasingly obscure assignments in fringe theaters, garden parties and bars, he meets a young fan who changes his life forever.

Based on a memoir by Slavomir Rawicz about his escape from a Siberian gulag and subsequent 4000-mile walk to freedom in India.

A man leads a reckless life highlighted by three marriages, two children and being a "person of interest" in the mysterious disappearance of his bosom buddy.

Follows skeptical seminary student Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue), who reluctantly attends exorcism school at the Vatican. While he’s in Rome, Michael meets an unorthodox priest, Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), who introduces him to the darker side of his faith, uncovering the devil’s reach even to one of the holiest places on Earth.