Browse Movies : 2008 : R : Drama

A Los Angeles police officer has always done what was needed to solve homicides and crack down on gang violence, but he gets a wakeup call and decides he can no longer play the game that made him so effective.

"The Reader" opens in post-WWII Germany when teenager Michael Berg becomes ill and is helped home by Hanna, a stranger twice his age. Michael recovers from scarlet fever and seeks out Hanna to thank her. The two are quickly drawn into a passionate but secretive affair.

Michael discovers that Hanna loves being read to and their physical relationship deepens. Hanna is enthralled as Michael reads to her from "The Odyssey," "Huck Finn," and "The Lady with the Little Dog." Despite their intense bond, Hanna mysteriously disappears one day and Michael is left confused and heartbroken.

Eight years later, while Michael is a law student observing the Nazi war crime trials, he is stunned to find Hanna back in his life – this time as a defendant in the courtroom. As Hanna's past is revealed, Michael uncovers a deep secret that will impact both of their lives. "The Reader" is a haunting story about truth and reconciliation, about how one generation comes to terms with the crimes of another.

Set in the 1950's, a happy suburban couple with two children find themselves caught between their true desires and the pressure to conform -- with explosive consequences.

The film chronicles the murder of former Beatle John Lennon. Jaried Leto will play Lennon's murderer Mark Chapman, while Lindsay Lohan will play a devoted Lennon fan who befriends Chapman on the weekend in 1980 when he kills the former Beatle.

Clint Eastwood stars in the drama "Gran Torino," marking his first film role since his Oscar-winning "Million Dollar Baby." Eastwood also directs the film in which he plays Walt Kowalski, an iron-willed veteran living in a changing world, who is forced by his immigrant neighbors to confront his own long-held prejudices. .

"Slumdog Millionaire" is the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" But when the show breaks for the night, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show's questions. Intrigued by Jamal's story, the jaded Police Inspector begins to wonder what a young man with no apparent desire for riches is really doing on this game show? When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out…

Based on Washington Post columnist David Ignatius' 2007 novel about a CIA operative, Roger Ferris (Leonardo DiCaprio), who uncovers a lead on a major terrorist leader suspected to be operating out of Jordan. When Ferris devises a plan to infiltrate his network, he must first win the backing of cunning CIA veteran Ed Hoffman (Russell Crowe) and the collegial, but perhaps suspect, head of Jordanian intelligence. Although ostensibly his allies, Ferris questions how far he can really trust these men without putting his entire operation – and his life – on the line.

Based on an extraordinary true story, "Defiance" is an epic tale of family, honor, vengeance and salvation in World War II. The year is 1941 and the Jews of Eastern Europe are being massacred by the thousands. Managing to escape certain death, three brothers take refuge in the dense surrounding woods they have known since childhood. There they begin their desperate battle against the Nazis. Daniel Craig, Liev Schreiber and Jamie Bell star as brothers who turn a primitive struggle to survive into something far more consequential -- a way to avenge the deaths of their loved ones by saving thousands of others.

Ray Eddy, an upstate New York trailer mom, is lured into the world of illegal immigrant smuggling when she meets a Mohawk girl who lives on a reservation that straddles the US-Canadian border. Broke after her husband takes off with the down payment for their new doublewide, Ray reluctantly teams up with Lila, a smuggler, and the two begin making runs across the frozen St. Lawrence River carrying illegal Chinese and Pakistani immigrants in the trunk of Ray's Dodge Spirit.

Taking place in the 1960s American South, Dakota Fanning plays Lewellen. a troubled 12-year old girl who finds solace from an abusive life through blues music. Blues music is delicately woven throughout this touching film to create a colorful tapestry of a melancholy life that finds release and healing through the music of Elvis Presley, whose character appears in the movie, albeit briefly, and the singing of the Blues.

When Leon Kaufman's latest body of work--a collection of provocative, nighttime studies of the city and its inhabitants--earns the struggling photographer interest from prominent art gallerist Susan Hoff, she propels him to get grittier and show the darker side of humanity for his upcoming debut at her downtown art space. Believing he's finally on track for success, Leon's obsessive pursuit of dark subject matter leads him into the path of a serial killer--Mahogany, the subway murderer who stalks late-night commuters, ultimately butchering them in the most gruesome ways imaginable. With his concerned girlfriend Maya fearing for his life, Leon's relentless fascination with Mahogany lures him further and further into the bowels of the subways and ultimately into an abyss of pure evil--inadvertently pulling Maya right along with him.

"The Elephant King" is a provocative and stirring story of two American brothers, Oliver and Jake Hunt, adrift in an exotic world they don't fully understand. When a domineering mother dispatches her young, introverted son Oliver off to Thailand to do everything he can to lure his reckless, older brother back home to the United States to face pending fraud charges, Oliver finds the intoxication of Thailand hard to resist--especially when it has a face as alluring as Lek's. As Oliver falls deeply in love for the first time, Jake slips deeper into despair, and the seams of their relationship begin to come undone. When the true extent of Jake's decadence and self-destruction is revealed to Oliver, he is forced to decide whether he will save his brother's life or his own.

Poppy is a teacher from north London whose life, at first glance, seems to be full of complications. It is hard to figure if she is a little crazy and irresponsible or deeply sane and sensible. Either way, everybody falls in love with her for better or for worse.

Rebecca Romijn plays a small-town cop romantically involved with Garity's character, who reunites with his estranged mother (Sissy Spacek) when deadly circumstances threaten their home.

In 1977, Harvey Milk was elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, becoming the first openly gay man to be voted into public office in America. His victory was not just a victory for gay rights; he forged coalitions across the political spectrum. From senior citizens to union workers, Harvey Milk changed the very nature of what it means to be a fighter for human rights and became, before his untimely death in 1978, a hero for all Americans. During the last eight years of his life, while living in New York City, he turns 40. Looking for more purpose, he and his lover Scott Smith relocate to San Francisco, where they found a small business, Castro Camera, in the heart of a working-class neighborhood. Then, with support from Scott and from new friends like young activist Cleve Jones, Milk plunges headfirst into the choppy waters of politics. Bolstering his public profile with humor, Milk's actions speak even louder than his gift-of-gab words. When Milk is elected supervisor for the newly zoned District 5, he tries to coordinate his efforts with those of another newly elected supervisor, Dan White. But as White and Milk's political agendas increasingly diverge, their personal destinies tragically converge.

A pair of veteran New York City police detectives are on the trail of a vigilante serial killer. After 30 years as partners in the pressure cooker environment of the NYPD, highly decorated Detectives David Fisk and Thomas Cowan should be ready for retirement, but aren't. Before they can hang up their badges, they are called in to investigate the murder of a notorious pimp, which appears to have ties to a case they solved years before. Like the original murder, the victim is a suspected criminal whose body is found accompanied by a four line poem justifying the killing. When additional crimes take place, it becomes clear the detectives are looking for a serial killer, one who targets criminals that have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system. His mission is to do what the cops can't do on their own--take the culprits off the streets for good. The similarities between the recent killings and their earlier case raise a nagging question: Did they put the wrong man behind bars?

Adrien Brody and Jeffrey Wright will portray blues/R&B record exec Leonard Chess and blues musician Muddy Waters, respectively. Leonard Chess launched the Chicago blues label Chess Records and traveled throughout the south, discovering artists and selling records from the back of his Cadillac.

A mother prays for the return of her kidnapped son. When her prayers are answered, however, she begins to suspect the boy who comes back is not her child. Inspired by true events that took place in Los Angeles in the 1920s.

Actor-turned-director Clark Gregg shows he is as adept behind the camera as he is in front of it with "Choke", a wickedly colorful dark comedy about mothers and sons, sexual compulsion, and the sordid underbelly of Colonial theme parks. Victor Mancini (Rockwell), a sex-addicted med-school dropout, who keeps his increasingly deranged mother, Ida (Huston), in an expensive private medical hospital by working days as a historical reenactor at a Colonial Williamsburg theme park. At night Victor runs a scam by deliberately choking in upscale restaurants to form parasitic relationships with the wealthy patrons who "save" him. When, in a rare lucid movement, Ida reveals that she has withheld the shocking truth of his father's identity, Victor enlists the aid of his best friend, Denny (Henke) and his mother's beautiful attending physician, Dr. Paige Marshall (Macdonald), to solve the mystery before the truth of his possibly divine parentage is lost forever.

A semiautobiographical account of Gallo's life as an impressionist painter during the summer of 1974.