1. "Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery" - 60 Minutes called Wolfgang Beltracchi a “con man of epic proportions” and dubbed him and his wife Helene, “the Bonnie and Clyde of the art world.” For nearly 40 years the charming and effervescent Beltracchi produced hundreds of meticulous works of art, forgeries of early and mid-20th century artists, using old canvases and distressed frames scoured from flea markets and paints whose pigments he ground himself. Amazingly, he didn’t reproduce known paintings, but, working in an artist’s style, would create entirely new “masterpieces.”
A large Max Ernst that took him three days to produce could easily fetch $5 million. Beltracchi was put on trial in 2011, but he readily admits that the handful of forgeries for which he was held accountable are just the tip of the iceberg. Many others remain on the walls of some of the world’s greatest art museums and private collectors. Filmmaker Arne Birkenstock, whose father was Beltracchi’s attorney, has unprecedented access to the controversial forger, capturing his unique personality: a bizarre mix of candor and cunning, insouciance and joie de vivre.
2. "Shanghai" - In "Shanghai," an American returns to a corrupt Japanese occupied Shanghai during the Second World War to discover his friend's death. While unraveling the mysteries of this death and the seedy underbelly of Shanghai politics he discovers a much larger secret his own government is hiding.
3. "Hitman: Agent 47" - "Hitman: Agent 47" centers on an elite assassin who was genetically engineered from conception to be the perfect killing machine, and is known only by the last two digits on the barcode tattooed on the back of his neck. He is the culmination of decades of research – and forty-six earlier Agent clones -- endowing him with unprecedented strength, speed, stamina and intelligence. His latest target is a mega-corporation that plans to unlock the secret of Agent 47’s past to create an army of killers whose powers surpass even his own. Teaming up with a young woman who may hold the secret to overcoming their powerful and clandestine enemies, 47 confronts stunning revelations about his own origins and squares off in an epic battle with his deadliest foe.
4. "The Curse of Downers Grove" - The town of Downers Grove looks like your average suburban neighborhood -- but Downers Grove has a disturbing secret.... For the past eight years, one senior from every high school graduating class has met a bizarre death right before graduation day. And this year, Chrissie Swanson (Bella Heathcote) has a terrible feeling that she is going to be the one to die. Can Chrissie survive the curse of Downers Grove or will she, like those seniors before her, fall prey to the town's deadly secret?
5. "She's Funny That Way" - From renowned director Peter Bogdanovich, "She's Funny That Way" is a screwball comedy featuring the interconnected personal lives of the cast and crew of a Broadway production. When established director Arnold Albertson (Owen Wilson) casts his call girl-turned-actress Isabella “Izzy” Patterson (Imogen Poots) in a new play to star alongside his wife Delta (Kathryn Hahn) and her ex-lover Seth Gilbert (Rhys Ifans), a zany love tangle forms with hilarious twists. Jennifer Aniston plays Izzy’s therapist Jane, who is consumed with her own failing relationship with Arnold’s playwright Joshua Fleet (Will Forte), who is also developing a crush on Izzy.
6. "Sinister 2" - The sequel to the 2012 sleeper hit horror movie. In the aftermath of the shocking events in “Sinister,” a protective mother (Shannyn Sossamon of “Wayward Pines”) and her 9-year-old twin sons (real-life twins Robert and Dartanian Sloan) find themselves in a rural house marked for death as the evil spirit of Buhguul continues to spread with frightening intensity.
7. "Some Kind of Beautiful" - Richard (Pierce Brosnan) is a successful college professor who gives up a steady stream of one-night stands and beautiful undergrads for fatherhood with much younger Kate (Jessica Alba). Three years later when Kate falls in love with someone else and moves out, she sends her sister, Olivia (Salma Hayek), to make sure Richard is properly caring for their son. Assuming Richard is back to his irresponsible playboy lifestyle, Olivia is shocked when she starts to fall in love with him herself.
8. "American Ultra" - "American Ultra" is a fast-paced action comedy about Mike (Eisenberg), a seemingly hapless and unmotivated stoner whose small-town life with his live-in girlfriend, Phoebe (Stewart), is suddenly turned upside down. Unbeknownst to him, Mike is actually a highly trained, lethal sleeper agent. In the blink of an eye, as his secret past comes back to haunt him, Mike is thrust into the middle of a deadly government operation and is forced to summon his inner action-hero in order to survive.
9. "Learning to Drive" - Wendy (Clarkson), a successful and self-obsessed book editor, comes home to her New York City brownstone one day to find her husband Ted (Jake Weber, also appearing at the Festival in Hungry Hearts) leaving her — again. But this time it's for good, and Wendy's initial denial turns into grief, anger, and a hard determination to become self-sufficient. That means learning to drive so she can visit her daughter Tasha (Grace Gummer) at college in Vermont. Wendy's determination wavers when she's faced with the confusing reality of an automobile dashboard, but fortunately she has Darwan (Kingsley), the world's most conscientious driving instructor. As Darwan guides Wendy through her automotive education, his patience invites her to open up about her problems. In turn, Wendy's volatile feelings about her changing marital status serve to highlight Darwan's deeply private concerns about his own impending marriage, and their relationship evolves in unexpected and touching ways.
10. "Digging for Fire" - Tim (Jake Johnson) and Lee (Rosemarie Dewitt) are married with a young child. The chance to stay at a fancy home in the Hollywood Hills is complicated by Tim's discovery of a bone and a rusty old gun in the yard. Tim is excited by the idea of a mystery, but Lee doesn't want him to dig any further, preferring that he focus on the family taxes, which he promised to do weeks ago. This disagreement sends them on separate and unexpected adventures over the course of a weekend, as Tim and his friends seek clues to the mystery while Lee searches for answers to the bigger questions of marriage and parenthood.
11. "Grandma" - In "Grandma," Lily Tomlin is Elle Reid. Elle has just gotten through breaking up with her girlfriend when Elle’s granddaughter Sage unexpectedly shows up needing $600 bucks before sundown. Temporarily broke, Grandma Elle and Sage spend the day trying to get their hands on the cash as their unannounced visits to old friends and flames end up rattling skeletons and digging up secrets.
12. "Mateo" - "Mateo" follows America’s most notorious gringo mariachi singer on his misadventures in Cuba. Matthew Stoneman dreamed of pop stardom. Instead, he went to jail, learned Spanish, and emerged as “Mateo,” America’s first white mariachi singer. Mateo is on the brink of completing an album of original songs in Havana. But his estrangement from friends and family, his criminal past, and his love for Cuban women could derail him on his quest for fame.
13. "Guidance" - "Guidance" is about the downward spiral of a man who has no limits. David Gold, 36, a pathologically immature former child actor, has never been able to get over high school. Recently diagnosed with skin cancer, unemployed and with nothing left to lose, he fakes his resume and gets a job as a high school guidance counselor. Quickly winning over the students at Grusin High with his laidback attitude and similar interests, he befriends Jabrielle, a teenaged outcast and soon learns that sometimes you can go too far, especially when it comes to committing a ridiculous crime.
14. "The Park Bench" - "The Park Bench" is a romance comedy about Emily, a neurotic librarian-to-be, assigned to tutor Mateo, a rogue Latino undergrad, struggling to pass American Lit. When she is assigned as his tutor, they agree (reluctantly) to meet three times a week on a park bench to study. At first they do not get along, but when the discussion turns from classics to confessions, they reveal secrets that could change their lives forever. Soon these two opposites learn that they have more in common than they ever could have imagined. Since Emily is engaged to be married, and Mateo has no shortage of girlfriends, the two are forced to tread carefully over their growing feelings for each other.
15. "Being Evel" - In the history of sports, few names are more recognizable than that of Evel Knievel. Long after the man hung up his famous white leather jumpsuit and rode his Harley into the sunset, his name is still synonymous with the death-defying lifestyle he led. Notoriously brash, bold, and daring, Knievel stared death in the face from the seat of his motorcycle, but few know the larger-than-life story of the boy from Butte, Montana.
After an adolescence riddled with petty thievery and general rabble-rousing, Knievel set his sights on superstardom, a feat he achieved when televisions around the world aired the startling crash footage of his 1967 attempt to jump the fountains at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas. The jump was spectacular, but the failed landing that sent him skidding like a ragdoll across the asphalt was the main attraction. Throughout the 1970s, his legacy as King of the Daredevils spawned action figures, movies, and a generation of kids who wanted to be just like Evel. "Being Evel" stars Evel Knievel, Johnny Knoxville, Mat Hoffman, George Hamilton, and Tony Hawk.
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