Problem: Build a movie plot around this: How many different time-frames does the film switch between? Three

A: Structure and content[edit]Mirror depicts the thoughts, emotions and memories of Alexei, or Alyosha (Ignat Daniltsev), and the world around him as a child, adolescent, and forty-year-old. The adult Alexei is only briefly glimpsed, but is present as a voice-over in some scenes including substantial dialogue. The structure of the film is discontinuous and nonchronological, without a conventional plot, and combines incidents, dreams and memories along with some news-reel footage. The film switches among three different time-frames: prewar (1935), war-time (1940s), and postwar (1960s or '70s).Mirror draws heavily on Tarkovsky's own childhood. Memories such as the evacuation from Moscow to the countryside during the war, a withdrawn father and his own mother, who actually worked as a proof-reader at a printing press, feature prominently.Synopsis[edit]The film opens with Alexei's adolescent son Ignat (also played by Ignat Daniltsev) switching on a televisor and watching the examination of a stammerer by a physician. After the opening titles roll, a scene is set in the countryside during prewar times in which Alexei's mother Maria (Margarita Terekhova) also called Masha and Marusya talks with a doctor (Anatoli Solonitsyn) who chances to be passing by. The exterior and interior of Alexei's grandfather's country house are seen. The young Alexei, his mother and sister watch as the family barn burns down. In a dream sequence Maria is washing her hair. Now in the postwar time-frame, Alexei is heard talking with his mother Maria on the phone while rooms of an apartment are seen. Switching back to the prewar time-frame, Maria is seen rushing frantically to her work-place as a proof-reader at a printing press. She is worrying about a mistake she may have overlooked, but is comforted by her colleague Liza (Alla Demidova), who then abruptly reduces her to tears with withering criticism. Back in postwar time, Alexei quarrels with his wife, Natalia (also played by Margarita Terekhova), who has divorced him and is...

Problem: Build a movie plot around this: What does the local priest do? He douses himself with gasoline and sets himself on fire.

A: The film follows two stories, one about the civilians trying to stay alive during the disaster, having to battle both "the crazies" as well as U.S. soldiers ordered to shoot on sight. The other involves the political and military leaders trying to contain the epidemic.Set in the small town of Evans City, Pennsylvania, the central characters are firefighter David (Will McMillan), his girlfriend, nurse Judy (Lane Carroll), and firefighter Clank (Harold Wayne Jones). David was a Green Beret and Clank an infantryman, both having served in Vietnam. The town has seen a number of violent events, including arson at a local farm by a demented farmer. Judy and David are very concerned, since Judy is pregnant.Meanwhile, heavily armed U.S. troops in NBC suits and gas masks, arrive in town, led by Major Ryder (Harry Spillman), who takes over the doctor's office where Judy works. Days earlier, an Army plane carrying an untested bioweapon crash-landed in the hills near the town, infecting the water supply with a virus code-named "Trixie," causing victims to either die or become homicidal. "Trixie" is highly contagious, with anyone drinking from the Evans City reservoir becoming affected. In Washington D.C., government officials order Colonel Peckem (Lloyd Hollar) to go to Evans City to help contain the virus, while scientist Dr. Watts (Richard France), arrives to develop a cure before the virus spreads beyond the small town.Officials also deploy bombers armed with nuclear weapons, to destroy the town, if necessary. Mayhem begins when the Army quarantines the town, shooting anyone attempting to escape. The soldiers move the townspeople into the high school, and chaos happens when the sheriff (Robert Karlowsky) is shot with his own pistol. While the townspeople are being rousted from their homes, a soldier encounters a quiet elderly woman. He kindly urges the woman to come with him, but she stabs him with her knitting needle. By now, nearly all of the villagers are infected. A group of soldiers are killed by a mob armed...

Problem: Build a movie plot around this: Who does Barrett think used the house's forces to attack him? Tanner

A: Physicist Lionel Barrett is enlisted by an eccentric millionaire, Mr. Deutsch, to make an investigation into "survival after death" in "the one place where it has yet to be refuted". This is the Belasco House, the "Mount Everest of haunted houses", originally owned by the notorious "Roaring Giant" Emeric Belasco, a six-foot-five perverted millionaire and supposed murderer, who disappeared soon after a massacre at his home. The house is believed to be haunted by numerous spirits, the victims of Belasco's twisted and sadistic desires.Accompanying Barrett are his wife, Ann, as well as two mediums: a mental medium and Spiritualist minister, Florence Tanner, and a physical medium, Ben Fischer, who is the only survivor of an investigation 20 years previously. The rationalist Barrett is rudely sceptical of Tanner's belief in "surviving personalities", spirits which haunt the physical world, and he asserts that there is nothing but unfocused electromagnetic energy in the house. Barrett brings a machine he has developed, which he believes will rid the house of this energy.Though not a physical medium, Tanner begins to manifest physical phenomena inside the house. When, after a quarrel with Tanner, Barrett is attacked by invisible forces, he suspects that Tanner may be using the house's energy against him. Meanwhile, Fischer remains aloof, with his mind closed to the house's influence, and is only there to collect the generous paycheck.Ann Barrett is subjected to erotic visions late at night, which seem linked to her lackluster sex life. She goes downstairs and, in an apparent trance, disrobes and demands sex from Fischer. He strikes her, snapping her out of the trance, and she returns to herself, horrified and ashamed. A second incident occurs a day or so later; this time, she is awake but uninhibited due to alcohol. Her husband arrives a moment later to witness her advances to Fischer. He is resentful, and spurns Fischer's psychic ability, claiming that "Mr. Deutsch is wasting one-third of his money!" Stricken by...

Problem: Build a movie plot around this: Who leads the immigrant Irish? Priest Vallon

A:
In 1846, in Lower Manhattan's "Five Points" district, a territorial war raging for years, between the "Natives" (comprising those born in the United States of British descent) and recently arrived Irish, Catholic immigrants, is about to come to a head in Paradise Square. The Natives are led by William "Bill the Butcher" Cutting (Daniel Day-Lewis), an American Protestant nativist, with an open hatred of recent immigrants. The leader of the immigrant Irish, the "Dead Rabbits", is Priest Vallon (Liam Neeson), who has a young son, Amsterdam (played as a child by Cian McCormack). Cutting and Vallon meet with their respective gangs in a horrific and bloody battle, concluding when Bill kills Priest Vallon, which Amsterdam witnesses. Cutting declares the Dead Rabbits outlawed and orders Vallon's body be buried with honor. Amsterdam seizes the knife that kills his father, races off and buries it. He is found and taken to the orphanage at Hellgate.Sixteen years later, Amsterdam returns to New York as a grown man (Leonardo DiCaprio) in the second year of the Civil War. It is September 1862, days after the Battle of Antietam and the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation. Arriving in Five Points, he reunites with an old friend, Johnny Sirocco (Henry Thomas). Johnny, now a member of a clan of pickpockets and thieves, introduces Amsterdam to Bill the Butcher, for whom the group steals. Amsterdam finds many of his father's old loyalists are now under Bill's control, including Happy Jack Mulraney (John C. Reilly), now a corrupt city constable and in Bill's pocket and McGloin (Gary Lewis), now one of Bill's lieutenants. Amsterdam soon works his way into the Butcher's inner circle. Amsterdam learns that each year, on the anniversary of the Five Points battle (February 16), Bill leads the city in saluting the victory over the Dead Rabbits and he makes plans to kill the Butcher during this ceremony, in front of the entire Five Points community, to exact public revenge. Amsterdam meets Jenny Everdeane (Cameron Diaz), a...