[Q]: Build a movie plot around this: What is Loretta? Lonnegan's hired killer
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[A]: The film takes place in 1936, at the height of the Great Depression. Johnny Hooker, a grifter in Joliet, Illinois, cons $11,000 in cash ($187,600 today) in a pigeon drop from an unsuspecting victim with the aid of his partners Luther Coleman and Joe Erie. Buoyed by the windfall, Luther announces his retirement and advises Hooker to seek out an old friend, Henry Gondorff, in Chicago to teach him "the big con". Unfortunately, their victim was a numbers racket courier for vicious crime boss Doyle Lonnegan. Corrupt Joliet police Lieutenant William Snyder confronts Hooker, revealing Lonnegan's involvement and demanding part of Hooker's cut. Having already spent his share, Hooker pays Snyder in counterfeit bills. Lonnegan's men murder both the courier and Luther, and Hooker flees for his life to Chicago.Hooker finds Henry Gondorff, a once-great con-man now hiding from the FBI, and asks for his help in taking on the dangerous Lonnegan. Gondorff is initially reluctant, but he relents and recruits a core team of experienced con men to con Lonnegan. They decide to resurrect an elaborate and supposedly obsolete scam known as "the wire", using a larger crew of con artists to create a phony off-track betting parlor. Aboard the opulent 20th Century Limited, Gondorff, posing as boorish Chicago bookie Shaw, buys into Lonnegan's private, high-stakes poker game. Shaw infuriates Lonnegan with his obnoxious behavior, then out-cheats him to win $15,000. Hooker, posing as Shaw's disgruntled employee, Kelly, is sent to collect the winnings and instead convinces Lonnegan that he wants to take over Shaw's operation. Kelly reveals that he has a partner named Les Harmon (actually con man Kid Twist) in the Chicago Western Union office, who will allow them to win bets on horse races by past-posting.Meanwhile, Snyder has tracked Hooker to Chicago, but his pursuit is thwarted when he is summoned by undercover FBI agents led by Agent Polk, who orders him to assist in their plan to arrest Gondorff using Hooker. At the same time, Lonnegan...

[Q]: Build a movie plot around this: Who tells Mary that Bob has been stealing from her account? Bob's Lawyer.
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[A]: Ruth is a frumpy, overweight wife and mother, who tries desperately to please her husband Bob, an accountant trying to boost his business. After Bob meets Mary Fisher, a romance novelist, at a dinner party, they begin an affair. Ruth, aware of the affair, confronts Bob while his parents are visiting, and Bob leaves her. As he packs his suitcase, he says his assets are his home, his family, his career, and his freedom. Angry, Ruth vows revenge on him and Mary. Ruth writes a list titled "Bob's Assets", with the four assets that Bob stated. She crosses off each one when it is destroyed. With Bob away at Mary's and the kids at school, she sets the house on fire, which is destroyed in a gigantic explosion. She drops the children off with Bob (now living with Mary) and tells him that she will not be returning. However, she is still working behind the scenes to destroy Bob's remaining assets. It is revealed that Bob's second asset, his family, is being destroyed, too, as Mary's selfish refusal to learn how to be a mother causes tension in her relationship with Bob.Ruth takes a job at a nursing home under the pseudonym Vesta Rose, where she befriends Mary's foul-mouthed, estranged mother, and arranges for her to return to Mary's life at an inopportune moment. She also meets Nurse Hooper, a woman who has worked for the nursing home for twenty-two years and put aside her earnings for a considerable life savings. They form a partnership and start an employment agency for downtrodden women who have been rejected by society and need a second chance. The agency is a success, and women who Ruth has helped assist her in getting revenge on Bob.Mary writes a new novel loosely based on her romance with Bob, which her publisher considers strange and off putting, because of its focus on laundry and the protagonists' name, Bob. Olivia, an attractive but ditzy young blonde applies to Ruth's agency, and she finds her a position as Bob's secretary. He soon starts sleeping with her but when she proclaims her love, he immediately...

[Q]: Build a movie plot around this: Who makes a conscious effort to reverse everything his ego tells him to do? Jake
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[A]: Dorothy Macha (Ray Liotta) is a gang boss involved in illegal gambling all over the city. With the help of three goons, known as "the three Eddies", he controls several games that take place in the underground. On one occasion, just before a big game, Macha loses his card man. With no chances left, Macha asks for help of Jake Green (Jason Statham), a card man with a good reputation underground. When Jake refuses, they harass Jake's brother, Billy (Andrew Howard), and Billy's family to convince Jake to play. He succumbs and plays the game, which he ends up winning. The loser, a high roller named George, insults Jake's mother and Jake responds by shooting him in the foot, igniting a gunfight in which the game's money vanishes.Two weeks later, Jake's name is mentioned and he is brought in for questioning by the police. Taking precautionary measures, Macha sends the three Eddies to Billy's house where they threaten his niece. Billy's wife reacts poorly in the situation and is accidentally shot. Jake does not give Macha's name to the police to protect Billy and his family and ends up sentenced to prison. He is given a choice to either spend 14 years in general prison population or 7 years in solitary confinement. He chooses the latter.During his seven-year stint imprisoned in solitary confinement Jake learns of a specific strategy (referred to as "The Formula") that is supposed to lead its user to win every game. The Formula itself was discovered by two unnamed men who inhabited adjacent cells on either side of Jake's own. They are referred to as a chess expert and a con man. During the first five years of his seven-year sentence, the three men communicated their thoughts on confidence tricks and chess moves via messages hidden inside library books, such as The Mathematics of Quantum Mechanics.The chess expert and the con man plan to leave their cells simultaneously, and promise to take Jake with them. But when they disappear from their cells, they leave Jake behind to serve the remaining two years of his...

[Q]: Build a movie plot around this: What does the ghostwriter stumble upon? A dark secret concerning Lang
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[A]:
When a successful British ghostwriter (Ewan McGregor) agrees to complete the memoirs of former British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan), his agent assures him it is the opportunity of a lifetime. But the project seems doomed from the start not least because his predecessor on the project, Lang's long-term aide, died in an apparent accident. The ghostwriter flies out to work on the project, in the middle of winter, at an oceanfront house in the fictional village of Old Haven (an allusion to Vineyard Haven) on Martha's Vineyard. But the day he arrives, a former British foreign minister named Rycart accuses Lang of authorizing the illegal seizure of suspected terrorists and handing them over for torture by the CIA a possible war crime. Lang faces the threat of prosecution by the International Criminal Court, unless he stays in the U.S. or goes to another country that does not recognize that court.The controversy brings reporters and protesters swarming to the security perimeter of the island home where Lang is staying with his wife, Ruth (Olivia Williams), and his personal assistant (and mistress), Amelia Bly (Kim Cattrall). As the ghostwriter works, he uncovers clues suggesting his predecessor may have stumbled on a dark secret concerning Lang and that somehow this information is hidden in the manuscript he left behind. During Lang's absence, the neglected Ruth sleeps with the writer. The writer also meets an old man (Eli Wallach) living locally, who tells him that there is no possible way the current could have taken the body of the dead writer from the ferry where he disappeared to the beach location where it was discovered. The old man also reveals that a woman saw flashlights on the beach the night the body was discovered, but later fell down her stairs and went into a coma.The next morning, the ghostwriter follows the GPS in the car of the previous writer, which leads him to the estate of Professor Paul Emmett (Tom Wilkinson), who also appears in college photographs with Lang which have been left...