What's Eating Gilbert Grape is a 1993 dramedy movie directed by Lasse Hallström and starring Johnny Depp, Juliette Lewis and Leonardo DiCaprio. It is based on a book of the same name by author Peter Hedges. It was filmed in Manor, Texas.

Plot:

In the small town of Endora, Iowa, Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp) is busy caring for his mentally handicapped brother, Arnie (Leonardo DiCaprio). His morbidly obese mother, Bonnie (Darlene Cates), has not left the house in seven years since her husband committed suicide in the basement of their house, spending almost all of her time on the couch watching television. With Bonnie unable to care for her children on her own, Gilbert has taken responsibility for repairing the old house and looking after Arnie, who has a habit of climbing up the town water tower, while his sisters Amy and Ellen do the rest. A new "Food Land" supermarket has opened, threatening the small Lamson's Grocery where Gilbert works. With all the weight on his shoulders Gilbert tries to handle his situation the best he can.

As the film begins, the family is preparing for Arnies's 18th birthday. Just then, a young woman named Becky (Juliette Lewis) and her grandmother are stuck in town when the truck pulling their mobile home breaks down. When Gilbert first sees Becky, he begins to rethink his life. His unusual, chaotic home life threatens to get in the way of their budding romance. The mother climbs the stairs of her house to her bedroom for the first time since her husband's suicide and dies for reasons not mentioned in the film directly. The children, not willing to let their mother become the joke of the town by having her corpse lifted from the house by crane empty their family home of possessions and set it ablaze, to cremate their parent. The film cuts to the blaze and fades out with the family looking on at their burning home. The story then skips ahead one year, with Gilbert describing how Amy got a job in Des Moines, and Ellen who can't wait to switch schools, as Gilbert and his brother Arnie wait by the side of a long road for the arrival of Gilbert's romance, Becky. The film fades out with Gilbert and Arnie riding with Becky and her grandmother to an untold destination, hugging each other in the back seat of the Recreational Vehicle owned by Becky's grandmother.

Natural Born Killers is a 1994 satirical movie directed by Oliver Stone and starring Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson. It also features appearances by Rodney Dangerfield, Robert Downey Jr., Tom Sizemore and Tommy Lee Jones.

Plot:

The film opens with Mickey Knox (Harrelson) and his girlfriend Mallory (Lewis) in a roadside cafe. Mallory is offended when a hick tries to hit on her. He asks her to dance, she dances for a short while. Mallory then punches him in the face and kicks him several times, embarrassing him. He tries to fight back, but is easily put down by Mallory. She jumps on him and stomps on his face to kill him, shocking and humiliating the man. Mickey, meanwhile, stabs two other customers and shoots the chef and the waitress (with a drawn-out bulletime sequence). They leave one witness alive, as is their custom, to "tell the tale."


After the titles, there is a flashback sequence to how the murderous pair met up: Mickey was a delivery man who turned up at the house where Mallory lived with her physically and sexually abusive father (Rodney Dangerfield), her mother, and Kevin, her younger brother. The scene is portrayed as a sitcom with a canned laughter track, the "audience" laughing hardest when Mallory is subjected to lewd comments and molestation by her repulsive father. When Mickey arrives with a delivery of beef, he falls in love with Mallory and whisks her away on a date, stealing her father's car in the process. Mickey is arrested and imprisoned for car-theft, but escapes and returns to Mallory's house. The two kill her father by drowning him in the fishtank, and burn her mother alive in her bed. They spare her ten-year-old brother. Mickey then takes Mallory away with him.

Back in the present the pair continue their crime-spree (which bears several parallels to Bonnie and Clyde), slaughtering their way across the southwest United States and ultimately claiming fifty-two victims. Following them are two characters who have an obsessive interest in Mickey and Mallory for the purposes of acquiring fame and glory, as well as furthering their own careers. The first is a policeman, Detective Jack Scagnetti (Sizemore), who is seemingly in love with Mallory. Scagnetti wants to achieve hero status by capturing the pair, though it is plainly revealed that Scagnetti has a lifelong obsession with serial killers after seeing his mother shot and killed by Charles Whitman when he was five. The second is journalist Wayne Gale (Downey), who hosts a show called 'American Maniacs', profiling serial killers in a blatantly sensationalist way. Various clips of his program on Mickey and Mallory are shown, with Gale sounding outraged as he details the pair's crimes, although off-air he clearly regards their crimes as a fantastic way of boosting his show's ratings. It is Gale who is mostly responsible for elevating Mickey and Mallory into heroes, with his show featuring interviews with people expressing their admiration for the mass-killers as if they were film stars.

While lost in the desert, Mickey and Mallory are taken in by a Navajo man (known as "Old Indian") and his grandson. After the duo fall asleep, the Old Indian begins chanting beside the fire, invoking nightmares in Mickey about his abusive father and mother. Mickey wakes up in a rage and shoots Old Indian before he realizes what he is doing. Mallory and Mickey are both traumatized, marking the first time the couple feel guilty for a murder. Mallory exclaims, "You killed life!" implying Old Indian was more worthy of living than their previous victims. While running from the scene through the desert, the two are bitten repeatedly by rattlesnakes.

They go to a drugstore to find snakebite antidote, but the police interfere and a gunfight ensues, ending when Scagnetti captures them at gunpoint. The film then jumps ahead one year. After a surreal trial that is shown in a flashback in clips from 'American Maniacs', the homicidal couple have been imprisoned but are shortly due to be shipped to a mental hospital after being declared insane.

Scagnetti arrives at the prison and meets up with Warden McClusky (Tommy Lee Jones) and the two devise a plan to get rid of Mickey and Mallory: McClusky will arrange for Scagnetti to transport the Knoxs to the mental hospital. Alone with the pair during transport, Scagnetti will shoot and kill them claiming that they were trying to escape. Gale is also at the prison and persuades Mickey to agree to a live interview to air immediately after the Super Bowl. At the time, Mallory is held in solitary confinement elsewhere in the prison, awaiting her transport to the mental hospital.

As planned, Mickey is interviewed by Gale. He gives a speech about how crime is a normal part of humanity, describes enlightenment through murder and declares himself a "natural born killer." His words inspire the other inmates (who are watching the interview on TV in the recreation room) and incite them to riot. During the riot, the inmates subdue, torture, and murder nearly all of the prison guards and their inmate informants.

Warden McClusky heads down to the control room, leaving Mickey alone with Gale, the film crew and several guards. Using a lengthy joke complete with hand gestures as a diversion, Mickey elbow-smashes a guard in the face and steals his shotgun. Mickey kills most of the guards and takes the survivors and film crew hostage. He leads them through the prison riot to find Mallory. Gale follows, giving a live television interview as people are slaughtered all around him. Meanwhile, Mallory is being savagely beaten in her cell by Scagnetti for refusing to submit to his attempts at seduction (for which she attacked him). Still live on national television, Mickey engages in a short Mexican Standoff with Scagnetti, eventually feigning concession to lower Scagnetti's guard so that Mallory can stab him in the throat with a fork. Scagnetti is shot by Mallory shortly after, with his own gun.

After being rescued by a mysterious prisoner named Owen (Arliss Howard), Mickey and Mallory take cover in a blood-splattered shower-room. By this time Gale has snapped and has shot a number of prison guards himself, finding the killing a thrill. Warden McClusky is outside the shower room with dozens of guards. Obsessed with killing Mickey and Mallory, McClusky threatens to storm the shower room, despite the protests of his guards who insist that there are more pressing problems, namely the hundreds of other rioting inmates heading their way.

Mickey and Mallory, together with their savior, Owen, eventually manage to escape, holding guns to the heads of Wayne Gale and a prison-guard hostage, Gale's camera still capturing everything. After Mickey and Mallory flee, McClusky and his guards are massacred by hordes of inmates who eventually burst through into the area. In the director's cut of the film, there is a shot of McClusky's head on a pike.

In a rural location Mickey and Mallory give a final interview to Wayne Gale before - much to his surprise and horror - they execute him, capturing it on the camera (their one survivor).

Cape Fear is a 1991 film, directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a remake of the 1962 film of the same name and tells the story of a family man, a former public defender, whose family is threatened by a convicted rapist who wants vengeance for having been put in prison fourteen years before because of the lawyer's faulty defense tactics.

Plot:

Sam Bowden (Nick Nolte) is a former Atlanta public defender who seeks to start life anew in corporate law for him and his family in the quiet resort town of New Essex, North Carolina. Max Cady (Robert DeNiro) is a client Sam defended fourteen years prior to the setting of the movie. Cady, who was being tried for the rape of a 16-year-old girl, was illiterate at the time of the trial and was unable to read a report Sam kept hidden from him and the court that could have lightened his sentence or gotten him acquitted. Now a well-read, recently-released ex-convict Cady stalks Bowden and plans to seek vengeance. The movie reaches a riveting climax as the two men engage in a showdown during a severe thunderstorm on Cape Fear.