What Is It? (2005)

Director
Crispin Glover

Main cast
Crispin Glover

Genres
Drama

Description
What Is It? is the name of a 2005 experimental film written, starring, funded and directed by Crispin Glover. As of 2008, the film has only been shown at independent theaters, typically accompanied by a question and answer session, slideshow and meet-and-greet/autograph signing with Glover.


Similar movies

Film about filmmaking. It takes place during one day on set of non-budget movie. Ultimate tribute to all independent filmmakers.
Death in Love is a psychosexual-thriller about a love affair between a Jewish woman and a doctor overseeing human experimentation at a Nazi German concentration camp, and the impact this has on her sons' lives in the 1990s.
Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence—a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.
In the late 1970s, when a mentally handicapped teenager is abandoned, a gay couple takes him in and becomes the family he's never had. But once the unconventional living arrangement is discovered by authorities, the men must fight the legal system to adopt the child.
Major Jock Sinclair has been in this Highland regiment since he joined as a boy piper. During the Second World War, as Second-in-Command, he was made acting Commanding Officer. Now the regiment has returned to Scotland, and a new commanding officer is to be appointed. Jock's own cleverness is pitted against his new CO, his daughter, his girlfriend, and the other officers in the Mess.
The investigation of two horrific mass murders leads to the capture and trial of the psychotic pseudo-hippie Charles Manson and his "family".
Yale University, 1961. Stanley Milgram designs a psychology experiment that still resonates to this day, in which people think they’re delivering painful electric shocks to an affable stranger strapped into a chair in another room. Despite his pleads for mercy, the majority of subjects don’t stop the experiment, administering what they think is a near-fatal electric shock, simply because they’ve been told to do so. With Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial airing in living rooms across America, Milgram strikes a nerve in popular culture and the scientific community with his exploration into people’s tendency to comply with authority. Celebrated in some circles, he is also accused of being a deceptive, manipulative monster, but his wife Sasha stands by him through it all.
An unflinching chronicle of Charles Manson's life leading up to the orchestration of the Tate and LaBianca murders..
Young lovers in London are wrapped up in a love triangle that may not be exactly what it seems. Carmen, a beautiful Spanish woman with a tendency to lose her temper at the drop of a hat, is about to be married to Barnaby, a caring, wealthy, but slightly boring Englishman. While out with friends on her 'hen night' she encounters a stranger who suddenly sparks a passion that has been sleeping within her. As her wedding date approaches, she finds herself struggling to put this newcomer out of her mind, but his effect on her keeps growing stronger. What is it that he sees in her, and why does she feel like she's being pushed inevitably into his arms?
This film is based on the actual events that took place in 1971 when Stanford professor Dr. Philip Zimbardo created what became one of the most shocking and famous social experiments of all time.
True story of Germany's most famous anti-Nazi heroine brought to thrilling, dramatic life. Sophie Scholl stars Julia Jentsch in a luminous performance as the fearless activist of the underground student resistance group, The White Rose. Armed with long-buried historical records of her incarceration, director Marc Rothemund expertly re-creates the last six days of Sophie Scholl's life.
Calvin Campbell is a former professional baseball player sent to an early retirement due to his panic attacks at the plate. Even though he had all the talent for the big leagues, he struggles with the curveballs life has thrown him. Today, he mindlessly sleepwalks through his days and the challenge of raising his teenager daughter. His life is in a slow downward spiral when it is suddenly awakened and invigorated by the most unlikely person – Produce, a young-man with Down syndrome who works at the local grocery store.
A new take on the Manson Family murders, with a keen focus on Charles Manson himself.
An Hungarian youth comes of age at Buchenwald during World War II. György Köves is 14, the son of a merchant who's sent to a forced labor camp. After his father's departure, György gets a job at a brickyard; his bus is stopped and its Jewish occupants sent to camps. There, György find camaraderie, suffering, cruelty, illness, and death. He hears advice on preserving one's dignity and self-esteem. He discovers hatred. If he does survive and returns to Budapest, what will he find? What is natural; what is it to be a Jew? Sepia, black and white, and color alternate to shade the mood.
Tel Aviv, Summer 1989. Boaz, a beautiful and alluring linguistics student, receives anonymous, male written love letters, that undermine his sexual identity and interfere on his peaceful life with his beloved girlfriend.
The story of an aspiring young filmmaker's encounter with a grumpy fount of movie lore.
Nazi skinheads in Melbourne take out their anger on local Vietnamese, who are seen as threatening racial purity. Finally the Vietnamese have had enough and confront the skinheads in an all-out confrontation, sending the skinheads running. A woman who is prone to epileptic seizures joins the skins' merry band, and helps them on their run from justice, but is her affliction also a sign of impurity?
Greed, corruption, ignorance, and disease. Midsummer, 1349: the Black Death reaches northern Germany. Minstrels go to Hamelin for the Mayor's daughter's wedding to the Baron's son. He wants her dowry to pay his army while his father taxes the people to build a cathedral he thinks will save his soul. A local apothecary who's a Jew seeks a treatment for the plague; the priests charge him with witchcraft. One of the minstrels, who has soothed the Mayor's daughter with his music, promises to rid the town of rats for the fee. The Mayor agrees, then renigs. In the morning, the plague, the Jew's trial, and the Piper's revenge come at once.
In a bustling office in Mumbai, Kartik Krishnan sits behind his desk coding HTML websites when he chances upon a blog on cinema featuring Independent filmmakers. This sparks his intentions to make his own short film, thus leading him to contact Srinivas Sunderrajan, an independent filmmaker who agrees to guide him through the process. As he begins piecing the story, cast and screenplay together, several inexplicable phenomena start emerging in his life including a sinister stalker dressed in official government clothing; and the sudden appearance of a strange future-telling antique toy. Troubled with these bizarre developments and the unresolved feelings that he harbours for Swara, his office colleague, Kartik embarks on an extraordinary journey that transcends love, life and logic itself.
Chak De! India follows a team of rag-tag girls with their own agenda who form Team India competing for international fame in field hockey. Their coach, the ex mens Indian National team captain, returns from a life of shame after being unjustly accused of match fixing in his last match. Can he give the girls the motivation required to win, while dealing with the shadows of his own past?
Two stories of love and responsibility separated by four decades have a common link in this drama from writer and director Jean-Marc Vallee. In 2011, Antoine has a life most people would envy -- he's a successful club DJ living in Montreal with an international following, he has a beautiful girlfriend Rose, and is raising two healthy daughters. However, Rose is not Antoine's first love, and he's still infatuated with his ex-wife Carole, the mother of his children. Carole hopes he'll someday return to her, though despite his feelings there's little evidence to suggest he will. In 1969, Jacqueline is a single mother who is raising a seven-year-old son Laurent. Laurent was born with Down's Syndrome, and is not expected to live past 25; Jacqueline is determined to do whatever she can for her boy during the time he has, but as the stress of these demands take their toll, we learn that she and Carole share a special connection.
Via the Cleveland Plain Dealer: "One-third of the film is devoted to Ivor, the film’s pseudonym for Charles Manson, picking up the girls who are to become members of his “family.” One-third delves into the psychological reasons why the girls are attracted to him and the psychological reasons behind his actions. The final third is devoted to the “family’s” murders."
20 men are chosen to participate in the roles of guards and prisoners in a psychological study that ultimately spirals out of control.
Hannah Arendt is a portrait of the genius that shook the world with her discovery of “the banality of evil.” After she attends the Nazi Adolf Eichmann’s trial in Jerusalem, Arendt dares to write about the Holocaust in terms no one has ever heard before. Her work instantly provokes a furious scandal, and Arendt stands strong as she is attacked by friends and foes alike. But as the German-Jewish émigré also struggles to suppress her own painful associations with the past, the film exposes her beguiling blend of arrogance and vulnerability — revealing a soul defined and derailed by exile.
During a blizzard in 1964, Dr. David Henry delivers his son Paul with the help of nurse Caroline. But when Henry realizes his wife is also carrying a girl with Down syndrome, he hands the second child over to Caroline without his wife's knowledge. Henry's fateful decision yields grave consequences for his family over the next 20 years.
The story of two brothers: one who’s devoted to his family, the other who’s obsessed with the Manson Family.
A bored, retired rock star sets out to find his father's executioner, an ex-Nazi war criminal who is a refugee in the U.S.
Two misunderstood suburban kids challenge society and run from the police while documenting all of their deeds with a digital camera.
Bentzi, Momo, and Yuda'leh are three teenage boys growing up in 1950's Israel, which is not much different from 1950's America if you believe what you see in the film. Of course they are obsessed with one thing - sex. Bentzi is interested in the beautiful Nili, but she prefers his friend Momo.
Recovering from an attempted suicide, a man is selected to participate in a time travel experiment that has only been tested on mice. A malfunction in the experiment causes the man to experience moments from his past in a random order.
A dying German magnate invites his youngest son and daughter-in-law home to discuss the future of the family's shipbuilding empire. There, the daughter-in-law stumbles upon a secret of the family's Nazi past.
Georges has Down syndrome, living at a mental-institution, Harry is a busy businessman, giving lectures for young aspiring salesmen. He is successful in his business life, but his social life is a disaster since his wife left him and took their two children with her. This weekend his children came by train to meet him, but Harry, working as always, forgot to pick them up. Neither his wife or his children want to see him again and he is driving around on the country roads, anguished and angry. He almost runs over Georges, on the run from the institution since everybody else went home with their parents except him, whose mother is dead. Harry tries to get rid of Georges but he won't leave his new friend. Eventually a special friendship forms between the two of them, a friendship which makes Harry a different person.
A look as the personal and professional lives of employees at an American news magazine in the late 1960s.
Kurt and Sara Müller and their three children left Germany many years ago and finally arrive to her mother's house in Washington DC. Kurt are working for the anti-nazi resistance in Germany. The Romanian count Brankovic who also lives there tries to blackmail him.
The film is a high-concept project with five stories exploring the themes of motherhood and pregnancy, directed by women filmmakers from five former Yugoslav republics. “Croatian Story” follows an anguished painter who must decide whether or not to keep one of her unborn twins, diagnosed with Down syndrome. “Serbian Story” finds an expectant mother in the same emergency room with a charming killer. “Bosnia-Herzegovina Story” centers on a financially strapped Sarajevo family whose son?s lover is pregnant. “Macedonian Story” unfolds in a clinic where a drug addict struggles to keep her baby, and “Slovenian Story” ends the omnibus on a humorous note with a nun who finds her own way to immaculate conception.
Elite snipers Brandon Beckett and Richard Miller are tasked with protecting a gas pipeline from terrorists looking to make a statement. When battles with the enemy lead to snipers being killed by a ghost shooter who knows their exact location, tensions boil as a security breach is suspected. Is there someone working with the enemy on the inside? Is the mission a front for other activity? Is the Colonel pulling the strings?
Jim Van Bebber's "The Manson Family" is an extremely violent and bloody horror film that reconstructs the early activities of the Family and their descent into the Tate-LaBianca killings.Van Bebber mixes this with a contemporary sub plot involving tabloid journalist Jack Wilson's quest to film a documentary on the subject.The film is loaded with plenty of sex and full-frontal nudity.The final third of "The Manson Family" is a grueling nightmare with some of the most sadistic and savage murders ever captured on screen.
Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.
An attractive young couple's open relationship is stretched to the breaking point when each partner finds themselves falling in love with other people.
Ego gets in the way of a harmonious bond between two mega-talents.
Former Danish servicemen Lars and Jimmy are thrown together while training in a neo-Nazi group. Moving from hostility through grudging admiration to friendship and finally passion, events take a darker turn when their illicit relationship in uncovered.
A failed New Jersey inventor embarks on a career as a standup comic, turns to drink, and labors to keep his family together.
Every choice has a consequence. But what if the flip of a coin could trigger two separate but parallel destinies? Bobby (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Kate (Lynn Collins) are a young New York couple at a crossroads whose lives are about to take very different directions. A seemingly ordinary July 4th is cleaved in two by the flip of a coin. One path leads them to gentle discoveries about family, loss and each other on a visit to Brooklyn, and the other plunges them into an urban nightmare of pursuit, suspense and murder in Manhattan.
Setsuko Hara plays Fumiko, whose unsuccessful marriage has made her become more and more cynical. When her niece, Ayako visits and complains about her own marriage, she is unsurprised. Meanwhile, a new couple, whose marriage is similarly unblissful, moves in next door. The two couples create a very awkward bond that could ruin both marriages, but everyone seems to be aware and nobody cares either way. [Cinema Talk Blog]
Alberta, a mousy young woman with the survival skills of a snail, loses cash that isn't hers, so she runs from her small town to Seattle where her old babysitter, Celene, lives - a dominatrix with a classy apartment and a life plan. She lets Alberta stay. Alberta gets a job as a checker at a supermarket and becomes fascinated with Celene's work.
A free-spirited artist (Elizabeth Taylor), who lives near California's Big Sur, meets the administrator (Richard Burton) of the parochial school that her young son attends and lures the cleric away from his wife (Eva Marie Saint).
The film centers on a Jewish counterfeiter, Salomon Sorowitsch, who is coerced into assisting the Nazi operation at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The film won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the 80th Academy Awards in 2008.
An abalone poacher, a dead son, and a broken love story are all bound together by a single theme: the curse of the abalone - an endangered marine snail prized as an aphrodisiac in China, but illegal harvesting has disastrous effects on the traditional fishing community near Cape Town, South Africa.
Perry, a sheltered chemical engineer, falls in love with Leslie, a former homecoming princess, when he becomes a jury member at her hippie death cult murder trial.
An American spy behind the lines during WWII serves as a Nazi propagandist, a role he cannot escape in his future life as he can never reveal his real role in the war.
Linda Kasabian falls prey to the hypnotic charms of Charles Manson and his self-proclaimed "family" during the drug-fueled summer of 1969.
Broke and alone on New Year's Eve, Wilson (Scoot McNairy) just wants to spend the rest of a very bad year in bed. But, when his best friend convinces him to post a personal ad, he meets a woman (Sara Simmonds) bent on finding the right guy to be with at midnight.
Psychiatrist experiments LSD on 4 volunteers, to investigate Coffin Joe's influence over them. Each patient presents a different reaction, involving sex, perversion and sadism.
Set in Harlem in 1987, claireece "Precious" Jones is a 16-year-old African American girl born into a life no one would want. She's pregnant for the second time by her absent father; at home, she must wait hand and foot on her mother, an angry woman who abuses her emotionally and physically. School is chaotic and Precious has reached the ninth grade with good marks and a secret..she can't read.
In the final days of the year 1999, most everyone in Taiwan has died. A strange plague has ravished the island. Supposedly spread by cockroaches, the disease sends its victims into a psychosis where they act like the insects. Eventually, they die. The Hole takes place in a crumbling apartment building. Its two protagonists live right above and below each other. The woman is on the lower floor, and the pipes above her apartment are leaking fiercely, threatening to destroy her food supply, not to mention her sanity. She calls a plumber to go check it out, and he accidentally pokes a hole through the floor of the man's apartment. The two have never met before, and they come into contact through the hole.
Chelsea is an in-demand call girl whose $2,000 an hour price tag allows her to live in New York's lap of luxury. Besides her beauty and sexual skill, Chelsea offers her clients companionship and conversation, or, as she dubs it, "the girlfriend experience." With her successful business and a devoted, live-in boyfriend, Chelsea thinks she has it made... until a new client rocks her world.
Based on the true story of the greatest treasure hunt in history, The Monuments Men is an action drama focusing on seven over-the-hill, out-of-shape museum directors, artists, architects, curators, and art historians who went to the front lines of WWII to rescue the world’s artistic masterpieces from Nazi thieves and return them to their rightful owners. With the art hidden behind enemy lines, how could these guys hope to succeed?
Daniel - a recent university graduate with Down's Syndrome - falls in love on his first day at work in the Department of Social Services. Laura is an outsider who spends her nights in the city's crowded clubs and singles' bars, escaping her problems in the arms of total strangers. Yet despite their apparent incompatibility, the two strike up a moving, bittersweet friendship that touches them both and eventually sets them on the road to happiness.
The first feature film from director Simon Bross, the drama Bad Habits shows how a person's approach to food greatly affects one's life. Jimena Ayala plays a nun named Matilde who believes that eating next to nothing will help God stop the suffering of others. She trains pudgy, young Linda (Elisa Vicedo) for her first communion. Linda's mother is an emaciated exercise addict who frets over her daughter's shape. Linda's father, Gustavo, is a libertine who enjoys food as well as a healthy sex life with a mistress. Gustavo, an architect, must figure out why the pipes of a local school are leaking under the strain of a seemingly ceaseless rainstorm.
Lovelife is a 1997 romantic comedy film written and directed by Jon Harmon Feldman. The ensemble cast includes Matt Letscher, Sherilyn Fenn, Saffron Burrows, Carla Gugino, Bruce Davison, Jon Tenney and Peter Krause. Lovelife was nominated for a Feature Film Award at the 1997 Austin Film Festival, and won an Audience Award at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival. The film was winner of the screenplay award at the L.A. Indie fest.

© Valossa 2015–2024