(Note: I’m trying a new format where I’m putting the beats right in this post. Please let me know if you prefer this approach.)

Summary: Michael Clayton, a “fixer” for a top wall-street law firm, is hired to remedy the situation after another attorney has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multi-billion dollar class action suit.

Screenplay: Tony Gilroy

Director: Tony Gilroy

Cast: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollock
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Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Summary: A young couple move into a new apartment building, which is unfortunately inhabited by a coven of witches in this classic supernatural suspense story.

Screenplay: Roman Polanski (based on the novel by Ira Levin)

Director: Roman Polanski

Cast: Mia Farrow, John Cassavetes, Ruth Gordon

“The Player” (1992)

Summary: “[A] shit-bag producer, studio exec, murders a writer he thinks is harassing him. Problem is, he killed the wrong writer. Now he’s got to deal with blackmail, as well as the cops.”

Screenplay: Michael Tolkin; based on his novel

Director: Robert Altman

Cast: Tim Robbins, Greta Scacchi, Fred Ward, Whoopi Goldberg, Peter Gallagher, Brion James

“Drag Me to Hell” (2009)

Summary: When a bank officer is ordered to evict an old woman from her home she finds herself the recipient of a supernatural curse, which turns her life into a living hell. In desperation, she turns to a seer to try and save her soul, while evil forces work to push her to a breaking point.

Screenplay: Sam Raimi & Ivan Raimi

Director: Sam Raimi

Cast: Alison Lohman, Justin Long, David Paymer

“Michael Clayton” (2007)

Summary: Michael Clayton, a “fixer” for a top wall-street law firm, is hired to remedy the situation after another attorney has a breakdown while representing a chemical company that he knows is guilty in a multi-billion dollar class action suit.

Screenplay: Tony Gilroy

Director: Tony Gilroy

Cast: George Clooney, Tilda Swinton, Tom Wilkinson, Sydney Pollock

“Titanic” (1997)

Summary: A survivor of the Titanic returns to her memories of class struggle and star-crossed romance in that fateful wreck, while a modern-day treasure-hunter tries to find a precious diamond the woman wore the night the ship went down.

Screenplay: James Cameron

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet, Gloria Stuart, Billy Zane, Kathy Bates, Bernard Hill, David Warner, Bill Paxton

“True Lies” (1994)

Summary: Career spook Harry Tasker has successfully hide his life as a spy from his family for 15 years. But when Harry suspects his wife of an affair and nuclear weapons go missing, the lies start to pile up and he finds his once-separate lives on a collision course.

Screenplay: James Cameron; based on a screenplay by Claude Zidi, Simon Michael, and Didier Kaminka

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tom Arnold, Bill Paxton, Charlton Heston

“Terminator 2: Judgement Day” (1991)

Summary: A second Terminator is sent back to assassinate John Conner, future savior of mankind, when he is still a child. Again, a lone protector is also sent back to do battle with the assassin. But as the machines try to re-shape the past, Sarah, John, and his protector will consider re-shaping the future.

Screenplay: James Cameron & William Wisher

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Robert Patrick, Edward Furlong, and Joe Morton

“The Abyss” (1989) beatsheet

Summary: As a hurricane approaches, the crew of a deep-sea oil-drilling rig is tasked to help a Navy SEAL team recover a sunken nuclear submarine. Cold War tensions run high, but the roughnecks slowly realize there may be something unearthly involved.

Screenplay: James Cameron

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Ed Harris, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, Michael Biehn

“Aliens” (1986)

Summary: This time it’s war.

Screenplay: James Cameron; James Cameron (story), David Giler (story), Walter Hill (story); Dan O’Bannon (characters), Ronald Schusett (characters)

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen, Paul Reiser, Bill Paxton

“The Terminator” (1984)

Summary: Average, hard-working L.A. denizen Sarah Conner finds her world up-ended when she learns she has been targeted for termination by a futuristic A.I. waging genocide against humanity in the year 2029. Her crime? She will give birth to the future messiah.

Screenplay: James Cameron with Gale Ann Hurd

Director: James Cameron

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Linda Hamilton, Michael Biehn

“The Prestige” (2006)

Summary: Two magicians who are former partners stop at nothing to destory each other after a terrible accident divides them.

Screenplay: Christopher Nolan, Jonathan Nolan, Christopher Priest (novel)

Director: Christopher Nolan

Cast: Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Rebecca Hall, Scarlett Johansson

Children of Men (2006)

Summary: In the near-future, a fallen activist agrees to secretely transport a miraculously pregnant woman to safety, where her child’s birth may help scientists save humanity.

Screenplay: Alfonso Cuaron, Timothy J. Sexton, David Arata, Mark Fergus, Hawk Ostby, P.D. James (novel)

Director: Alfonso Cuaron

Cast: Clive Owen, Julianne Moore, Michael Caine

“Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid” (1968)

Summary: In the turn-of-the-century American West, inseparable outlaws Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid find that the times they are a-changin’. Fistfights, knifefights, gunfights, heists, chases, stick-ups, and musical interludes ensue.

Screenplay: William Goldman

Director: George Roy Hill

Cast: Paul Newman, Robert Redford, Katharine Ross

Minority Report (2002)

Summary:In the future, crooks get caught before they commit crimes, but one of the cops in the special unit that busts them is accused of his own crime and sets out to prove his innocence.

Screenplay: Phillip K. Dick (story), Scott Frank, John Cohen
Director: Steven Spielberg

Cast: Tom Cruise, Colin Farrell, Samantha Morton

Sideways (2004)

Summary: Two guys approaching middle age with little but disappointment embark on a week long road-trip through California’s wine country, just as one is about to get married.

Screenplay: Rex Pickett (novel), Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor
Director: Alexander Payne

Cast: Paul Giamatti, Thomas Haden Church, Virginia Madsen, Sandra Oh

Norma Rae (1979)

Summary: Norma Rae Webster struggles to help unionize an oppressive textile mill in her hometown during the summer of 1979.

Screenplay: Irving Ravetch & Harriet Frank, Jr.

Director: Martin Ritt

Cast: Sally Field, Ron Leibman, Beau Bridges, Pat Hingle

“On the Beach (1959)”

Summary: The survivors of a nuclear war struggle to accept that the fallout will soon claim them as well.

Screenplay: Nevil Schute (novel); John Paxton

Director: Stanley Kramer

Cast: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Anthony Perkins, Fred Astaire, Donna Anderson

“Oliver Twist (1948)”

Summary: Oliver Twist is an orphan who runs away to 19th-century London and falls in with a gang of pickpockets led by the murderous thief Fagin.

Screenplay: Charles Dickens (novel); David Lean, Stanley Haynes; Eric Ambler (uncredited), Kay Walsh (uncredited)

Director: David Lean

Cast: Alec Guinness, Robert Newton, Kay Walsh, Henry Stephenson, John Howard Davies

Hi Nick, amazing site thank you for sharing this treasure trove. Am watching ‘the informers’ and trying to put a beat sheet together (major BEE fan). Is there any way I could take a ‘peek’ under the sheets of you & Bret’s very sharp screenplay? If not I totally get it but it would just be for my eyes and purely for educational purposes. Thanks man .

Back to the Future (1985)

Summary: A teenager accidentally sent back in time 30 years must get his parents to fall in love and find a way to return to 1985.

Screenplay: Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis
Director: Robert Zemeckis

Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover, Lea Thompson

Bullets Over Broadway (1994)

Summary: In 1920s New York, a struggling playwright is forced to cast a mobster’s talentless girlfriend in his latest drama in order to get it produced.

Screenplay: Woody Allen
Director: Woody Allen

Cast: John Cusack, Chazz Palminteri, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Tilly

Pacific Heights (1990)

Summary: A couple works hard to renovate their dream house and become landlords to pay for it. Unfortunately one of their tenants has plans of his own.

Screenplay: Daniel Pyne
Director: John Schlesinger

Cast: Melanie Griffith, Matthew Modine, Michael Keaton

Dead Calm (1989)

Summary: A mass-murderer kidnaps and seduces a young woman after leaving her husband to die on the vessel whose crew he’s just slaughtered.

Screenplay: Charles Williams (novel), Terry Hayes (screenplay)
Director: Phillip Noyce

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Sam Neill, Billy Zane

Broadway Danny Rose (1984)

Summary: In his attempts to reconcile a lounge singer with his mistress, a hapless talent agent is mistaken as her lover by a jealous gangster.

Screenplay: Woody Allen
Director: Woody Allen

Cast: Woody Allen, Mia Farrow, Nick Apollo Forte

Blade Runner (1982)

Summary: Deckard, a blade runner, has to track down and terminate 4 replicants who hijacked a ship in space and have returned to earth seeking their maker.

Screenplay: Hampton Fancher & David Webb Peoples
Director: Ridley Scott

Cast: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah

Gone Baby Gone

Summary: Two Boston area detectives investigate a little girl’s kidnapping, which ultimately turns into a crisis both professionally and personally. Based on the Dennis Lehane novel.

Screenplay: Ben Affleck & Aaron Stockard
Director: Ben Affleck

Cast: Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris

The Wire: The Target (Pilot)

King of New York (1990)

Summary: A former drug lord returns from prison determined to wipe out all his competition and distribute the profits of his operations to New York’s poor and lower classes in this stylish and ultra violent modern twist on Robin Hood.

Screenplay: Nicholas St. John
Director: Abel Ferrara

Cast: Christopher Walken, Larry Fishburne, David Caruso, Wesley Snipes, Victor Argo

Sopranos: Pilot

Dillinger (1945)

Summary: The rise and fall of John Dillinger and his associates from petty criminal to Public Enemy Number One.

Screenplay: Phillip Yordan & William Castle
Director: Max Nosseck

Cast: Lawrence Tierney, Edmund Lowe, Anne Jeffries

The Public Enemy (1931)

The Conversation

Summary: A paranoid and personally-secretive surveillance expert has a crisis of conscience when he suspects that a couple he is spying on will be murdered.

Screenplay: Francis Ford Coppola
Director: Francis Ford Coppola

Cast: Gene Hackman, John Cazale, Harrison Ford, Teri Garr

Heat

Summary: A Los Angeles crime saga focused on the lives of two men on opposite sides of the law - one a detective; the other a thief.

Screenplay: Michael Mann
Director: Michael Mann

Cast: Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, Val Kilmer, Ashley Judd, Amy Brenneman

Little Caesar (1931)

Night and the City (1950)

Bob Le Flambeur (1956)

Bullets or Ballots (1936)

Angels Over Broadway (1940)

Hard Eight

Thief

Light Sleeper

Carlito’s Way

To Live and Die in LA