Tuesday, June 4, 1968: the California presidential primary. As day breaks Robert Kennedy arrives at the Ambassador Hotel; he’ll campaign, then speak to supporters at midnight. To capture the texture of the late 1960s, we see vignettes at the hotel: a couple marries so he can avoid Vietnam, kitchen staff discuss race and baseball, a man cheats on his wife, another is fired for racism, a retired hotel doorman plays chess in the lobby with an old friend, a campaign strategist’s wife needs a pair of black shoes, two campaign staff trip on LSD, a lounge singer is on the downhill slide. Through it all, we see and hear RFK calling for a better society and a better nation. Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

Rather than a paint-by-the-numbers remake of the 1962 John Frankenheimer film, director Jonathan Demme’s 2004 version of “The Manchurian Candidate” is a re-envisioned, revamped and contemporized take on the classic political thriller. Academy Award-winner Denzel Washington stars in the role Frank Sinatra handled in the original. Liev Schreiber takes on the Laurence Harvey part from the first film. And two-time Oscar winner Meryl Streep chews up the screen as the candidate’s political junkie mother, a role which earned Angela Lansbury an Academy Award nomination in 1963 and which might do the same for Streep.

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Frank Horrigan is a secret service agent who keeps thinking back to November 22, 1963, when, as a hand-picked agent by President Kennedy, he became one of the few agents to have lost a President to an assassin when Kennedy died. Now, former CIA assassin Mitch Leary is stalking the current President, who is running for re-election. Mitch has spent long hours studying Horrigan, and he taunts Horrigan, telling him of his plans to kill the President. Leary plans to kill the president because Leary feels betrayed by the government — Leary was removed from the CIA, and the CIA is now trying to have him killed. After talking to Leary, Horrigan makes sure he is assigned to presidential protection duty, working with fellow secret service agent Lilly Raines. Horrigan has no intention of failing his President this time around, and he’s more than willing to take a bullet. White House Chief of Staff Harry Sargent refuses to alter the President’s itinerary, while Horrigan’s boss, Secret Service Director Sam Campagna, is supportive of Horrigan. As the election gets closer, Horrigan begins to doubt his own abilities, especially when Horrigan’s colleague Al D’Andrea is killed by Leary. But Horrigan may be the only one who can stop Leary. Written by Todd Baldridge

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Special Agent Pete Garrison is convinced that a Neo-Nazi Aryan Disciple has managed to infiltrate the White House. When a White House Agent is murdered, Garrison is framed and blackmailed over an affair with the First Lady Sarah Ballentine. He is relieved of his duties, but Garrison won’t stop in trying to prove his innocence, and save the life of the President. While attempting to uncover the person behind it all, he comes into confrontation with his protege, Agent Breckinridge. Written by Anonymous

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Fact-based story about a disturbed office furniture salesman (Sean Penn) who in 1972 concocted a plot to kill then-President Nixon by hi-jacking a plane to fly over the White House to drop a gas bomb. At the start of the movie, the man is separated from his wife and stressed in his job where he is made the butt of jokes and is an under-performer. Attempts to get his brother’s old tire business resurrected with a black partner is rejected by the banks. When he is officially served with divorce papers, everything comes apart and Richard Nixon’s broken promises comes to represent all the evils that have come down on him. A news story about a pilot that landed a helicopter on the White House lawn gives him the idea for his attack. Bolting onto a Baltimore plane, he attempts the hi-jacking. Written by John Sacksteder {jsackste@bellsouth.net}

Robert Rath (Sylvester Stallone) is a seasoned hitman who just wants out of the business with no back talk. But, as things go, it ain’t so easy. A younger, peppier assassin named Bain (Antonio Banderas) is having a field day trying to kill said older assassin. Rath teams up with a computer hacker named Electra (Julianne Moore) to defeat the obsessed Bain. Written by Joshua Davis {xtnb64a@prodigy.com}

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