Film Reviews

When Max, a young poet hires a marketing company to turn his suicide-by-jumping into a mass-media spectacle, he finds that his subversive intentions are quickly diluted into a reactionary gesture, and his motivations are revealed as a desperate attempt to seek attention through celebrity.

A young woman with no strong religious beliefs, Frankie Paige begins having strange and violent experiences, showing signs of the wounds that Jesus received when crucified. When the Vatican gets word of Frankie's situation, a high-ranking cardinal requests that the Rev. Andrew Kiernan investigate her case. Soon Kiernan realizes that very sinister forces are at work, and tries to rescue Frankie from the entity that is plaguing her.

A Pulitzer-winning writer grapples with being a widower and father after a mental breakdown, while, 27 years later, his grown daughter struggles to forge connections of her own.

Though RKO Radio Pictures was, in 1951, still faithful to the concept of "B" westerns starring Tim Holt, the studio was more than capable of turning out an "A" oater from time to time. Best of the Badmen stars Robert Ryan as a former Union officer who persuades a fictional vigilante group which closely resembles Quantrill's Raiders to lay down their arms and seek out new and honest lives. Ryan is undercut by shifty Pinkerton man Robert Preston, who wants to collect the rewards on the heads of the ex-vigilantes; to that end, he frames Ryan for murder. With the help of Preston's embittered wife Claire Trevor, Ryan escapes and turns outlaw with the men whom he'd earlier convinced to turn honest.

A girl with insomnia who works in a coffee house has impossibly high standards for her love and fears she will never meet a worthy man. Then in walks a new employee and they click - until she discovers he has a girlfriend. Undaunted, she moves to L.A. with a friend sure that he will dump the girlfriend and follow her. She puts all her faith in fate and hopes for the best.

The film stars two of Itami's regular actors, Nobuko Miyamoto as a geisha who brings luck to the men with whom she sleeps, and Masahiko Tsugawa as her unfaithful, sometimes partner. As well as showing her relationships with the man she loves and the men who employ her, it satirizes corruption and the influence of money in Japanese politics.

After the bankruptcy of their father's stonemasonry firm, brothers Nicola and Andrea emigrate to America to restore their fortunes. After many adventures and near-disasters, they end up in Hollywood designing sets for D.W.Griffith and marry beautiful actresses, but tragedy strikes with the arrival of World War I, which finds the brothers fighting on opposite sides...

In GLOBAL METAL, directors Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn set out to discover how the West's most maligned musical genre - heavy metal - has impacted the world's cultures beyond Europe and North America. The film follows metal fan and anthropologist Sam Dunn on a whirlwind journey through Asia, South America and the Middle East as he explores the underbelly of the world's emerging extreme music scenes; from Indonesian death metal to Chinese black metal to Iranian thrash metal. GLOBAL METAL reveals a worldwide community of metalheads who aren't just absorbing metal from the West - they're transforming it - creating a new form of cultural expression in societies dominated by conflict, corruption and mass-consumerism.

The Other Side of the Mountain Part 2 is a 1978 film directed by Larry Peerce. It stars Marilyn Hassett and Timothy Bottoms. It is a sequel to The Other Side of the Mountain

A sharecropper fights the elements to start his own farm.

A Taiwanese man returns to the island after years abroad when he inherits a house; when he and his fiancé move in, strange things start to happen.

Wicked one-liners and soul-baring confessions converge in this uniquely intimate stand-up special from "Chappelle's Show" co-creator Neal Brennan.

Russia attacked Finland in late November 1939. This film tells the story of a Finnish platoon of reservists from the municipality of Kauhava in the province of Pohjanmaa/Ostrobothnia who leave their homes and go to war. The film focuses on the farmer brothers Martti and Paavo Hakala.

After Nadodikkattu (1987) and Pattana Pravesham (1988), CIDs Ramdas and Vijayan are back for another wacky adventure. After a priceless gold crown is stolen from India, Ramdas (Mohanlal) and Vijayan (Srinivasan) are sent to the United States to retrieve it. The only clues they have is a pseudonym ("Paul Barber") and a piece of a torn shirt. In the States, the two remain as helpless and clueless as they were in the two prequel films and realize that this is their toughest case yet. While Akkare Akkare Akkare is lacking in the poignant drama that made its predecessor films so endearing, it makes up for it by being the funniest movie in the trilogy. A Malayalam comedy classic that is still remembered more than 15 years after its release.

After inheriting a failing bikini shop, two recent grads decide to make a go of it. One, in the hopes of building it into a successful business, the other, in the hopes of getting to look at lots of women in (and out) of swimsuits. As they try more and more outrageous ways of drumming up business, their antics begin attracting some unwanted attention. Written by Jean-Marc Rocher