Film Reviews

There are terrible things happening in the desert...unexplainable, frightening things. Tragic, inexplicable incidents… ever since she arrived.

After the India of Varanasi’s boatmen, the American desert of the dropouts, and the Mexico of the killers of drugtrade, Gianfranco Rosi has decided to tell the tale of a part of his own country, roaming and filming for over two years in a minivan on Rome’s giant ring road—the Grande Raccordo Anulare, or GRA—to discover the invisible worlds and possible futures harbored in this area of constant turmoil. Elusive characters and fleeting apparitions emerge from the background of the winding zone: a nobleman from the Piemonte region and his college student daughter sharing a one-room efficiency in a modern apartment building along the GRA.

Events over the course of one traumatic night in Paris unfold in reverse-chronological order as the beautiful Alex is brutally raped and beaten by a stranger in the underpass. Her boyfriend and ex-lover take matters into their own hands by hiring two criminals to help them find the rapist so that they can exact revenge. A simultaneously beautiful and terrible examination of the destructive nature of cause and effect, and how time destroys everything.

In Majdal Shams, the largest Druze village in Golan Heights on the Israeli-Syrian border, the Druze bride Mona is engaged to get married with Tallel, a television comedian that works in the Revolution Studios in Damascus, Syria. They have never met each other because of the occupation of the area by Israel since 1967; when Mona moves to Syria, she will lose her undefined nationality and will never be allowed to return home. Mona's father Hammed is a political activist pro-Syria that is on probation by the Israeli government. His older son Hatten married a Russian woman eight years ago and was banished from Majdal Shams by the religious leaders and his father. His brother Marwan is a wolf trader that lives in Italy. His sister Amal has two teenager daughters and has the intention to join the university, but her marriage with Amin is in crisis. When the family gathers for Mona's wedding, an insane bureaucracy jeopardizes the ceremony.

Dave is a married man with two kids and a loving wife , and Mitch is a single man who is at the prime of his sexual life. One fateful night while Mitch and Dave are peeing in a fountain when lightning strikes, they switch bodies.

A powerful statement against war, Barefoot Gen is a story about the effect of the atomic bomb on a boy's life and the lives of the Japanese people.

A tribute to the U.S. 442nd Regimental Combat Team, formed in 1943 by Presidential permission with Japanese-American volunteers. We follow the training of a platoon under the rueful command of Lt. Mike Grayson who shares common prejudices of the time. The 442nd serve in Italy, then France, distinguishing themselves in skirmishes and battles; gradually and naturally, Grayson's prejudices evaporate with dawning realization that his men are better soldiers than he is.

Daryl Davis has an unusual hobby. As a musician he has played with legends like Chuck Berry and Little Richard, but in his spare time he likes to meet and befriend members of the Ku Klux Klan. Join Daryl on his personal quest to understand racism.

Two young English women go on a cycling tour of the French countryside. When one of them goes missing, the other begins to search for her. But who can she trust?

Set in 1879 Paris. An orphan girl dreams of becoming a ballerina and flees her rural Brittany for Paris, where she passes for someone else and accedes to the position of pupil at the Grand Opera house.

A rebellious teen butts heads with the teachers at an all-girl charm school in Mexico City.

Following the death of her mother, 20-year-old Lili has been living with her grandmother and is about to inherit her legacy to become the latest in a long line of female warriors adept at the deadly martial art of Sayama Hashinryu. During an informal ceremony inducting her into the legendary ranks, Lili is mysteriously transported 300 years back in time to a small village in 18th-century Japan. In no time at all she is fulfilling her destiny as a warrior by rescuing a young girl who is being harassed by three ninja members of the Yamishika gang who work for the evil Lady Okinu. Soon, they will all meet, and Lili's fate will be decided!

Set in the early 1970s, it tells the story of a Chinese-Japanese student who returns to her native Hong Kong after graduating from a university in London. Once she arrives back home, she and her family begins to fight, largely due to cultural and societal conflicts between her mother and herself.

Lonely pensioner, Harold Gimble, has become the first man to suffer from a new neurological disease that is slowly turning him into a zombie-like state. Harold’s hermit-like existence is shaken up when a vivacious nurse, Penny Rudge, is sent along to alleviate his stiffness. Her ‘special’ massage techniques work a treat on Harold and they become close friends. Harold agrees to trial a possible cure for the disease at a private institute, and the initial results are excellent. But the following day he’s in an even worse state than before, and after Penny accidentally overhears the doctor’s dire prognosis for Harold she decides to sneak him away the next morning. Word soon gets out, and before long a small group of bloodthirsty thugs are pursuing Harold and Penny across dramatic moorlands in the hope of a kill.

Late 1960 and the world consists of feudal cities after decades of a global war and plague. 2035 and the world has been rebuilt with fantastic technology, but has progress gone too far and has man learned anything.