Film Reviews
| Actions | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Better Living |
A comedy about families, the elements that bind them together, and about hope in the face of hardship. |
|
|
Courage Mountain |
In this version of "Heidi," a young Swiss girl is sent off to boarding school at the beginning of World War I. |
|
|
Lakeboat |
Coming-of-age tale set aboard a shipping freighter traveling America's Great Lakes. Dale is an Ivy League college student who briefly joins a world-weary crew. Exposed to a seafaring lifestyle which falls short of his literary visions, Dale instead finds the experience rich in unexpected ways. The men's bravado and comical posturing gives way as their lively story-telling reveals more about their mythologized view of life than about what actually may have happened. |
|
|
Live Nude Girls Unite! |
Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers' surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia Query, a dancer and stand-up comedian who is reluctant to tell her mother, a physician who works with prostitutes, that she strips. |
|
|
The Plastic Age |
Hugh Carver is an athletic star and a freshman at Prescott College. He falls in love with Cynthia Day, a popular girl who loves to go to parties. He finds that it is impossible to please her and still keep up with his studies and his athletic training, and soon the two face some difficult decisions. |
|
|
Leaving on the 15th Spring |
Yuna lives on a remote Ryukyu island in Japan dividing her time between studies and tending the home for her father, a stoic sugar cane farmer. For reasons unknown to Yuna, her father has been ostracized by the rest of his family. Like generations before her, Yuna will move to the big island of Okinawa to finish her education, but before she leaves she must lead her traditional music circle in a farewell concert. In her stirring portrayal of Yuna, accomplished pop and television star, Miyoshi Ayaka sings and plays the sanmisen, a traditional Japanese stringed instrument. Director Yoshida has worked closely with the locals of Minamodaito to craft a sensitive and poignant impression of a young girl on the cusp of adulthood, torn between the alternately attractive and conflicting natures of tradition and progress. |
|
|
Marketa Lazarová |
Mikolás and his brother Adam rob travelers for their tyrannical father Kozlík. During one of their "jobs" they end up with a young German hostage whose father escapes to return news of the kidnapping and robbery to the King. Kozlik prepares for the wrath of the King, and sends Mikolás to pressure his neighbor Lazar to join him in war. Persuasion fails, and in vengeance Mikolás abducts Lazar's daughter Marketa, just as she was about to join a convent. The King, meantime, dispatches an army and the religious Lazar will be called upon to join hands against Kozlik. Stripped-down, surreal, and relentlessly grimy account of the shift from Paganism to Christianity. |
|
|
Journey to Space |
A sweeping overview of humanity’s accomplishments in space, as well as our ongoing activities and future plans. |
|
|
Killing Kennedy |
Drama documentary based on Bill O'Reilly's and Martin Dugard's 2012 non-fiction book "Killing Kennedy: The End of Camelot". It follows the parallel lives of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald from the winter 1959-1960 to those fatal days in Dallas in November 1963, when they both died within two days after each other and were buried on the same day - John F. Kennedy in a state funeral in Washington D.C., broadcast live both to Europe and the Pacific, while Oswald was buried in Forth Worth at a small funeral where the attending reporters were asked to act as pallbearers. |
|
|
The Broken |
The life of a successful radiologist spirals out of control when she sees the spitting image of herself driving down a London street. While attempting to uncover who the imposter could be, she stumbles into a terrifying mystery that her family and closest friends are somehow involved in, leaving her with no one to trust. |
|
|
My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done |
Brad (Michael Shannon) has committed murder and barricaded himself inside his house. With the help of his friends and neighbours, the cops piece together the strange tale of how this nice young man arrived at such a dark place; Based on a true story, this gripping and unnerving blend of deadpan comedy, melodrama and raw tragedy is fleshed out by an expert cast, including Willem Dafoe and Chloe Sevigny |
|
|
The Escort |
Desperate for a good story, a sex-addicted journalist throws himself into the world of high-class escorts when he starts following a Stanford-educated prostitute. |
|
|
Panama Hattie |
Sailors and spies mingle in between the acts at Hattie's (Ann Sothern) nightclub in the Canal Zone. |
|
|
Hi Diddle Diddle |
When the bride's mother is supposedly swindled out of her money by a spurned suitor, the groom's father orchestrates a scheme of his own to set things right. He is aided by a cabaret singer, while placating a jealous wife. |
|
|
Filmistaan |
Sunny is struggling to make a living in the Bollywood industry. He takes a job as assistant director (the operative word being assistant) for an American documentary filmmaking team, but during filming in the Indian Rajasthan province he is kidnapped by Pakistani terrorists – and detained in a small village in Pakistan. The situation is delicate, but the villagers share Sunny's passion for Bollywood film, and little by little the hostage and the guardians come to understand each other. Eventually, Sunny lays a plan to escape with the help of the villagers. |