Film Reviews

One-time rival collegians, Vikas Sabkuchwala and Sunil, are now friends and in love with sisters Ayesha and Mamta Vidrohi, who they would like to marry. But their politician father wants a size-able dowry as well as well-placed sons-in-laws, and refuses to have to do anything with them. The foursome get together and arrange the fake kidnapping of the sisters so as to extort a large sum of money from Vidrohi. Things go completely out of control and awry, when Vikas and Sunil find out that the kidnapping has taken place - not by them - but by notorious international terrorist and seemingly invincible Colonel Chikara.

Pulp found fame on the world stage in the 1990s with anthems including ‘Common People’ and ‘Disco 2000’. 25 years (and 10 million album sales) later, they return to Sheffield for their last UK concert. Giving a career-best performance exclusive to the film, the band members share their thoughts on fame, love, mortality — & car maintenance. Director Florian Habicht (Love Story) weaves together the band’s personal offerings with dream-like specially-staged tableaux featuring ordinary people recruited on the streets of Sheffield. Pulp is a music film like no other — by turns funny, moving, life-affirming & (occasionally) bewildering.

After suffering a brutal trauma, Julia uses an unorthodox form of therapy to restore herself.

A seriously ill schoolteacher becomes dependent on a "miracle" drug that begins to affect his sanity.

After fifteen years of traveling around the world Gussie (Spacek), a famous photographer, returns to the Maryland coastal resort where she grew up

A weekend at a lake house in the Louisiana Gulf turns into a nightmare for seven vacationers as they are subjected to fresh-water shark attacks.

In a staid English seaside town after the Second World War, young Lynda grows up with her widowed father and younger sister. Rebellious Lynda has been swearing constantly from an early age. At sixteen, she becomes more exhibitionist and seeks out sexual encounters challenging the prevailing lower-middle class attitudes to sex. She eventually becomes pregnant by an acquaintance of her father.

A married Japanese forester during WWII is sent to Indochina to manage forests. He meets a young Japanese typist and promises to leave his wife. He doesn't and after the war, she turns up and the affair resumes.

An artist, framed for the murder of a woman, is drawn into a web of corruption, blackmail and deceit.

Renowned actress Colleen West abandons her successful career for a secluded life in the hills. But the quiet and peace of mind she longed for is disrupted by the noisy construction of neighboring housing developments. Before long, Colleen discovers that she really can’t stand herself now that she has given up the only thing that she has ever truly been passionate about. As an alternative to isolation, she reluctantly befriends her jubilant, whimsical neighbor and reconnects with her estranged brother. Haunted by loneliness and past desires, Colleen begins to feel as if she has lived her life through the characters she has played on stage and screen. –Quinzaine des Réalisateurs

Three young guys with disabilities want to go on a party holiday in Salou, just as their friends do. Only their parents block this idea. But then a caretaker, found on the internet, makes the dream possible. Adios Amigos is a remake of the Belgium movie Hasta La Vista.

Four women were murdered, each was knifed and, though they had their clothes torn, they weren't molested. As the famed police inspector Jules Maigret pieces the clues together, he comes to realize that for the elusive man that he suspects to be unmasked, he has to set him a trap.

For five men, the opportunity to share a penthouse in the city -- in which to carry on extramarital affairs -- is a dream come true, until the dead body of an unknown woman turns up. Realizing that her killer must be one of their group, the men are gripped by paranoia as each one suspects another. Friendships are tested, loyalties are questioned, and marriages crumble while fear and suspicion run rampant.

The shooting of a U.S. senator's wife raises the stakes for kidnappers seeking a hefty ransom for a computer magnate.

Akasen Chitai [Red Light District, aka Street of Shame] sadly, the very last film by Kenji Mizoguchi (Sansho Dayu, Ugetsu Monogatari) presents a vivid portrait of prostitution in 1950s Japan. In a Tokyo brothel named Dreamland an obvious irony given the faded hopes of those who work there the lives of five prostitutes intersect. Each has a very different story for how they entered the profession, but what they share is the struggle to make sense of the red light district and its cycle of exploitation. Filmed shortly before the Japanese government's introduction of an anti-prostitution bill, Akasen Chitai is a compelling study of women torn between financial necessity and questions of conscience.