Film Reviews

Two women are held hostage in a deep basement of an abandoned industrial site. They're chained to the wall, sharing a moldy mattress, some food and a bucket. From time to time their captor drops by in order to torture them, to drive them to the point of breaking. Unfortunately, early into the kidnapping, the captor has made a mistake by letting them know when exactly he is going to release them. On one hand, this gives hope to the women, on the other hand this creates the necessity for maximum cruelty on the captor's side as he wants to break them for that little project of his. The whole situation threatens to escalate when the captor's partner in crime suddenly shows up and makes new demands.

Filmed over five and a half years, ALL THE DIFFERENCE (83 min.) weaves together the stories of two tough, yet promising young black men, Robert and Krishaun, as they navigate their lives through their high school senior year and all four years of college. They come from broken homes and low-income, high-risk communities in Chicago where barely 50% of young black men graduate from high school and of those that do graduate less than half go on to college and even fewer will graduate within 4 to 6 years. The film explores the factors in their lives (education, parents and grandparents, teachers, role models, personal drive and community support) that made all the difference in helping them be the first in their families to most likely escape poverty and secure a place in the middle class.

A stylish political thriller where love and war collide in Southeast Asia. Set in early 1950s Vietnam, a young American becomes entangled in a dangerous love triangle when he falls for the beautiful mistress of a British journalist. As war is waged around them, these three only sink deeper into a world of drugs, passion, and betrayal where nothing is as it seems.

When the beloved cellist of a world-renowned string quartet is diagnosed with a life threatening illness, the group’s future suddenly hangs in the balance as suppressed emotions, competing egos and uncontrollable passions threaten to derail years of friendship and collaboration. As they are about to play their 25th anniversary concert — quite possibly their last — only their intimate bond and the power of music can preserve their legacy.

Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson meet as boys in an English Boarding school. Holmes is known for his deductive ability even as a youth, amazing his classmates with his abilities. When they discover a plot to murder a series of British business men by an Egyptian cult, they move to stop it.

A documentary about the men who run a pet cemetery, and the men and women who bury their pets.

THE RING goes ‘found footage’ Peruvian in a terrific example of the continually igniting South American new horror wave. A group of media students embark on a documentary project covering ‘Reaction Videos’ - filming people watching intense shock footage online to monitor their psychological effect. And they find one example so terrifying the viewers have all died in mysterious circumstances. But what exactly is on this gruesome Internet footage? Their search leads to an obscure corner of cyberspace known as the Dark Web, a Quechua curse dating from the Spanish Inquisition and a demonic power they cannot escape from.

A small band of resistance fighters battle the cyborgs that have taken control of the planet.

A Ronald Reagan-obsessed serial killer targets a bunch of hippies who are heading to a weekend-long concert.

In forgotten towns along the American border, a young mother drifts from one motel to the next with her intoxicating boyfriend and her 8-year-old son. The makeshift family scrapes by, living one hustle at a time, until the discovery of a mobile home community offers an alternative life.

In the small Central California town where they grew up, two estranged gay brothers struggle to reconnect after the recent death of their father.

In the summer of 1987, a college graduate takes a 'nowhere' job at his local amusement park, only to find it's the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.

A typical American family - photographer father, two talented daughters, Michelle an accomplished commercial artist with a clear upward career path. Then she has an auto accident, and the head trauma leaves behavioral changes. The part of the brain involved in impulse control is damaged (but the lesion is not visible on the usual CAT scan, and psychological tests are not done). Michelle has no control of her sexual impulses, and changes to 'a thief, a liar, and a whore' as her eventual therapist puts it. The family is broken apart, her sister and mother leave, but the father remains convinced that the daughter he loves is in there somewhere. It is a long and harrowing road to understanding of her sex addiction, and the end is not certain, but hopeful.

13-year-old Sinikka vanishes on a hot summer night. Her bicycle is found in the exact place where a girl was killed 23 years ago. The dramatic present forces those involved in the original case to face their past.

Phillip Filmore is a naive, 15-year-old, preoccupied with sex, who develops a crush on Nicole Mallow, the new 30-something, French housekeeper and sitter to look after him when Phillip's father is out of town for the summer on a "business" trip. But Mr. Filmore's unscrupulous chauffeur, Lester Lewis, takes advantage of Phillip's crush on Nicole to hire her to seduce the youth, then draws her into a plot to fake her own death in a blackmail scheme aimed to drain Phillip's trust fund.