Film Reviews

Director 'Nicholas Ray' is eager to complete a final film before his imminent death from cancer. Wim Wenders is working on his own film Hammett (1983) in Hollywood, but flies to New York to help Ray realize his final wish. Ray's original intent is to make a fiction film about a dying painter who sails to China to find a cure for his disease. He and Wenders discuss this idea, but it is obviously unrealistic given Ray's state of health.

In pre-WWII Australia, a love triangle develops between a man, his wife and the man's brother.

Each member of a family in Taipei asks hard questions about life's meaning as they live through everyday quandaries.

A group of misfits decide to leave for a place that they can all be free. There mode of transportation is a PBY flying boat. The only problem is that the PBY needs a lot of work and they will need jobs to pay for the parts. When they find that they have only 10 days before the PBY is sold for scrap, they decide on borrowing the parts for their trip

Three women, all strangers to each other, meet in a dress boutique. One of the three is approached by the male proprietor as she is shoplifting a garment. When he approaches her the other two join her in beating the man to death. Other female shoppers ignore the whole situation and leave when the crime is complete. The court appoints a female psychriatrist to examine the women; contrary to public opinion the psychiatrist finds they are not insane but implies the rage expressed by the crime is a result of the male dominated society. An interesting study of extreme behavior. The prisoner's cells were a revelation. Written by Rosemarie Friedman

An in-depth, award-winning documentary on the life and music of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson. Mixing rare photographs, exclusive interviews, and dramatic re-creations, director Peter Meyer presents a compelling portrait of this enigmatic figure.

Shirley Muldowney is determined to be a top-fuel drag racer, although no woman has ever raced them before. Despite the high risks of this kind of racing and the burden it places on her family life, she perseveres in her dream.

A young Navy sailor has one night to find out why a woman was killed and he ended up with a bag of money after a drinking blackout.

In 1976, a Mi'gMaq teenager plots revenge against the sadistic Indian agent who imprisoned her in a residential school where rape and abuse are common.

The Empire Builder is America’s busiest long-distance train route, running from Chicago to Seattle. Throughout these corridors sit runaways, adventurers, and loners – a myriad of passengers waiting to see what their journey holds. A touching and honest observation, co-directed by the iconic Albert Maysles, In Transit breathes life into the long commute, and contemplates the unknowns that lie at our final destination.

An ex-con takes a job driving a truck cross country. What he doesn't know is that the truck is filled with illegal weapons and now he must fight to survive and save his family.

The eastern Ukrainian town of Snezhnoje, which prospered during the Soviet era when miners there were spoiled with all kinds of privileges, now lives in poverty.

Tom Sawyer and his pal Huckleberry Finn have great adventures on the Mississippi River, pretending to be pirates, attending their own funeral, and witnessing a murder.

Three young people check into the Meadow View Inn for a night's rest, fully unaware of the inn's sick-minded employees and their nefarious intentions.

Engineer Jake Holman arrives aboard the gunboat U.S.S. San Pablo, assigned to patrol a tributary of the Yangtze in the middle of exploited and revolution-torn 1926 China. His iconoclasm and cynical nature soon clash with the "rice-bowl" system which runs the ship and the uneasy symbiosis between Chinese and foreigner on the river. Hostility towards the gunboat's presence reaches a climax when the boat must crash through a river-boom and rescue missionaries upriver at China Light Mission.