Film Reviews

Wang Yu plays a vagabond who earn a living on people's superstitions, but also puts things right. (A Shaw Brothers production)

North Carolina mountains at the end of the 1920s – George and Serena Pemberton, love-struck newly-weds, begin to build a timber empire. Serena soon proves herself to be equal to any man: overseeing loggers, hunting rattle-snakes, even saving a man’s life in the wilderness. With power and influence now in their hands, the Pembertons refuse to let anyone stand in the way of their inflated love and ambitions. However, once Serena discovers George’s hidden past and faces an unchangeable fate of her own, the Pemberton’s passionate marriage begins to unravel leading toward a dramatic reckoning.

Jon Lansdale is a comic book artist who loses his right hand in a car accident. The hand was not found at the scene of the accident, but it soon returns by itself to follow Jon around, and murder those who anger him.

In this adolescent-oriented drama, a young woman is forced to attend a posh finishing school in the Mediterranean. She vents her anger by rebelling against the cruel and sicko headmaster. When she discovers that he has been secretly photographing them naked and profiting from the pictures, she rallies the other girls and gets revenge.

A group of unemployed theater actors survive by working as illegal money collectors. The loan shark they are working for owns an Off-Broadway theater. As he decided to play "American Buffalo" there, a bloody battle for the favorite roles begin.

Omar, a homosexual Pakistani boy living in London with his alcoholic father, lifts a chunk of drug money from another Pakistani and, with his lover Johnny, decides to renovate a grungy laundrette.

This warmhearted comedy takes place in a household completely dominated by Durga Bhatnagar, an imposing matriarch who's desperate for a grandson and heir.

In the vast rooms of a beautiful Sicilian villa, Anna receives an unexpected guest. Twenty-something Jeanne has arrived from France, declaring herself to be the girlfriend of Anna’s son, Giuseppe, who has invited her to the house to spend Easter together. But this is news to Anna, and Guiseppe is not yet there...

After his father’s death, high school lacrosse star Conor Sullivan becomes self-destructive but through a new love interest and his passion for this sport, Conor discovers the warrior within himself.

In Italy, the American writer Sam Dalmas (Tony Musant) witnesses an attempt of murder of the owner of an art gallery, a couple of days before his foreseen return to the United States of America. He decides to stay with his girlfriend Julia (Suzy Kendall) and help the police in the investigation, while the serial killer stalks Julia and him.

Nordvest is a gangsterfilm set in the suburbs of Copenhagen. Casper (18), the oldest of 3 siblings, survives life on the streets by committing burglaries for the neighbourhood boss, Jamal. When Casper gets an offer to work for Jamal’s rival Björn, he jumps at the chance for a better life, making his way into a world of drugs and prostitution. As things escalate between Björn and Jamal, Casper finds himself and his family dead center of a conflict, that threatens to destroy them.

Call + Response is a first of its kind feature documentary film that reveals the world’s 27 million dirtiest secrets: there are more slaves today than ever before in human history. Call + Response goes deep undercover where slavery is thriving from the child brothels of Cambodia to the slave brick kilns of rural India to reveal that in 2007, Slave Traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined. Luminaries on the issue and many other prominent political and cultural figures offer first hand account of this 21st century trade. Performances from Grammy-winning and critically acclaimed artists move this chilling information into inspiration for stopping it. Music is part of the movement against human slavery. Dr. Cornel West connects the music of the American slave fields to the popular music we listen to today, and offers this connection as a rallying cry for the modern abolitionist movement currently brewing.

Nobuhiko Obayashi, director of the cult horror/comedy "House," gives his unique spin on the true story of Sada Abe, who strangled her lover and cut off his genitals as a keepsake.

Jason Crockett is an aging, grumpy, physically disabled millionaire who invites his family to his island estate for his birthday celebration. Pickett Smith is a free-lance photographer who is doing a pollution layout for an ecology magazine. Jason Crockett hates nature, poisoning anything that crawls on his property. On the night of his birthday the frogs and other members of nature begin to pay Crockett back.

Though no one can see him, Hollow Face lurks in the corners, desperately desiring love but only knowing how to spread fear and hate. He creeps into the life of John Farrow after Farrow’s beloved 13-year-old daughter Mia is assaulted in their home. The line between the real and the imaginary blurs as fissures start to open within the family unit. It seems that no security measure can keep Hollow Face out.