Film Reviews
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Winter on Fire: Ukraine's Fight for Freedom |
A documentary on the unrest in Ukraine during 2013 and 2014, as student demonstrations supporting European integration grew into a violent revolution calling for the resignation of President Viktor F. Yanukovich. |
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A Thousand Clouds of Peace |
A teenager discovers that mending a broken heart is no simple thing in this independent romantic drama from Mexico. Gerardo (Juan Carlos Ortuno), a 17-year-old who has recently embraced his homosexuality, has just parted ways with his first serious boyfriend, Bruno (Juan Carlos Torres). Gerardo has fallen into a deep depression after losing Bruno, and he drifts through Mexico City, where he meets and makes love with a number of attractive strangers. However, his hedonistic adventures cannot wash away the pain in his heart. The first feature-length project from director Julian Hernandez, Mil Nubes de Paz Cercan el Cielo, Amor, Jamás Acabarás de Ser Amor was screened at the 2003 Berlin Film Festival, where it received the Teddy award, given to the best Gay or Lesbian-themed film shown at the fest. |
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Code Name: Jackal |
Clumsy and off-the-wall hit man Bong Min-jung (Song Ji-hyo) is hired to kill top Hallyu star Choi Hyun (Kim Jaejoong). She ambushes him at Paradise Hotel in Seong-ju where the cops are on a stakeout for serial killer "Jackal". However Min-jung realizes that Hyun is her favorite star, and Hyun finds out that her client is his ex-girlfriend. Then Angela arrives and the two meet Hyun, her boy toy, she is unintentionally stabbed to death by Min-jung. Curious chemistry develops between the two, and he decides to help her. |
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High Heels and Low Lifes |
A nurse eavesdrops with a friend on a cell phone conversation that describes a bank heist. She and the friend then conspire to blackmail the robbers for $2 million. |
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Home Movies |
A cult guru urges a shy disciple to make life a movie and be its star. |
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Tormented |
To his mute sister's dismay, a young boy puts a dying rabbit out of its misery with a brick -- and soon the siblings end up in a world of nightmares. |
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Ladybird Ladybird |
This Ken Loach docu-drama relates the story of a British woman's fight with Social Services over the care of her children. Maggie has a history of bouncing from one abusive relationship to another. She has four children, of four different fathers, who came to the attention of Social Services when they were injured in a fire. Subsequently, Maggie was found to be an "unfit mother" and her children were removed from her care. She finally meets the man of her dreams, a Paraguayan expatriate, and they start a family together. Unfortunately, Social Services seems unwilling to accept that her life has changed and rends them from their new children. She and Jorge together, and separately, fight Social Services, Immigration, and other government bureaucrats in a desperate battle to make their family whole again. |
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The deputy |
Madrid, Roberto Orbea is a member of the Spanish communist party. He is married to Carmen, and he has been elected as Deputy in the first democratic elections in Spain. But his enemies, the fascist, know his double life. Roberto likes boys, and they hire Juanito to seduce the politician. They fall in love... |
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Shaitan |
Five substance-abusing friends decide to fake a kidnapping in order to bribe a police constable for covering-up a hit-and-run accident. |
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Stella |
1977. Stella entre en sixième, dans un grand lycée parisien. Stella entre dans le monde... Un nouveau monde, à l'opposé de celui qu'elle connaît. Presque un miracle. Elle, elle vit dans un café, un café d'ouvrier, à la frontière de Paris. Cette rentrée va changer sa vie. |
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Love Finds You In Sugarcreek |
Will a mysterious stranger's past wreak havoc on a quiet Amish community after they've opened their doors -- and hearts -- to him and his son? |
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Richard Pryor: I Ain't Dead Yet, #*%$#@!! |
This documentary praises comedian Richard Pryor by showing fragments of various shows Pryor made and having famous comedians talk about the importance and greatness of Pryor. Different themes are reviewed this way. Among others, they are the use of the word nigger, the way Pryor talked about racism, the fact Pryor talked openly about his own faults on-stage and the fact he didn't mince matters. |
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Fear and Trembling |
Amélie, a young Belgian woman, having spent her childhood in Japan, decides to return to live there and tries to integrate in the Japanese society. She is determined to be a "real Japanese" before her year contract runs out, though it precisely this determination that is incompatable with Japanese humility. Though she is hired for a choice position as a translator at an import/export firm, her inability to understand Japanese cultural norms results in increasingly humiliating demotions. Though Amelie secretly adulates her, her immediate supervisor takes sadistic pleasure in belittling her all along. She finally manages to break Amelie's will by making her the bathroom attendant, and is delighted when Amelie tells her the she will not renew her contract. Amelie realizes that she is finally a real Japanese when she enters the company president's office "with fear and trembling," which could only be possible because her determination was broken by Miss Fubuki's systematic torture. |
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A Gathering of Old Men |
A regular day in a Louisiana sugarcane plantation changes course when a local white farmer is shot in self defense. A group of old, black men takes a courageous step by coming forward en masse to take responsibility for the killing of a white racist, whom one of their members has shot. As the sheriff confronts the suspects, the young plantation owner stands alone in her daring defense of this group of men, provoking racial tension that makes a compelling drama. |
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The Witch's Curse |
Maciste travels to Hell to find a witch and make her undo a curse she put on the surface world. |
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