Film Reviews

A young writer brings a collection of short stories to a big Moscow publishing house. The manuscript stays at the office and mysteriously influences the lives of anyone who opens it and reads at least one page. There are four stories in the manuscript, and four readers whose lives are changed after reading them. The situations range from realistic to absurd to thrilling to create a rich portrait of life in contemporary Russia and showcase the thoughts, feelings and ambitions of people who live there.

A mysterious door in the basement of the Hercules house leads to the Sixth Dimension by way of a gigantic set of intestine. When Frenchy slips through the door, King Fausto falls in love with her. The jealous Queen Doris takes Frenchy prisoner, and it is up to the Hercules family and friend Squeezit Henderson to rescue her.

A political strategist juggling three clients questions whether or not to take the high road as the ugly side of his work begins to haunt him.

Shallow, rich and socially successful Cher is at the top of her Beverly Hills high school's pecking scale. Seeing herself as a matchmaker, Cher first coaxes two teachers into dating each other. Emboldened by her success, she decides to give hopelessly klutzy new student Tai a makeover. When Tai becomes more popular than she is, Cher realizes that her disapproving ex-stepbrother was right about how misguided she was -- and falls for him.

After thirty years in the big corporation, Ugo Fantozzi retires. Suddenly, he needs things to do in everyday life and he tries a number of activities: helping Pina shopping; babysitting grand-daughter Uga; a trip to Venice; learning golf. He then fakes documents to get a new job, but in the end he becomes a hypochondriac and doesn't even take a long-awaited chance with Miss Silvani.

Yeo-jin and Jae-yeong are two teenage girls who are trying to earn money for a trip to Europe. To reach this end, Jae-yeong is prostituting herself while Yeo-jin acts as her pimp, setting her up with the clients and staying on guard for the police. Things take a turn for the worse when Yeo-jin gets distracted from her duty and the police raid the motel where Jae-yeong is meeting with a client. To avoid getting caught, Jae-yeong jumps out of a window, fatally injuring herself.

At her husband's funeral, Pearl (Shirley Maclean), Jewish mother of two divorced and antagonistic daughters, meets an old Italian friend (Marcello Mastroianni) of her husband, whose advice years previously had stopped the husband leaving home. For 23 years he, now a widower, has secretly loved Pearl...

Lara Croft ventures to an underwater temple in search of the mythological Pandora's Box but, after securing it, it is promptly stolen by the villainous leader of a Chinese crime syndicate. Lara must recover the box before the syndicate's evil mastermind uses it to construct a weapon of catastrophic capabilities.

Margaret Fish is planning a surprise party for her dentist husband, Bob. Meanwhile, at the office, Bob his having a mid-life crisis while insects munch on what's left of his plants. When Bob returns home, Margaret has a terrible time getting him into the room where everyone's hidden until he's halfway through changing clothes and talking about how horrid all their nebbishy friends are (the same friends hidden all over the room).

While traveling across country with her fiancé, Beth wakes alone in an isolated clinic to a mother's worst nightmare. Just how far will she go to save her child?

While changing the pipes in the tanningbeds at Golden Sun, Tommy meets the owner. A middleaged former Miss Fyn called Susse. Slowly an unusual love affair begins. Tommy's two friends Ole & Flemming give him tips on how to give Golden Sun some masculine appeal. Susse just happens to have a sleazy lawyer that does not appreciate the new look.

A recent college graduate sets out to win back the girl of his dreams.

Emma, a young author, goes to see Erik, the publishing editor whom she's sent her debut novel. Their meeting leads to a love affair. The middle-aged Erik leaves his wife. What Erik doesn't know is that Emma recently began a relationship with the dramatist Stefan, whose play is also being published by Erik's company. One day Stefan overdoses and is brought to the emergency ward where Erik's wife Ann works as a doctor. These incident is the start of the story about how four people's lives are crossed during ten years, until the four of them finally end up in the same loneliness they started.

His name might not be very familiar, but the works of graphic artist Milton Glaser -- whose prolific output includes the "I Love NY" ad campaign, as well as album covers for Townes Van Zandt and Nina Simone -- are recognizable to many. Revisiting the famed paintings, drawings, logos, prints, posters and other works by Glaser, filmmaker Wendy Keys creates a rich and engaging mosaic of a key figure in American iconography.

Man leaves his factory job and sells everything to buy an earth mover and start his own business, travelling from place to place with his wife and child. There is not enough work and he is eventually forced to emigrate after many hardships.