Film Reviews

Hey, Boo explores the life of reclusive author Nelle Harper Lee, shedding light on the context and history of her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel To Kill a Mockingbird.

When cattle mysteriously start dying of anthrax in a small Alberta ranching community, an RCMP officer tries to keep the peace as ranchers lay the blame on a local agricultural research center. A reporter encourages the angry ranchers - led by the Mountie's mother-in-law - to stage a sit-in at the research center. When an eccentric old rancher dies after being exposed to a deadly strain of anthrax, the protesters are quarantined. No one notices that the reporter has disappeared - along with several vials of the deadly bacteria. The RCMP officer begins his own investigation, gleaning information from a U.S. government agent. He finds himself racing against time to recover the stolen anthrax.

Renee returns home one Saturday after giving an early morning piano lesson. She lives in the provinces with her husband Juan and their five year-old son Santi. Over breakfast, they discuss a possible move to Buenos Aires but rule it out after Juan provides a reasoned argument against it. He suggests a family trip to the beach. Renee proposes for Juan alone to take Santi to the beach while she takes her ailing mother Virginia to the country. The film bifurcates as the narrative alternates between the two excursions. Renee picks up Virginia at an assisted-living facility; they drive to a rustic cabin, sit by the fireplace and later take a walk in the forest. Juan and the inquisitive Santi travel further, to an almost empty beach, walk down a pier, build a castle out of sand, and meet two fishermen who entertain the boy with sea tales and teach him how to gut a fish.

When a shy girl, secretly in love with her rocker-grrl housemate, meets an unbalanced heiress on the run, anything could (and does) happen in BRUSHFIRES, the latest production from Chicago-based film group Split Pillow. As the three women negotiate the dangerous relationships among them, the seven women directors weave a sensual tale of suspense. Drawing inspiration from the poem by Jessica Wilbur and the surrealist parlour game, The Exquisite Corpse, each director selected a word or phrase on which to base her segment, and the seven chapters of the film bear their individual marks. This impressive experiment in filmmaking emerges as a sensitive tale of young desire, loss, and love's confusion.

The world is closing in on Greta Driscoll. On the cusp of turning fifteen she can't bear to leave her childhood, it contains all the things that give her comfort in this incomprehensible new world. She floats in a bubble of loserdom with her only friend Elliott, until her parents throw her a surprise 15th birthday party and she's flung into a parallel place; a world that's weirdly erotic, a little bit violent and thoroughly ludicrous - only there can she find herself.

This documentary follows 8 teens and pre-teens as they work their way toward the finals of the Scripps Howard national spelling bee championship in Washington D.C. All work quite hard and practice daily, first having to win their regional championship before they can move on. Interviews include the parents and teachers who are working with them. The competitors not only work hard to get to the finals but face tremendous pressure as the original group of over 250 competitors is whittled down and the words they must spell get ever more difficult.

Isabelle's life revolves around the New York bookshop she works in and the intellectual friends of both sexes she meets there. Her grandmother remains less than impressed and decides to hire a good old-fashioned Jewish matchmaker to help Isabelle's love-life along. Enter pickle-maker Sam who immediately takes to Isabelle. She however is irritated by the whole business, at least to start with.

Barry McKenzie sets off for England with his aunt, Edna Everage, to advance his cultural education. Bazza is an innocent abroad, fond of beer, Bondi and beautiful sheilas, but he soon settles into the Australian ghetto in Earls Court, where his old mate Curly has a flat.

An unlikely friendship between 2 young men becomes everything, when an Australian soldier takes refuge under the canopied jungles of Singapore, during the violent Japanese invasion in World War II. Jim is lost, injured and defenseless in a hostile, tropical world, hunted by Japanese troops, Seng, a Singapore-Chinese resistance fighter emerges from the jungle and the two young men find themselves thrown together hoping to survive.

When John takes his San Francisco friends to his deceased uncle's remote ranch to hunt wild pigs, it seems like a typical guys weekend with guns - despite the presence of John's sexy girlfriend Brooks. But as John and his crew trek deeper into the forest, they begin tracking the awful truth about his uncle's demise and the legend of The Ripper -- a murderous three-thousand-pound black boar!

Freelance reporter Jennifer and her two friends, Karen and Vicki, accept an invitation for cheap room and board in a large farmhouse offered by a friendly, but shady, museum owner named Ernest Keller since all the motels in and around town are booked for a holiday parade fair Jennifer is covering. But unknown to the women, some unseen "thing" has been living in the basement of the house for over 20 years and is looked after by Keller and his shy sister Virginia, in which the "thing" soon gets out and begins harassing and killing the women one by one in various violent, but seemingly accidental, means.

Innovative and enchanting adaptation of this well-loved children's story.

Georges has Down syndrome, living at a mental-institution, Harry is a busy businessman, giving lectures for young aspiring salesmen. He is successful in his business life, but his social life is a disaster since his wife left him and took their two children with her. This weekend his children came by train to meet him, but Harry, working as always, forgot to pick them up. Neither his wife or his children want to see him again and he is driving around on the country roads, anguished and angry. He almost runs over Georges, on the run from the institution since everybody else went home with their parents except him, whose mother is dead. Harry tries to get rid of Georges but he won't leave his new friend. Eventually a special friendship forms between the two of them, a friendship which makes Harry a different person.

See the sport of surfing as it’s never been captured before in John Florence and Blake Vincent Kueny’s second signature release, this time in association with the award-winning film studio Brain Farm. The first surf film shot in 4K, View From a Blue Moon follows the world’s most dynamic surfer John Florence and his closest friends from his home on the North Shore of Oahu to his favorite surfing destinations around the globe. From the dreamy blue perfection of the South Pacific to the darkest uncharted waters of Africa (and everywhere in between), Florence faces a broad spectrum of emotions as he continues to seal his legacy as one of the most gifted surfers ever. And while the young Hawaiian is pulled in increasingly different directions, there is no form of pressure that will keep him from his ultimate goal — to redefine what is possible in the ocean.

The 50 year story of a ballroom in France, from the 1920s. The people who go there is always the same, even the musicians. You can see all kind of people dancing all the fashion dances (depending on the age).