Film Reviews
Welcome to the Jungle |
Two young couples head into the New Guinea wilderness in an effort to find Michael Rockefeller, the heir to the Rockefeller fortune who disappeared in 1961. |
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The Four |
An undercover agent is assigned by his corrupt chief to infiltrate a rival department and sabotage their investigation of counterfeit currency. What he discovers is the counterfeiter's real plan. To overthrow the capital. Not by flooding it with funny money, but with an army of undead. |
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I Dream Too Much |
If Columbia could make an acceptable movie star out of opera-diva Grace Moore, then RKO Radio could do the same with Lily Pons. At least that was producer Pandro S. Berman's reasoning when he cast Pons in the 1935 musical romance I Dream too Much. The actress plays Annette, a rural French musical student who marries struggling American composer Jonathan (Henry Fonda). Possessed of a splendid singing voice, our heroine rises to fame on the opera stage, while poor Jonathan continues struggling, supporting himself as a tour guide. Annette eventually saves her marriage by transforming her husband's "masterpiece," a rather turgid modernistic opera, into a light-hearted musical comedy. Lucille Ball, who'd later co-star with Henry Fonda in The Big Street and Yours, Mine and Ours, has a funny minor role as a gum-snapping tourist. Though Lily Pons was at least 10 years older than Fonda, they make an attractive and believable screen couple, adding credibility to this somewhat contrived yarn |
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Lowlands |
Set in the early part of 20th century Europe. There lived a dancer who becomes the romantic bone of contention between a humble shepherd and an imperious marquis. |
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Becoming Chaz |
Documentary following Chaz (formerly Chastity) Bono's gender transition. Includes interviews with family members and friends as the transition is followed. |
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United Red Army |
The film is told in three acts, beginning with a historical background of Japan's student movement of the 1960s and early 1970s, mostly using archive footage and a narrator. The second act follows the formation of the group to their mountain training camps in the southern Japanese Alps. It emphasizes the dogmatic (and eventually hypocritical) bullying of the group by Mori and Nagata, with 12 members being killed for infractions as small as improperly cleaning a gun, wearing make-up, and kissing. The third act shows the splitting up of the group after two members run off. It follows one group of five members to Karuizawa and a hostage-taking and police standoff known as the Asama-Sansō incident. |
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A Walk Among the Tombstones |
Private investigator Matthew Scudder is hired by a drug kingpin to find out who kidnapped and murdered his wife. |
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A Night at the Opera |
The Marx Brothers take on high society and the opera world to bring two lovers together. |
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Miffo |
Tobias is the new, idealistic priest in a suburb but he soon learns that his flock is quite uninterested in Christianity. However, he befriends Carolina, a chain smoking woman his age, wheelchair-bound since birth. It is opposites attract although their backgrounds are different. |
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A Light Beneath Their Feet |
A high school senior must choose between enrolling at the college of her dreams and remaining at home to take care of her bipolar mother. |
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After the Storm |
Ryota is an unpopular writer although he won a literary award 15 years ago. Now, Ryota works as a private detective. He is divorced from his ex-wife Kyoko and he has an 11-year-old son Shingo. His mother Yoshiko lives alone at her apartment. One day, Ryota, his ex-wife Kyoko, and son Shingo gather at Yoshiko's apartment. A typhoon passes and the family must stay there all night long. |
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Star Kid |
Shy seventh-grader Spencer Griffith's life changes when the meteor falls into local junkyard and he finds a Cybersuit - the wise and strong robot from another galaxy. Spencer puts Cybersuit on and becomes a different kind of guy |
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The Man in the Glass Booth |
Arthur Goldman is a rich Jewish industrialist, living in luxury in a Manhattan high-rise. He banters with his assistant Charlie, often shocking Charlie with his outrageousness and irreverence about aspects of Jewish life. Nonetheless, Charlie is astonished when, one day, Israeli secret agents burst in and arrest Goldman for being not a Jewish businessman but a Nazi war criminal. Whisked to Israel for trial, Goldman forces his accusers to face not only his presumed guilt--but their own. |
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Chinese Puzzle |
Xavier is a 40-year-old father of two who still finds life very complicated. When the mother of his children moves to New York, he can't bear them growing up far away from him and so he decides to move there as well. |
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Nowhere to Hide |
After the murder of a police inspector, his widow discovers with horror that, in addition, her only daughter has been kidnapped. While driving in her search, the voice of the technical roadside assistance that comes through the intercom installed in her vehicle, reports that he is who has kidnapped the girl. |
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