Film Reviews

Romanian director Cristian Nemescu's comedy California Dreamin' (aka Nesfarsit, 2007) unfolds against the backdrop of the Kosovo War, circa 1999. A NATO train rolls through a Romanian hamlet, transporting a plethora of weapons across the country -- without official documents, and equipped only with the verbal consent of the Romanian authorities. The transport thus grows intensely vulnerable.

An ancient pestilence called The Scourge has been set free in a small town after being entombed in a church's masonry for a century and a half. As bodies rapidly pile up, nothing stands between the spawning Scourge and the rest of the town except our young heroes Scott and Jessie who rediscover their love for each other in the process

At a Catholic public school, Benjamin Stanfield is tired of being the teacher's pet and decides to play a practical joke on his form master Father Goddard. In confession, Stanfield tells Goddard that he has accidentally murdered his friend Blakey and buried him in the forest. When Goddard investigates the matter, he finds a buried scarecrow. Goddard is outraged, but, due to the seal of confession, he knows he cannot expel Stanfield. Shortly after, Stanfield once again enters the confession booth, telling Goddard that what before was a practical joke, he has now made happen. In disbelief, Goddard once again goes to the forest to investigate the matter. This time, he discovers Blakey's dead body. The plot soon thickens as Stanfield's fellow student Arthur Dyson mysteriously disappears...

Brian, an out-of-work stockbroker, is introduced by his landlord Mr. Redman to a new source of insider information: the Ouija! The Ouija makes him rich, but when Mr. Redman kills himself and Brian suffers a freak accident, Brian's wife starts noticing changes in her husband...

Aditya (Vivek Oberoi), a young middle class boy, meets Suhani (Rani Mukerji), a medical student and falls head over heels for her. He pursues her relentlessly in the local trains of Mumbai. Suhani, brushes off Aditya's overtures, because she wants to become a successful doctor and do her parents proud. However, Aditya's persistence pays off and she finally accepts. But opposition from her parents forces the couple to part ways. The separation is unbearable and they get married in secret. Once they are married, is where the real story begins. The bliss ends and reality sets in with misunderstandings and quarrels in tow. Where do the newlyweds go from here? Will Aditya and Suhani understand the true meaning of being a "Saathiya"?

I may be provincial and old-fashioned. I may believe in a lot of dead things like patriotism and the Constitution, and I like apple pie, because that's the dumb way I was brought up, and that's the dumb way I feel!

A director and his crew attempt to make the transition from the small to the big screen.

Life Itself recounts the surprising and entertaining life of renowned film critic and social commentator Roger Ebert. The film details his early days as a freewheeling bachelor and Pulitzer Prize winner, his famously contentious partnership with Gene Siskel, his life-altering marriage, and his brave and transcendent battle with cancer.

After a card game Southerner Owen Pentecost finds himself the owner of a Denver hotel. Involved with two women - one who came with the hotel, and one newly arrived from the East to open a dress shop - he then has to make even more fundamental choices when, with the start of the Civil War, he becomes one of a small minority in a strongly Unionist town.

Selling the Silence is a creative documentary film. It witnesses the rise and fall of one family of entrepreneurs, the Kuukkanen family from Salla, Lapland, side-by-side with the current changes in the values of our society. In combining private and personal family memories with ongoing changes in the scenery, the documentary asks: How to avoid irreversible changes in the nature when earning your living? Selling the Silence is a journey to the North, past and present. Sometimes the journey can be surprising, sometimes sad, sometimes absurd in a black Finnish way. When the film asks: ”What is the price of the wilderness?”, it is also a question of identity: Who you really are? What is your real nature?

The thirteenth film overall for the long-running series and the fourth movie in the Diamond and Pearl story arc, it includes an upcoming creature from Pokémon Black & White, named Zoroark, as the main character (as well as its pre-evolved form, Zorua). In the movie, Celebi travels to the past to prevent a battle between Raikou, Entei, and Suicune after seeing the future battle in a vision. Meanwhile, Ash, Brock and Dawn make it to Crown City to attend the annual Pokémon Baccer World Cup where they have an encounter with Zorua, who has lost his companion. The town is then attacked by the Legendary Pokémon Raikou, Entei, and Suicune... who are revealed to actually be Zoroark. It is then up to Celebi to appear from the future and help the trio stop the rampaging Pokémon.

Directed by Pernille Rose Grønkjær.

Les, a small-time celebrity photographer desperate to make it big, befriends Toby, a homeless young man with no direction except a vague desire to become an actor. When by chance Toby becomes romantically involved with K'Harma Leeds, the hottest pop star of the moment, Les grows jealous and plots revenge.

Life and times of Nikola Tesla, famous scientist whose inventions were stolen, but whose greatest contribution to mankind remain a mystery to this day.

An acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9/11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960's and 1970's. By the 1990's, such characters were apparently no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of anonymous bombs in suitcases. Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster.