Film Reviews

Year 2038: The mineral resources of the earth are drained, in space there are fights for the last deposits on other planets and satellites. This is the situation when one of the bigger mining corporations has lost all but one mineral moons and many of their fully automatic mining robots are disappearing on their flight home. Since nobody else wants the job, they send prisoners to defend the mining station. Among them undercover agent Stone, who shall clear the whereabouts of the expensive robots. In an atmosphere of corruption, fear and hatred he gets between the fronts of rivaling groups.

Women (many of them lesbian) artists, writers, photographers, designers, and adventurers settled in Paris between the wars. They embraced France, some developed an ex-pat culture, and most cherished a way of life quite different than the one left behind.

A mother and daughter hatch a scheme to murder their family's domineering and sadistic patriarch.

What if Apollo 11 never actually made it? What if, in reality, Stanley Kubrick secretly shot the famous images of the moon landing in a studio, working for the US administration? This is the premise of a totally plausible conspiracy theory that takes us to swinging sixties London, where a stubborn CIA agent will never find Kubrick but is forced to team up with a lousy manager of a seedy rock band to develop the biggest con of all time.

June 1946: Stalin invites Russian emigres to return to the motherland. It's a trap: when a ship-load from France arrives in Odessa, only a physician and his family are spared execution or prison. He and his French wife (her passport ripped up) are sent to Kiev. She wants to return to France immediately; he knows that they are captives and must watch every step.

This documentary promoting the joys of life in a Soviet village centers around the activities of the Young Pioneers. These children are constantly busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing hand bills, exhorting all to "buy from the cooperative" as opposed to the Public Sector, promoting temperance, and helping poor widows. Experimental portions of the film, projected in reverse, feature the un-slaughtering of a bull and the un-baking of bread.

Since his wife's death, Arthur, a peculiar and severe surgeon, cloisters his teen daughter Lucille inside a strange mansion. Desperate, Lucille tries to commit suicide and ends up with her face completely burned and bandaged. Arthur, with the assistance of his aunt, prepares a weird skin graft in order to give back Lucille a face, a face that resembles his beloved and deceased wife. To take care of her, the father then hires Joan, an attractive nurse with a somber past. Lucille and Joan start a forbidden and passionate love affair.

An American colonel will pay any price to defeat the Viet Cong. When his unauthorized fighting force in Cambodia is discovered, he becomes a one man army, fighting a war of his own for a cause he knows is just.

Lush scenery and gorgeous photography highlight this bio of Princess Kaiulani (Q'Orianka Kilcher), a 19th-century Hawaiian princess raised in England but determined to maintain her people's independence from aggressive American businessmen. After being sent to England as a child by her Scottish father, Kaiulani returns to Hawaii and becomes a political activist who fights to retain her throne, even though she must leave her English paramour.

Nick Carraway, a young Midwesterner now living on Long Island, finds himself fascinated by the mysterious past and lavish lifestyle of his neighbor, the nouveau riche Jay Gatsby. He is drawn into Gatsby's circle, becoming a witness to obsession and tragedy.

Tired of scaring humans every October 31 with the same old bag of tricks, Jack Skellington, the spindly king of Halloween Town, kidnaps Santa Claus and plans to deliver shrunken heads and other ghoulish gifts to children on Christmas morning. But as Christmas approaches, Jack's rag-doll girlfriend, Sally, tries to foil his misguided plans.

A beautiful young woman snaps and kills a man she thought truly loved her. Her past shows that she's had a life of abusive relationships with men.

Movie describes real events that took place in 1983 when seven young Georgians, all from intellectual elite families, attampted to flee the Soviet Union by hijacking an airliner. The crisis ended with a storming of the airliner by Soviet special forces that resulted in eight dead. The surviving hijackers were subsequently tried and executed.

By turns tragic and transcendent, Akira Kurosawa’s film follows the daily lives of a group of people barely scraping by in a slum on the outskirts of Tokyo. Yet as desperate as their circumstances are, each of them—the homeless father and son envisioning their dream house; the young woman abused by her uncle; the boy who imagines himself a trolley conductor—finds reasons to carry on. The unforgettable Dodes’ka-den was made at a tumultuous moment in Kurosawa’s life. And all of his hopes, fears, and artistic passion are on fervent display in this, his gloriously shot first color film.

The former leader of a commando rescue attempt into Vietnam tries to discover why his squad members are being murdered, one-by-one, after the war is over.