Film Reviews

Professor Sinigaglia (Marcello Mastroianni) is the title character in this darkly comedic Italian drama about mistreated factory workers in the city of Turin. Toiling away in appalling conditions in a textile mill, these employees have no one to stand up for them until Sinigaglia puts his academic career on the line by helping them to start a strike. Although the teacher comes under scrutiny by unsympathetic authorities, he maintains his dedication to the workers' cause.

A dangerous international spy is determined to give up his high stakes life to finally build a closer relationship with his estranged wife and daughter. But first, he must complete one last mission - even if it means juggling the two toughest assignments yet: hunting down the world's most ruthless terrorist and looking after his teenage daughter for the first time in ten years, while his wife is out of town.

The pond. This is where hockey was born-under the open sky-where the ice is gritty and so is the play. For generations, Northlanders have grown up on outdoor ice. But, there are new climate- controlled arenas in every town, and that's where the kids go to practice year-round now.

The guests of a villa are killed off one by one by their hosts. Incest, decapitations and a cyanide bath feature amongst the other bizarre delights.

Is it just another evening at the hugely popular Italian restaurant of proprietor and bookmaker Louis Cropa in New York? Anything but as tonight's guests include; a local police detective and his wife specially invited by the owner; on the balcony rival bookmaker gangsters from Queens who want to become partners in the restaurant; in the corner renowned food critic 'the food nymph' is her usual demanding self; and at the bar, seemingly unnoticed, is Ken. As the evening continues enter Duncan, inveterate gambler and sous-chef on-the-line in the frenetic kitchen downstairs, who acts as the catalyst that causes the evening to draw to its inevitable, explosive, deadly conclusion.

Essentially true story of how Spartan king Leonidas led an extremely small army of Greek Soldiers (300 of his personal body guards from Sparta) to hold off an invading Persian army now thought to have numbered 250,000.

A young punk rock band find themselves trapped in a secluded venue after stumbling upon a horrific act of violence.

A serial killer whose mother was a prostitute starts killing streetwalkers as a way of paying back his mother for her abuse.

The Waiting Room is a character-driven documentary film that uses extraordinary access to go behind the doors of an American public hospital struggling to care for a community of largely uninsured patients. The film - using a blend of cinema verité and characters' voice over - offers a raw, intimate, and even uplifting look at how patients, executive staff and caregivers each cope with disease, bureaucracy and hard choices. It is a film about fighting for survival when the odds are stacked against you.

A film about the noted American linguist/political dissident and his warning about corporate media's role in modern propaganda.

A young director intent on making "the greatest color crime movie ever" can't seem to finish his script--he has a beginning and an end, but he can't quite figure out the middle. The daughter of his landlord, excited to have a real "movie person" living nearby, tries to help by putting him in touch with a man who wants to collaborate on a script--the strange "Dr. Jolly"

El ángel de Budapest (Angel of Budapest) is a Spanish 2011 television World War II-Holocaust miniseries based on the book "Un español frente al Holocausto" (A Spanish against the Holocaust) written by journalist and radio executive director Diego Carcedo. The plot focuses on Ángel Sanz Briz, a Spanish ambassador in Hungary during World War II who helped to save the lives of thousands of jews from the Holocaust by lodging them in Spanish safe houses in Budapest.

A house at 10 thousand miles away from Buenos Aires, where confluence political interests of a whole country. A house inhabited by a former president overthrown and exiled with his wife and future president, and his secretary who created the wild Triple A. A house visited by Montoneros leaders, trade unionists, military opponents and friends, tourists and students world which was the heart and brain of resistance and struggle of a people, and which covered the corpse of Eva Peron, kidnapped by nearly two decades. A house that witnessed the daily life of the most important Argentine leader of the twentieth century, his private world, and his friendship with a young woman who came to know him as nobody Sofia. Simply, a house.

It ain't easy bein' green -- especially if you're a likable (albeit smelly) ogre named Shrek. On a mission to retrieve a gorgeous princess from the clutches of a fire-breathing dragon, Shrek teams up with an unlikely compatriot -- a wisecracking donkey.

A massive 5 1/2 hour biopic of Napoleon, tracing his career from his schooldays (where a snowball fight is staged like a military campaign), his flight from Corsica, through the French Revolution (where a real storm is intercut with a political storm) and the Terror, culminating in his triumphant invasion of Italy in 1797 (the film stops there because it was intended to be part one of six, but director Abel Gance never raised the money to make the other five). The film's legendary reputation is due to the astonishing range of techniques that Gance uses to tell his story, culminating in the final twenty-minute triptych sequence, which alternates widescreen panoramas with complex multiple- image montages projected simultaneously on three screens.