Film Reviews

Thad Beaumont is the author of a highly successful series of violent pulp thrillers written under the pseudonym of ‘George Stark’, but when he decides to ‘kill-off’ his alter-ego in a mock ceremony, it precipitates a string of sadistic murders matching those in his pulp novels, which are soon discovered to be the work of Stark himself. Looking like a maniacal version of his counterpart, Stark is not so willing to quit the writing game – even if it means coming after Thad's wife and their baby.

This is multifaceted look at the landscape and history of Utah (or Deseret, as the Mormon Church prefers to call it). Benning condenses 93 news stories from the New York Times from 1852 to 1992 (read offscreen by Fred Gardner) and sets them against contemporary Utah landscapes, the shots changing with each sentence.

Two plus-sized ladies meet the men of their dreams in the most unexpected of ways.

Zona Zamfirova is set in the eastern Serbian city of Niš in the 19th century. The plot follows the story of Zona Zamfirova, a local rich man's daughter, and the vicissitudes of her affair with Mane, an ordinary goldsmith. As it was undesirable for the daughter of a rich man to marry a craftsman, the two are at first divided, with the possibility of Zona marrying Manulać, who came from a wealthy family. Everything is, however, changed as Mane organizes a successful conspiracy to keep Zona for himself.

Antonio Barozzi moves from Lago Maggiore to Rome to become an actor. He does not realize his agent and acting coach are only manipulating him to further their own careers.

Director Billy Wilder adds a new and intriguing twist to the personality of intrepid detective Sherlock Holmes. One thing hasn't changed however: Holmes' crime-solving talents. Holmes and Dr. Watson take on the case of a beautiful woman whose husband has vanished. The investigation proves strange indeed, involving six missing midgets, villainous monks, a Scottish castle, the Loch Ness monster, and covert naval experiments. Can the sleuths make sense of all this and solve the mystery

At the height of the Vietnam war, Captain Benjamin Willard is sent on a dangerous mission that, officially, "does not exist, nor will it ever exist." His goal is to locate - and eliminate - a mysterious Green Beret Colonel named Walter Kurtz, who has been leading his personal army on illegal guerrilla missions into enemy territory.

Set in Bertolucci's ancestral region of Emilia, the film chronicles the lives of two men during the political turmoils that took place in Italy in the first half on the 20th century.

In a countryside town bordering on a magical land, a young man makes a promise to his beloved that he'll retrieve a fallen star by venturing into the magical realm. His journey takes him into a world beyond his wildest dreams and reveals his true identity.

In writer-director Nick Whitfield's black indie comedy, a pair of "exorcists" (Ed Gaughan and Andrew Buckley) with the power to rid people of their secrets agree to help a woman (Paprika Steen) whose daughter (Tuppence Middleton) is mute -- and whose husband is missing. Jason Isaacs co-stars as the mysterious Colonel, who seems to be calling the shots from the sidelines of the duo's shadowy enterprise.

Larry Abbot, speaker in the radio horror shows of Manhattan Mystery Theater wants to marry. For the marriage he takes his fiancée home to the castle where he grew up among his eccentric relatives. His uncle decides that he needs to be cured from a neurotic speech defect and exaggerated bursts of fear: he gives him a shock therapy with palace ghosts.

A novelist struggling with writer's block enlists the aid of an assassin for some inspiration -- fully unaware that he is being set up to take the blame for a murder.

Faced with the suspicious death of their father, two brothers must motivate one another to get back on their bikes and take the Las Vegas Motocross Championships by storm.

"He who has two women loses his soul, he who has two houses loses his mind." So it goes with Louise played by Pascale Ogier who is dissatisfied with her mundane life in a bleak Parisian new-town. She rents a pied-à-terre in the city so she can experience independence.

When a woman dying of cancer in turn-of-the century Sweden is visited by her two sisters, long repressed feelings between the siblings rise to the surface.