Film Reviews

This film concerns two mysterious characters who meet on a Sunday in Queens. Madeleine the most unsettling creature of that name since "Vertigo" is a middle-aged, moderately successful actress. Oliver/Matthew is either a homeless man or a famous film director or both. Madeleine hails him on the street as the latter, launching a bizarre chain of events that includes a conversation in a diner, a very unromantic sexual encounter, the arrival of Madeleine's odd husband and unsuspecting daughter, and a child's birthday party. The film also compassionately tracks the daily rounds of Oliver/Matthew's fellow denizens of the homeless shelter, some of whom will be recognizable to New York audiences.

Wealthy Brice Wayne enters West Point and, though he does well on the football field, angers fellow cadets with his arrogance.

Poverty, Inc. explores the hidden side of doing good. From disaster relief to TOMs Shoes, from adoptions to agricultural subsidies, Poverty, Inc. follows the butterfly effect of our most well-intentioned efforts and pulls back the curtain on the poverty industrial complex - the multi-billion dollar market of NGOs, multilateral agencies, and for-profit aid contractors. Are we catalyzing development or are we propagating a system in which the poor stay poor while the rich get hipper?

The Rosenwald Schools by Aviva Kempner is a documentary about how Chicago philanthropist Julius Rosenwald, the son of an immigrant peddler who rose to head Sears, partnered with Booker T. Washington to build 5,400 Southern schools in African American communities in the early 1900s during the Jim Crow era.

Jack is 24, sometimes he's a drag queen named Sabrina. In 1967, as Sabrina, he's the mistress of ceremonies at a national drag queen contest in New York City. The camera goes behind the scenes, recording the rehearsals leading up to the contest, the conversations in the dressing room (about draft boards, sexual identity and sex-change operations, and being a drag queen), and the jealousies that emerge before and after the competition. Jack introduces us to Richard, a young man who becomes Jack's protégé. As Miss Harlow, Richard enters the contest. One of his principal competitors is Miss Crystal, who's from Manhattan. Who will win the crown?

The successful novelist Judith Ralitzer is interrogated in the police station about the disappearance of her ghost-writer. A serial-killer escapes from a prison in Paris. A missing school teacher leaves his wife and children. In the road, the annoying and stressed hairdresser Hughette is left in a gas station by her fiancé Paul while driving to the poor farm of her family in the country. A mysterious man offers a ride to her and she invites him to assume the identity of Paul during 24 hours to not disappoint her mother. Who might be the unknown man and what is real and what is fiction?

Greedy locals are trying to turn some beach property into a tourist attraction, and a computer expert sets out to use is knowledge of computers--along with the help of several local "beach bunnies"--to stop them.

Charlie Murphy: I Will Not Apologize is a live stand-up performance by Murphy in Boston. During his 1-hour set, Charlie covers a spectrum of topics, such as a discussing the male ego as well as a politically incorrect bit about people, including a certain former president of the United States, that he believes are "functionally retarded." He also does an amusing re-enactment of some scenes from 300. Murphy goes on to criticize the usual rehabilitation treatments ensuing from celebrity meltdowns (e.g., Mel Gibson and Michael Richards), arguing that an experience with Jigsaw from Saw is the only way to cure these people of their prejudices. Sticking with celebrities, he claims that Britney Spears's strange behaviour in 2007-08 was caused by her being possessed by the spirit of Rick James. In addition, Charlie hits on reality television, making fun of the courage (or lack thereof) of Dog the Bounty Hunter as well as an obsession with The Dog Whisperer.

Based on an astonishing true incident that took place on the frigid seas off Iceland in 1984, The Deep fashions a modern-day everyman myth about the sole survivor of a shipwreck, whose superhuman will to survive made him both an inexplicable scientific phenomenon and a genuine national hero.

Vassili is an aged prostitute with killer instincts. He finds an unconscious young man in the Forest of Boulogne and takes him home. Now lovers and accomplices, the two men become a couple in prostitution and steal from their clients. And yet, menaces of retaliation leave the couple with no choice but to escape from Paris. The runaway begins...

The wicked Badiyanu has come to capture all Earth's children to gain enough power to absorb the planet in her Black Dream Hole. The Black Dream Hole is in Badiyanu's castle and absorbs the dream energy from children. The more children Badiyanu kidnaps, the larger the dream hole gets. The Sailor Team must save Earth's children and prevent the Black Dream Hole from enveloping the entire planet!

Inspired by the Baader-Meinhof gang, a film about modern left Germans adopting the culture of extreme left-wing movements of the 1970s. East German dominatrix Gudrun leads a revolutionary gang of her own in Berlin. She has her men kidnap the son of a rich businessman in order to gain publicity. Claiming that heterosexuality is a social norm created to keep the people down, she forces her male minions to have sex with each other.

Over a million women have modeling portfolios online. BROKEN SIDE OF TIME is the story of Dolce, one of the models who've made a career of it. But now 30, and tired of competing with 18-year-olds, Dolce realizes what makes her feel most alive is also killing her. Before starting a new career behind the camera, she embarks on a long road trip home, shooting with her favorite photographers one last time, and shedding her lifestyle-acquired vices along the way. Combing real photoshoots shot cinéma vérité-style with a narrative based on some very real-life adventures in front of the lens, BROKEN SIDE OF TIME is a dark, sexual glimpse into a world never before captured in a film. A world where any woman can play the role of a model, and any man can be a photographer, and where even the best of them must consider whether the fame and money is worth the cost.

In 1986 Michael Morton’s wife Christine is brutally murdered in front of their only child, and Michael is convicted of the crime. Locked away in Texas prisons for a quarter century, he has years to ponder questions of justice and innocence, truth and fate. Though he is virtually invisible to society, a team of dedicated attorneys spends years fighting for the right to test DNA evidence found at the murder scene. Their discoveries ultimately reveal that the price of a wrongful conviction goes well beyond one man’s loss of freedom.

A woman, who has been the mistress of a man who has just died, thinks about leaving the little Italian village where they lived and moving to another place. An old and rich man offers her a place in his house, however, she will have to listen to him telling his past love stories.