Film Reviews

"Lesson Plan" is a documentary film about The Third Wave (aka The Wave & Die Welle) classroom experiment, as told by the original students and teacher Ron Jones.

Alex, Marty, Gloria and Melman are still trying to get back to the Big Apple and their beloved Central Park zoo, but first they need to find the penguins. When they travel to Monte Carlo, they attract the attention of Animal Control after gate crashing a party and are joined by the penguins, King Julian and Co., and the monkeys. How do a lion, zebra, hippo, giraffe, four penguins, two monkeys, three lemurs travel through Europe without attracting attention and get back to New York? They join a traveling circus. Their attempts to get back to New York are consistently hampered by the Captain of Animal Control who wants to make Alex part of her collection. Once they make it back to New York Marty, Alex, Gloria and Melman realize that they want to be part of the traveling circus.

Two policewomen from Internal Affairs arrive in a provincial precinct to investigate the death of an Algerian woman who was an informer. One punches, the other eyes, tip top.

Hyperactive teenager Kelly is enrolled into a military school when her new stepfather becomes the Commandant. At first she has problems fitting in and taking orders until she tries out for the drill team.

The plot involves an innocent island girl who moves to the city after her fiancé lacks the courage to face his father who is against their relationship. In the city the girl winds up being abused by men, giving birth to a child out of wedlock, and supporting herself on prostitution.

A teenage girl living in Baltimore in the early 1960s dreams of appearing on a popular TV dance show.

Ciccio and Franco flee Naples because they are wrongly accused of having murdered a local camorra boss and enlist in the Foreign Legion. They are inept but are mistaken for brave people by their commander and sent to break a weapon smuggling ring.

Pressured by a greedy uncle (Brian Cox) and a pile of debt, lovable loser Steve Barker (Knoxville) resorts to an unthinkable, contemptible, just-crazy-enough-to-work scheme. He pretends to be mentally challenged to rig the upcoming Special Olympics and bring home the gold. But when Steve's fellow competitors get wise to the con, they inspire him to rise to the greatest challenge of all: becoming a better person.

Eccentric British painter J.M.W. Turner lives his last 25 years with gusto and secretly becomes involved with a seaside landlady, while his faithful housekeeper bears an unrequited love for him.

Black Sabbath is a 1963 Italian horror film directed by Mario Bava. Boris Karloff, in addition to appearing in the linking passages, has a role in "The Wurdalak" segment (based on a story by Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy). The film comprises three horror stories, the others being "The Drop of Water" and "The Telephone."

Story of the lives of three Soviet pilots who are united by disaster in a small town in the mountains.

A documentary about Eleusina. The past and the present, in complete antithesis, coexist in a place spoiled by modern industry but which long ago hosted the Eleusinian Mysteries, the secret ceremonies that initiated the ancient Greeks into the miracles of life, death and the afterlife.

The career of Shakespeare's Sir John Falstaff as roistering companion to young Prince Hal, circa 1400-1413.

A woman in an unnamed, war-torn Middle Eastern country delivers an engrossing, emotional monologue to her comatose husband, in novelist and filmmaker Atiq Rahimi's poetic and politically charged allegory based on his award-winning novel. (TIFF)

Rick Belrow Livingston, in love with Broadway star Lisa, is sentenced to 30 days in jail for speeding through a small town. He persuades the judge's daughter Cindy to let him leave for one night, so that he can visit Lisa on her birthday. After that he goes on the town with Cindy and she falls in love with him. But Dr. Schemmer wants his son to become her husband.