Film Reviews

Disappointed by the marriage of her lover to a woman he does not love, prostitute Harumi drifts from the city to a remote Japanese outpost in Manchuria to work in a "comfort house," or brothel, during the Sino-Japanese war. The commanding adjutant there takes an immediate liking to the new girl, but she is at first fascinated, and comes to love, Mikami, the officer's aide. At first he is haughty and indifferent to the girl, which enrages her, but they are drawn together eventually. Abused and manipulated by the adjutant, she grows to hate the officer and seeks solace in Mikami's arms. They carry on a clandestine affair, which is a dangerous breach of code for both of them.

An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality.

For generations, all that distinguished Eagle Pass, TX, from Piedras Negras, MX, was the Rio Grande. But when darkness descends upon these harmonious border towns, a cowboy and lawman face a new reality that threatens their way of life.

Army Sergeant Mickey Dunn sets out in pursuit of the Cisco Kid, a notorious if kind-hearted and charismatic bandit of the Old West. The Kid spends much of his loot on Tonia, the woman he loves, not realizing that she is being unfaithful to him in his absence. Soon, with her oblivious paramour off plying his trade, Tonia falls in with Dunn, drawn by the allure of a substantial reward for the Kid's capture -- dead or alive. Together, they concoct a plan to ambush and do away with the Cisco Kid once and for all.

The Party Animal is a documentary-style comedy about a sex-starved man, Pondo Sinatra, a 26-year-old college student whom everyone agrees is doomed to die a virgin. Desperate to break what seems to be a cosmic curse, he tries ever more bizarre schemes to seduce one the sexy, scantily-clad women who seem to be everywhere, taunting him and enjoying his misery. Despite his best efforts, however, he is rejected everywhere, even at the local cathouse. When Pondo threatens to kill himself, Studley, his ladykilling best friend, tries to help him in his quest to "get him a little", as does Studley's mentor, a wise old janitor named Elbow.

Amir is an illegal Pakistani immigrant smuggled into England in the 1960's to work, to send money to his family and perhaps even bring them over with him. A skilled laborer, he is forced to do unskilled work like shoveling sheep dung and processing wool. He lives in a boarding house with nearly a dozen other men, under the supervision of Hussein Shah. He befriends a young student, Sakib, who dreams of being a writer. Their existence is punctuated by secret movies, a visiting prostitute, fear of detection and deportation, and the gangster-like smuggler who comes by for his take every week. The household is shaken up by the arrival of a white girl, Shah's girlfriend, and the sense of femininity and family she brings.

The planned reburial of a village elder goes awry as the corpse resurrects into a hopping, bloodthirsty vampire, threatening mankind. Therefore, a Taoist Priest and his two disciples attempt to stop the terror.

Helen is a nonconformist teenage girl who maintains a conflictual relationship with her parents. Hanging out most of her time with her friend Corinna, with whom she breaks one social taboo after another, she uses sex as a way to rebel and break the conventional bourgeois ethic. After an intimate shaving accident, Helen ends up in the hospital where it doesn’t take long before she makes waves. But there she finds Robin, a male nurse who will sweep her off her feet...

Two Egyptologists, Professor Fuchs and Corbeck, are instrumental in unleashing unmitigated horror by bringing back to England the mummified body of Tara, the Egyptian Queen of Darkness. Fuchs’s daughter becomes involved in a series of macabre and terrifying incidents, powerless against the forces of darkness, directed by Corbeck, that are taking possession of her body and soul to fulfill the ancient prophesy that Queen Tara will be resurrected to continue her reign of unspeakable evil.

Bloed, Zweet en Tranen (Blood, Sweat and Tears) is a story about the life of Andre Hazes, a Dutch populair singer. This movie shows three crucial phases in the life of Hazes: his youth (60's), his breakthrough (80's) and the last year of his life (early '00).

A young woman's bleak life

Valerie is in love with a brooding outsider, Peter, but her parents have arranged for her to marry another man – who is wealthy. Unwilling to lose each other, Valerie and Peter plan to run away together when they learn that Valerie's older sister has been killed by a werewolf that prowls the dark forest surrounding their village. Hungry for revenge, the people call on famed werewolf hunter, Father Solomon, to help them kill the wolf. But Solomon's arrival brings unintended consequences as he warns that the wolf, who takes human form by day, could be any one of them.

An experimental look at the sexual life of a couple.

A man, who once dreamed of becoming a punk rocker, is working as a low salaryman at a musical instrument parts company. He’s secretly in love with his colleague. One day, he finds a little turtle on the rooftop, naming it Pikadon.

In a typical English working-class town, the juveniles have nothing more to do than hang around in gangs. One day, Alan Darcy, a highly motivated man with the same kind of youth experience, starts trying to get the young people off the street and into doing something they can believe in: Boxing. Darcy opens a boxing club, aiming to bring the rival gangs together.