Film Reviews

This gripping historical drama recounts the story of Armenian-born Missak Manouchian, a woodworker and political activist who led an immigrant laborer division of the Parisian Resistance on 30 operations against the Nazis in 1943. The Nazis branded the group an Army of Crime, an anti-immigrant propaganda stunt that backfired as the team's members became martyrs for the Resistance.

Four college friends become small-time bookies, only to find their world spinning dangerously out of control when their greed attracts the attention of organized crime.

Based on the best-selling psychology book by Paul Watzlawick, the film tells the story of Tiffany Blechschmid, a neurotic, moony, superstitious, contradictory and, no surprises here, single young woman in her late-twenties.

Pixote, a 10-year-old runaway boy, is arrested on the streets of Sao Paulo during a police round-up homeless people. Pixote endures torture, degradation and corruption at a local youth detention center where two of the runaways are murdered by policemen who frame Lilica, a 17-year-old transvesite hustler. Pixote helps Lilica and three other boys escape where they make their living by the life of crime which only escalates to more violence and death.

A remake of the Dicken's classic, "A Christmas Carol" featuring a very nasty pop singer who gets a reality check by three Christmas spirits.

A group of archaeologists uncover a strange structure in Northern Canada, dating over ten thousand years before the present. The team finds themselves isolated when their communication systems fail and it's not long before they begin to feel the effects of the solitude.

A story on the trials and tribulations of a mother-and-son relationship, which goes downhill after son Damiaan passes his school exams and almost immediately moves into a squat, while his widowed mother Aleid falls for the charms of a skipper and moves in with him just as soon.

Autumn 1978 in suburban Sweden. Everything seems to be fine with the middle class Bendrick family with their two teenage children and a younger son, until the mother starts seeing her first love again after 20 years. Just like their badly built house, the family façade starts slowly crumbling into pieces. The daughter, 15, finds her first love, and the boys too are puzzled by their own questions around adolescence and sexuality. The father tries to keep up a happy face, while the youngest son is the first and the most sensitive to realize how the family is heading towards a disaster.

When maladjusted orphan Jesse vandalizes a theme park, he is placed with foster parents and must work at the park to make amends. There he meets Willy, a young Orca whale who has been separated from his family. Sensing kinship, they form a bond and, with the help of kindly whale trainer Rae Lindley, develop a routine of tricks. However, greedy park owner Dial soon catches wind of the duo and makes plans to profit from them.

Spy spoof about Boysie Oakes, a British secret agent who specialises in Liquidating. In actual fact he contracts out the work and pretends it is was himself. This leads to complications.

In the midst of a tropical storm, the crew of an offshore oil rig must survive the rampage of a creature after invading its undersea habitat.

This harrowing tale of survival centers on Rose, a Masurian woman, whose German soldier husband was killed in the war, leaving her alone on their farm. A single woman had no defense against Russian soldiers who raped as a form of revenge, nor against plundering Poles who found themselves in desperate straits. Help arrives for Rose in the form of Tadeusz, a former officer in the Polish Home Army who deserted after he saw his wife raped and murdered by Russian troops and is attempting to hide his identity.

Scheming of a way to save their father's ranch, the Alvarez brothers find themselves in a war with Mexico's most feared drug lord.

The story of Saartjes Baartman, a Black domestic who, in 1808, left Southern Africa, then ruled by Dutch settlers, for Europe, following her boss Hendrick Caesar , hoping to find fame and fortune there. Once in London her master turned manager does nothing but exhibit her as a freak in a phony and humiliating carnival show. After a series of troubles caused by their act, Caesar, Saartje and their new friend, bear-tamer Réaux, head for Paris where once again, and against her will, she has to mimic savagery and expose her body, first in carnivals, then in the aristocratic salons of Paris, later on among the libertines and finally in brothels where she ends up being a prostitute. In the meantime, French anatomists will have taken an interest in her unusual anatomy (enormous buttocks and labia) only to declare her the missing link from ape to man. In 1815, aged only 27, she dies alone, of a combination of pneumonia and venereal disease.

Balbuena is a genial illegal immigrant who makes his way to New York City to take a bite out of the Big Apple. But his hopes of finding a better life soon begin to fade as Balbuena encounters one obstacle after another in the hardscrabble, uncaring metropolis.