Film Reviews

Nude men in rubber suits, close-ups of erections, objects shoved in the most intimate of places—these are photographs taken by Robert Mapplethorpe, known by many as the most controversial photographer of the twentieth century. Openly gay, Mapplethorpe took images of male sex, nudity, and fetish to extremes that resulted in his work still being labelled by some as pornography masquerading as art. But less talked about are the more serene, yet striking portraits of flowers, sculptures, and perfectly framed human forms that are equally pioneering and powerful.

Two contempo Frenchmen of Antillean descent visit their ancestor's time as well as their land in the slavery-themed French era.

A hatter in a provincial town (Michel Serrault) leads the life of a respectable citizen but is in fact a serial murderer. The only person to suspect this is his neighbour the tailor (Charles Asnavour).

This is rural France. It's the summer of 1943, the weather is fine and sunny and life is sweet. On one of these beautiful days, Nanette, a fourteen-year-old peasant girl, meets a slightly injured young man near the farm she lives on. Her life is about to change forever.

After Margaret, a divorcée living in Dublin, loses her teenage son, she develops an unorthodox relationship with Joe, a homeless youth. Their tentative trust is threatened by his involvement with a violent gang and the escalation of her ex-husband's grieving rage.

Sam Elliott and Katharine Ross star as architects brought to a secluded estate by an eccentric millionaire. They and other guests become trapped, leading to a series of grisly deaths which point to a supernatural…

A British multinational company seeks to overthrow a vicious dictator in central Africa. It hires a band of (largely aged) mercenaries in London and sends them in to save the virtuous but imprisoned opposition leader who is also critically ill and due for execution. Just when the team has performed a perfect rescue, the multinational does a deal with the vicious dictator leaving the mercenary band to escape under their own steam and exact revenge.

A group of Union Army soldiers is charged with protecting a box of gold and getting it to its rightful place within the government coffers.

After vanishing from her family’s lake house, 15 year-old Mary Solis returns without any memory of the traumatic events she experienced—and without part of her soul. Even while a shocking mystery surrounds her disappearance, and her disembodied soul begins a grim haunting, the Solis family’s biggest fear has yet to be faced.   When it’s discovered that two little girls, the same age as Mary’s sister, Sophia, went missing on the lake the very night that Mary disappeared, the stakes are raised. Is Mary suffering from a centuries old condition known as Loss of Soul? Or, is it something more nefarious?   After enlisting the help of a Shaman, the Solis family embarks on a journey to the spirit worlds, hunting for a supernatural cure.

Cassie, a 13 year old Gothic girl, is trying to fit in at her new school. To entertain herself, she plays a series of pranks on the popular kids and her younger brother, Max. When she goes to a Halloween store looking for new tricks, she finds a little book called "The Evil Thing"

The film "O Drakos" is about a mousy, timid, bespectacled guy in Athens who sees a newspaper photo of a fugitive criminal mastermind called "The Fiend". It's the spitting image of the harmless nerd. A gang of starstruck crooks sees our hapless hero, mistakes him for the Fiend, rescues him from imminent arrest and more or less forces him to lead a desperate criminal scheme they've got going. And finally, the poor little man becomes enamoured of the idea, decides for once in his sad life to be a tough guy and a hero. He surrenders to his bizarre destiny, to be "The Fiend of Athens"... O Drakos is brilliant: a dark, satirical noir masterpiece... is like a French New Wave picture crossed with a British Ealing comedy, with something of Fellini in its zinging energy, and Carol Reed's Odd Man Out and The Third Man. The stark, dramatic key-lighting in the "arrest" scene gives the imagery a Weegee-type crime-scene aesthetic...

Begone Dull Care shines with his masterful use of scratching and painting on film stock. In Begone Dull Care, McLaren adds complexity to Lye’s compositions, emphasising sound/visual synchronisation and generating depth on his mobile canvas. The film gives warmth and movement to compositions resembling a constantly morphing Jackson Pollock painting, yet never fails to remind us of its very calculated aesthetics when it suddenly adapts to the score’s slower movements and shifts from expressionistic and oversaturated explosions to minimalist vertical lines that vibrate accordingly to Oscar Peterson’s piano. (cont. http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/cteq/begone_dull_care/)

This historical drama is an account of the early life of British politician Winston Churchill, including his childhood years, his time as a war correspondent in Africa, and culminating with his first election to Parliament.

A down on his luck gambler links up with free spirit Elliot Gould at first to have some fun on, but then gets into debt when Gould takes an unscheduled trip to Tijuana. As a final act of desperation, he pawns most of his possessions and goes to Reno for the poker game of a lifetime. A film set mainly in casinos and races, as the two win and lose (but mainly win), get robbed, and get blind drunk.

Ghost is an idealogical musician who would rather play his blues in the park to the birds than compromise himself.