Film Reviews

It's hard, in the year 2001, to remember what porn was like in the 70s. In this decade when pornstars are on TV, date movie stars, and are on album covers, the secret world of men in raincoats attending sleazy theaters is hard to imagine. Now most people see porn on their cable or on video or DVD. Once upon a time, though, it was a big deal for a porn star to hit the mainstream, and John Holmes did just that. With a 14 inch endowment and not so good looks, Holmes made thousands of movies and slept with thousands of women. He became well known for his Johnny Wad series, where he was an international man of mystery and hard core sex. Eventually he got heavily into drugs, got involved in a brutal murder, and finally died of AIDS.

May, 1946, in Paris young poet Jacques Prevel meets Antonin Artaud, the actor, artist, and writer just released from a mental asylum. Over ten months, we follow the mad Artaud from his cruel coaching of an actress in his "theatre of cruelty" to his semi-friendship with Prevel who buys him drugs and hangs on his every word. Meanwhile, Prevel divides his time between Jany, his blond, young, drug-hazed mistress, and Rolande, his dark-haired, long-suffering wife, who has a child during this time. Cruelty, neglect, poverty, egoism, madness, and the pursuit of art mix on the Left Bank.

Jason and Alexandra 'Alex', a close couple, loose their sail yacht in a storm and are grateful to get picked up by Captain Jim Bigelow's commercial carrier. Suspicous about the rough treatment and injections given by ship's doctor Gerbac which make the strong man faint, and realizing the ship is improbably empty and the radio not broke as the crew claims, Jason starts snooping around and finds human bodies on meat hooks, but even Alex thinks he's just hallucinating. Alas while sane Jason is restrained for his 'paranoia', the real madmen are the doc's genetic experiment outfit, who abuse their human captives as live incubators for a giant spider's eggs...

When an heiress sues a newspaper, the editor hires a reporter to compromise her.

A priest (William Holden) arrives at a mission-post in China accompanied by a young native girl who has joined him along the way. His job is to relieve the existing priest (Clifton Webb), who is now too old and weak to continue with the upkeep of the church. However, Communist soldiers arrive at the mission and seize it as a command post. Their leader rapes the native girl and impregnates her, only later to realise that Communism is no good for him. In the end, the foursome flee to the border, but are pursued by Communist forces along the way.

One night, a burglar in a Santa Claus costume is surprised by Victor, a young boy who believes he is the real Santa Claus. Victor then follows him, and they embark on an unexpected adventure that will change their lives.

June 14, 1941, 3 a.m. Over 40000 people from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania are deported by Soviets to Siberia. Among them is a philosophy student Erna, a happily married mother of a little girl. Separated from her husband Erna and her daughter are dispatched together with other women and children to remote Siberian territories. Despite hunger, fear and brutal humiliation Erna never in next fifteen years loses her sense of freedom and hope of returning to homeland. The story is inspired by real events.

José Sirgado, filmmaker in his thirties, has completed his second film and is deeply unsatisfied for various reasons. One may be that his relationship with the film has nothing to do with what he had imagined, another may be that the heroine of his film has left a deeper mark than expected, or his break with Ana, the protagonist of his first film. On returning home he finds Ana and the heroine of his latest film. Both of them are expecting him as if nothing had happened and José, deeply altered, soon falls into temptation.

A young woman discovers that she is the focus of an evil nazi experiment involving selective breeding and summoned elves, an attempt to create a race of supermen. She and two of her friends are trapped in a department store with an elf, and only Dan Haggerty, as the renegade loose-cannon Santa Claus, can save them.

America's favorite singing cowboy Gene Autry stars in this vintage tale as an up-and-coming rodeo singer caught in the middle of two rival companies, both angling to ride the talented crooner to riches. Featuring several memorable musical performances from Autry, including renditions of "Forgive Me" and "In Old Capistrano," this rousing Western co-stars Smiley Burnette, Virginia Grey and Lucien Littlefield.

A doctor and his girlfriend are stalked by a woman who claims to be in love with him. Meanwhile, the man falls in love with a younger woman. Based on a true story

When his long-lost outlaw father returns, Tommy "White Knife" Stockburn goes on an adventure-filled journey across the Old West with his five brothers.

Based upon a true story. Wife with young family finds life becoming unbearable with her successful, but violent and abusive, husband. After filing for divorce, she quickly learns that her husband, through fear of his personal life embarrassing his clients, has commissioned an assassin to murder her before going to court. Unfortunately, for him, the hired assassin turns out to be an FBI agent. The FBI convince her that she must “pretend” to have been murdered in order to prove her husband’s involvement.

In 1616, when Flanders is under Spanish occupation, the town of Boom, in the midst of preparations for its carnival, learns that a Spanish duke with his army is on the way to spend the night there. Fearing that this will inevitably result in rape and pillage, the mayor — supported by his town council — has the idea of pretending to be newly dead, in order to avoid receiving the soldiers. But his redoubtable wife Cornelia despises this strategem and organises the other women to prepare hospitality and to adapt their carnival entertainments for the Spaniards (who insist on entering the town anyway).

Amon is a boy who can control the wind. Branik, ruler of the Empire of the Golden Snake, wants Amon's power to complete the ultimate weapon and sends his troops to capture the boy. Amon, using his talents, manages to runs away with Maria, one of the People of the Sea. Together, they try to stop the Empire of the Golden Snake from destroying and conquering everything.