Film Reviews

Launched in 1982 by three friends in a Houston diner, Compaq Computer set out to build a portable PC to take on IBM, the world’s most powerful tech company. Many had tried cloning the industry leader’s code, only to be trounced by IBM and its high-priced lawyers. Explore the remarkable David vs. Goliath story, and eventual demise, of Compaq, an unlikely upstart who altered the future of computing and helped shape the world as we know it today.

If You Were Young: Rage highlights the other side of post-war Japanese prosperity, focusing on the throngs of young people who missed out on the boom. We follow a group of young men that can't seem to get ahead, despite their willingness to try. Then one hits upon a plane - to work together to save for a dump truck and thus become independent contractors and be their own bosses at last. Ultimately life presents obstacles: jail for one, violence at the hands of the police for another and a girlfriend and subsequent children for the third. An early Kinji Fukasaku gem that imports the freewheeling style of the French New Wave and the hip detachment of American noir.

When a cockroach-spread plague threatened to decimate the child population of New York City in the original Mimic, biologist Susan Tyler and her research associates developed a species of "Judas" bugs and introduced them into the environment, where they were to "mimic" the diseased roaches and infiltrate their grubby habitats. The plan worked until the bugs evolved to mimic their next prey.....humans! Just when they were all thought to be dead, the giant cockroaches are back, and this time they've mutated to take on human form!

Two doctors find their graveyard shift inundated with townspeople ravaged by sores. Among the wounded is Cherry, a dancer whose leg was ripped from her body. As the invalids quickly become enraged aggressors, Cherry and her ex-boyfriend Wray lead a team of accidental warriors into the night.

Railroad fireman Bill White is a carefree ladies' man with an irresponsible streak. His buddy Jack Kulper, an engineer, is more solid and reliable. Bill comes to stay a while with Jack and his wife Lily. Bill and Lily fall in love, but not wishing to hurt Jack, Bill leaves without explanation. When Jack confronts Bill about his suspicions, the two fight and Jack is seriously injured. Bill is consumed with guilt and tries to make good, but Jack has his own ideas about that.

When virtually all of the residents of Piedmont, New Mexico, are found dead after the return to Earth of a space satellite, the head of the US Air Force's Project Scoop declares an emergency. A group of eminent scientists led by Dr. Jeremy Stone scramble to a secure laboratory and try to first isolate the life form while determining why two people from Piedmont - an old alcoholic and a six-month-old baby - survived. The scientists methodically study the alien life form unaware that it has already mutated and presents a far greater danger in the lab, which is equipped with a nuclear self-destruct device designed to prevent the escape of dangerous biological agents..

With the aid of his former law students, a professor-turned-prosecutor battles corruption and organized crime.

Baseball cards and a food-aid worker help a woman follow her shady husband's money trail around the world.

Calvin Wheeler is a scheming 13-year-old boy with everything going for him, except for an original issue of his precious comic book collection. When a prized show-dog chases him down while skateboarding one day, his owner inadvertently convinces him to adopt and train a dog of his own. However the only one available, is an uncouth stray Labrador/St. Bernard-mix named Tyko from a local animal shelter, who proves to be more than anybody can handle.

A high school substitute English teacher resorts to murder to protect her murderous dark past while seducing a student whom begins to suspect her true identity.

Decorated soldier Captain Colter Stevens wakes up in the body of an unknown man, discovering he's involved in a mission to find the bomber of a Chicago commuter train. He learns he's part of a top-secret experimental program that enables him to experience the final 8 minutes of another person's life. Colter re-lives the train incident over and over again, gathering more clues each time. But can he discover who is responsible for the attack before the next one happens?

Hamm is blind and unable to stand; Clov, his servant, is unable to sit; Nagg and Nell are his father and mother, who are legless and live in dustbins. Together they live in a room with two windows, but there may be nothing at all outside.

To reconcile with his girlfriend, a bookish college student tries to become an athlete.

In the Kerepesi Street cemetery, three grave diggers contemplate the fate of the world, then they step out of this role and in a sequence of episodes they play the typical figures of contemporary Hungarian reality, the fat cat, the swashbuckler, the victim, underworld chieftains, and present little absurd dramas of love, marriage, friendship, public order and legal safety. The author and the film director walk among them all the time, contemplating, laughing at their plays. The stories starting from the graveyard and returning there warn of the inevitability of death. The author and the director (Gyula Hernádi and Miklós Jancsó) wisely make friends with death.

God, heaven, and several Old Testament stories, including the Creation and Noah's Ark, are described supposedly using the perspective of rural, black Americans.