Film Reviews

New Yorkers, Skip Donahue and Harry Monroe, have no jobs and no prospects. They decide to flee the city and find work elsewhere, and land jobs as woodpeckers to promote the opening of a bank. When their feathery costumes are stolen and used in a bank robbery, they no longer have to worry about employment -- they're sent to prison!

In 1870s Florida, a rural family struggles to survive. A lonely twelve-year-old son, Jody (Wil Horneff), the lone surviving child, against his mother's better judgment eventually persuades his parents to allow him a pet fawn, which Jody grows to love deeply. Tragic conflict arises when the fawn begins eating the family's food crops.

An ordinary looking chair refuses to be sat upon.

The only thing that is working in Cassie's world is her small town business. Her Christmas Cupcakery is a huge success, but her love life is a mess. Cassie's whole universe is turned upside down when she falls in love with a co-worker who is revealed to be the famous and notoriously troubled actor Alex Gray. There's no denying that Alex and Cassie are in love, but can their relationship survive the pressure of Hollywood and the holidays?

This intimate documentary follows careers of two remarkable personalities: Carmen de Lavallade, a dynamic dancer and choreographer from California who moved to New York with Alvin Ailey and began a legacy of modern dance in America, and her husband Geoffrey Holder, a Trinidad-born choreographer, set and costume designer, painter and man about town with productions such as The Wiz. Features interviews and performance footage of friends and colleagues: dancers Judith Jamison, Gus Solomons, Jr., Dudley Williams, Ulysses Dove and Alvin Ailey.

Max Keeble, the victim of his 7th grade class, plots revenge when he learns he's moving; it backfires when he doesn't move after all.

The film features people from Berlin's electronic dance music scenes (primarily house music and techno, but especially their “minimal” sub-scenes). The majority of the film consists of footage of individual interviews, cut and interpolated together to create narratives around certain themes, such as music, drugs, love, addiction, friendship, and sexuality. Among the interviewees were DJs, bouncers, bartenders, and partygoers.

After she discovers that her boyfriend has betrayed her, Hilary O'Neil is looking for a new start and a new job. She begins to work as a private nurse for a young man suffering from blood cancer. Slowly, they fall in love, but they always know their love cannot last because he is destined to die.

After a one night stand Deb wakes up in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

An unlikely protagonist slinks around in “The Cat,” which follows So-yeon, a pet groomer who suffers from claustrophobia stemming from a childhood experience. One day, one of So-yeon’s customers dies on the elevator, leaving her cat Bi-dan behind. The mystery of who killed the woman on the elevator is unknown, and the cat is the only witness. As the police begin their investigation, they ask So-yeon to take care of Bi-dan. But something strange happens to So-yeon from the day she brings Bi-dan home. So-yeon starts having nightmares in which she sees a little girl who keeps coming back to haunt her dreams. Afraid and unsure of what this might mean, So-yeon starts investigating the mystery of the cat and the death of its owner when her closest friend, who has also recently gotten a cat, dies.

An experimental film matching shifting colors with audio taken from an NPR radio interview with a mother who lost her son in the Iraq War.

A train travels across Italy toward Rome. On board is a professor who daydreams a conversation with a love that never was, a family of Albanian refugees who switch trains and steal a ticket, three brash Scottish soccer fans en route to a match, and a complaining widow traveling to a memorial service for her late husband who's accompanied by a community-service volunteer who's assisting her. Interactions among these Europeans turn on class and nationalism, courtesy and rudeness, and opportunities for kindness.

An update of the 1960s Chinese martial arts story, Buddha's Palm, friends Charles and Chi (Andy Lau, Pak-Cheung Chan) visit Mainland China and discover an ancient cave that houses what is supposed to be the makeshift tomb of the legendary martial artist Lung Gim-Fei. The friends find an old spell book and practice some magic, which unintentionally breaks open a wall and releases a dormant princess (Joey Wang) and her handmaiden (Siu-Wai Mui). Charles and Chi take the Princess and her Handmaiden back to Hong Kong with them, unaware that they were followed by the just-awaken evil warlord, Tien Chien (Wah Yuen).

Tough-talking Detroit cop Axel Foley heads to the rarified world of Beverly Hills in his beat-up Chevy Nova to investigate a friend's murder. But soon, he realizes he's stumbled onto something much more complicated. Bungling rookie detective Billy Rosewood joins the fish-out-of-water Axel and shows him the West Los Angeles ropes.

Ida lives hard and fast with too much drinking and a string of boyfriends, Sandor has very few friends and his mother insists that he practices ballet. They meet in a chat room and despite appearances they discover they have much in common. Sandor and Ida lives in different cities and when Sandor unexpectedly visits her it ends with disaster.