Film Reviews

Marijuana is the most controversial drug of the 20th Century. Smoked by generations to little discernible ill effect, it continues to be reviled by many governments on Earth. In this Genie Award-winning documentary veteran Canadian director Ron Mann and narrator Woody Harrelson mix humour and historical footage together to recount how the United States has demonized a relatively harmless drug.

Buenos Aires. On the top floor of a hospital, a Spaniard that has lived half his life in Argentina realizes that he is dying. This old hired killer -tough, funny and tender- runs away with a happy load of morphine, and starts a trip up North, heading nowhere in particular. A girl he finds on the road will be his loyal companion along five thousand kilometres of black comedy.

A scuba diving instructor, her biochemist boyfriend, and her police chief ex-husband try to link a series of bizarre deaths to a mutant strain of piranha fish whose lair is a sunken freighter ship off a Caribbean island resort.

A hoodlum tries to go legit to buy a dog tract but needs investment money which he plans to get by robbing a bank, tunning in from a neighboring luggage shop. He takes over the luggage shop but is thwarted by its unexpected success.

Juha Berg is a 30-year-old hopeless drunk in the Kallio neighborhood of Helsinki. Juha doesn't have the first intention of changing his way of life - just the opposite. He really enjoys sundry sexual relationships, adrenalin-inducing violence and, of course, alcohol for which he gets money even if by collecting bottles. But the hilarity in a drunken haze soon gets a run for its money as the passionate Juha falls in love with his AA group leader. The relationship with Tiina progresses quickly to dating and Juha has to make pivotal decisions. Juha has to begin balancing between maintaining a functional intimate relationship and his old lifestyle. Juha's best friend Kristian does his best to sabotage the relationship, and Juha's shaky decision to stay sober is further hindered by Mikael, an expert on German erotica. But how far can you go before there is only one solution left?

“Portrait of Wally”, Egon Schiele’s tender picture of his mistress, Walburga (“Wally”) Neuzil, is the pride of the Leopold Museum in Vienna. But for 13 years the painting was locked up in New York, caught in a legal battle between the Austrian museum and the Jewish family from whom the Nazis seized the painting in 1939.

With being thrown off buildings an occupational hazard, professional stuntwomen Jeannie Epper and Zoë Bell (the alter egos of Wonder Woman and Xena, respectively) would seem well-equipped for any challenges Hollywood might dish out. But finding roles -- and respect -- in a male-dominated field can prove more harrowing than dodging punches.

Inspired by true events from the 1970s, the story revolves around a young detective who becomes the head of a police unit focused on catching a rampant serial killer of women, nicknamed 'The Silesian Vampire'.

The Man With No Name enters the Mexican village of San Miguel in the midst of a power struggle among the three Rojo brothers and sheriff John Baxter. When a regiment of Mexican soldiers bearing gold intended to pay for new weapons is waylaid by the Rojo brothers, the stranger inserts himself into the middle of the long-simmering battle, selling false information to both sides for his own benefit.

This documentary on the life and work of Academy award-winning director Elia Kazan highlights his colorful life on Broadway and in film, which is exemplified by such classic movies as East of Eden,A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and Gentleman's Agreement. Kazan's life outside the movie set is equally noteworthy, and this film utilizes various interviews to illustrate his controversial appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the '50s. Elia Kazan is one of America's most respected directors, and this video provides a unique glimpse into the life of a man who has left a lasting mark on the worlds of both cinema and theatre. ~ Dan Macintosh, Rovi

While researching his book In Cold Blood, writer Truman Capote develops a close relationship with convicted murderers Dick Hickock and Perry Smith.

In the fascinating new film from director Avi Nesher (The Wonders), two Israeli sisters delve into the dark mystery of their father’s former life in Poland during World War II.

A tribe of vicious female warriors terrorizes the countryside, and especially the males, until one day the men and some local villagers decide to fight back.

In common with other Zanzibar films, Patrick Deval’s Acéphale (1968) eschews conventional narrative in favour of an experimental arrangement of austerely executed but intensely hallucinatory episodes that build into a nightmarish fever of isolation and hopelessness.

H.G. Wells foresaw the future in such visionary novels as The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. On a night in London in 1946, newspaper reporter Ellen McGillivray arrives at the home of legendary literary figure, Herbert George Wells. Expecting to hear of the events and people who formed his prophetic imagination, she is informed of a world in which known scientific boundaries no longer exist. It begins a half-century earlier at London's Imperial College of Science where Wells meets Jane Robbins, a scientist equally fascinated by unnatural phenomenon, and a woman who immediately captures Wells' heart. To Wells' surprise, Ellen accepts his outlandish tales of traveling through time. What Ellen is about to discover is that at the heart of the mysterious orb is buried the equally mysterious heart of Jane Robbins, the one who inspired H.G. Wells to tell the amazing truth in the form of science "fiction."