Film Reviews

After his plane is downed in the South Pacific, a Navy flier recounts his life to a co-pilot while awaiting rescue.

Two narratives clash violently in this meditative portrayal of disaffected youth set in a graveyard of abandoned mobile homes known as Sunset Edge. We follow a group of four aimless, suburban teenagers - they skateboard the park, sleep in the sun, and rummage through the decaying remains completely unaware that this is where a lonesome teen is confronting a horrific past. Day turns to night, people disappear, and the secrets of Sunset Edge are revealed in a paralyzing finale.

A Vietnam veteran, Charles Rane, returns home after years in a POW camp and is treated as a hero. When thugs invade his home to steal the silver coins he received for his service, they mangle his hand and leave him and his family for dead. Rane survives and becomes obsessed with getting revenge. Aided by his loyal friend Johnny Vohden, Rane, now wielding a hook for a hand, sets out on his mission of vengeance.

For Ever Mozart is an episodic film that follows a theater troupe from France attempting to put on a play in Sarajevo. Along their journey they are captured and held in a POW camp, and they call for help from their friends and relations in France. Director Jean-Luc Godard presents stories about this troop to ask how one can make art while slaughters like the one in Bosnia are taking place, and he throws in a strong critique of the European Union. For Ever Mozart is one of Godard's most disjointed and difficult films. Its stories sometimes seem to form a whole and at other times the links among them are unclear. One gets the impression that in each episode Godard attempts to start a film only to come to the conclusion that it is impossible to continue. It features some of the most beautiful shots of tanks in the cinema.

A young woman named Noah lives alone in New York. She is a disturbed flower child, who retreats into her past, yearning for lost innocence. She recalls her childhood, searching for a "safe place." As a child she met a magician in Central Park who presented her with magical objects: a levitating silver ball, a star ring, and a Noah's ark. She is romantically involved with two totally different men. Fred is practical but dull. Mitch is dynamic and sexy, her ideal fantasy partner. Neither man is able to totally fulfill her needs.

Navy SEAL Lieutenant A.K. Waters and his elite squadron of tactical specialists are forced to choose between their duty and their humanity, between following orders by ignoring the conflict that surrounds them, or finding the courage to follow their conscience and protect a group of innocent refugees. When the democratic government of Nigeria collapses and the country is taken over by a ruthless military dictator, Waters, a fiercely loyal and hardened veteran is dispatched on a routine mission to retrieve a Doctors Without Borders physician.

When former black ops operative Tom Steele and his partner Manning are assigned to decommission an old prison, they must oversee the arrival of two mysterious female prisoners. Before long, an elite force of mercenaries assault the prison in search of the new arrivals. As the true identities of the women are revealed, Steele realizes he's caught in the middle of something far bigger than he had imagined.

In Naples, in the Second World War, the wolf businessman Domenico Soriano meets the seventeen years old whore Filumena Marturano in a brothel during an allied bombing. Two years later, in the post-war, they meet each other by chance and begin a long affair. For twenty-two years, Filumena is his mistress and administrates his shops in Naples while Domenico is traveling. When Domenico decides to marry the young cashier of his bakery, Filumena lures him as if she were near to death and he marries her. Later he annuls their matrimony, and she tells him that she has three sons that she raised secretly, one of them is his legitimate son but she does not disclose his identity. The middle-age Domenico uses the most different subterfuges trying to find which teenager might be his son.

Soren, a young barn owl, is kidnapped by owls of St. Aggie's, ostensibly an orphanage, where owlets are brainwashed into becoming soldiers. He and his new friends escape to the island of Ga'Hoole, to assist its noble, wise owls who fight the army being created by the wicked rulers of St. Aggie's. The film is based on the first three books in the series.

Astérix and Obélix have to win the Olympic Games in order to help their friend Alafolix marry Princess Irina (portrayed by supermodel Vanessa Hessler). Brutus (Benoît Poelvoorde) uses every trick in the book to have his own team win the game, and get rid of his father Julius Caesar (Alain Delon) in the process.

The Department of Emotional Integrity (DEI) documents all relationship activity. A 'relationship score' is given to keep people accountable for their choices. The score is public for all to see, and affects various aspects of daily life. Two couples, teenagers and early 30s, face different but intersecting challenges in their relationships within the rules of the DEI.

The alien criminal from the first movie is dead, but he left a few eggs which are hatching now. The good alien, who still inhabits Tom Beck's body, has been waiting just in case this happened. Unfortunately, his presence in the body has taken a terrible toll on it, draining it of life energy. Additionally relations with Beck's daughter Juliet (now a cop) have deteriorated. But when the killing starts again, they will need to work together to stop the new generation of aliens.

A bank temporarily housed in a mobile home while a new building is built, looks like an easy target to break into. On the other hand, why not steal the whole bank, and rob it in a safer location.

As lawyer and power broker Roy Cohn lies dying of AIDS in a private hospital room, ghosts from his past visit him as he reflects on his life and loves.

A look back on the weird and wasted career of the Holy Modal Rounders.