Film Reviews

Directed by Gian Tavarelli, Liberi (Break Free) centers on the freckle-faced Vince (Elio Germano), whose life in a Roman mountain village is unfulfilling, to say the least. His father Cenzo (Luigi Maria Burruano) lost his job after a local chemical plant closed; shortly afterward, Cenzo's wife Paola (Anita Zagaria) dumped him for a politician. Fed up, Vince travels to the beach town of Pescara and lands a job as a junior cook at a tourist resort. While there, he falls in love with Genny (Nicole Grimaudo), a waitress plagued by a phobia of traveling. Just as the romance begins to take off, Cenzo appears at Vince's doorstep demanding that his son help him get Paola back. ~ Tracie Cooper, Rovi

At 12 years old, Kermit the Frog and best friends Goggles and Croaker travel outside their homes in the swamps of the Deep South to do something extraordinary with their lives.

While touring in Italy, a recently-widowed American opera singer has an incestuous relationship with her 15-year-old son to help him overcome his heroin addiction.

Set in the competitive world of modern agriculture, ambitious Henry Whipple wants his rebellious son Dean to help expand his family’s farming empire. However, Dean has his sights set on becoming a professional race car driver. When a high-stakes investigation into their business is exposed, father and son are pushed into an unexpected situation that threatens the family's entire livelihood.

A bunch of young and impulsive space cadets make their first real flight in space and realize that the attack they suffered wasn't a training mission. They face the Enemy alone and have the chance to save the world, and maybe to prevent the war? Can the cadets conquer the more experienced, stronger and much more evil enemy? (Written by Peter 'grin' Gervai )

The story bases on four Finnish brothers, nicknamed 'the Eura Daltons' who received nation-wide notoriety for tearing gas pumps apart when they needed cash. The cast is an impressive one: the brothers are portrayed by Peter Franzen, Lauri Nurkse, Niko Saarela and Jasper Pääkkönen while their really evil father is played by Vesa-Matti Loiri, one of the grand old men of Finnish cinema.

The Nazis, exasperated at the number of escapes from their prison camps by a relatively small number of Allied prisoners, relocates them to a high-security 'escape-proof' camp to sit out the remainder of the war. Undaunted, the prisoners plan one of the most ambitious escape attempts of World War II. Based on a true story.

A fine art auctioneer mixed up with a gang, joins forces with a hypnotherapist to recover a lost painting. As boundaries between desire, reality and hypnotic suggestion begin to blur, the stakes rise faster than anyone could have anticipated.

Based on Puccini's opera La bohème, Rent tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists struggling to survive and create in New York City in the 1990s. This is a live recording of Rent's final performance after more than 12 years and 5000 shows.

Brian Barnes (Johnny Messner) wakes up in the desert wounded and with no memory and no idea why he's surrounded by eight bodies, a van with four million in cash and a van full of cocaine. Brian is pursued by not only notorious drug lord Danny Perez (Danny Trejo) who desperately want his money back, and DEA Agent Rooker (Dolph Lundgren), but also a by the corrupt Sheriff Olson (Michael Pare) who will stop at nothing to get his hand on the new found fortune. On the run, Brian discovers the more he remembers the less he wants to know about who he really is.

set in the eighteenth century, the film is about John Mohune, a young orphan, played by Jon Whiteley, who is sent to the Dorset village of Moonfleet to stay with an old friend of his mother's, Jeremy Fox. Fox, played by Stewart Granger, is a morally ambiguous character, an elegant gentleman involved with smugglers and pirates.

Undercover Las Vegas police officer Vincent Downs is caught in a high stakes web of corrupt cops and the mob-controlled casino underground. When a heist goes wrong, a crew of homicidal gangsters kidnaps Downs’ teenage son. In one sleepless night he will have to rescue his son, evade an internal affairs investigation and bring the kidnappers to justice.

Two strange sisters live in a crumbling mansion, where they keep a pet ape, which belonged to their late father, locked in a cage. While one of the sisters seems to be keeping her head on straight, as it were, the other appears to be sinking further and further into barbarism and insanity.

During the Civil War, a Southern civilian is about to be hanged for attempting to sabotage a railway bridge. When the execution takes place from the bridge, the rope breaks and he begins his escape toward home.

In the 1970s, Richard Pryor dropped like a bomb into the sanitized landscape of American television. Raised in his grandmother's Illinois bordello, he became famous for his expletive-filled stand-up routines about the black man trying to survive in the land of whiteys. His transition to television was stormy, and he had to battle to get every scene past the censors. The sacrifices he made to the white establishment contributed to a self-loathing that plagued him throughout adulthood. Seven marriages, and chronic drug abuse fueled endless media interest -- as did Pryor's setting himself on fire whilst freebasing cocaine. A string of friends including Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams recount how whenever Pryor was poised on the brink of mega success, his behavior would sabotage him -- for most people to understand the comic legend you need to "omit the logic". CN