Film Reviews

Phobia 2 is composed of five short movie segments directed by five of the best directors of Thai horror films. A teenager who committed a crime goes to a sacred place for meditation and hiding that brings him fright and guilt about what he did (segment Novice). A young man gets haunted in an hospital by an old man in coma who's not too far from him (segment Ward). Two men along with two hitchhikers in a truck got into a big trouble after opening the back (segment Backpackers). A secondhand car dealer realizes what the previous car owners/passengers had terribly been into (segment Salvage). An ill hardworking actress whose role is a ghost is reported dead after she was brought to the hospital (segment In the End).

In a small Corsican village, the life of Hélène, ordinary and single, She works as a maid in a hotel and is married happily with her Husband Ange and her fifteen year-old daughter. Her modest and monotonous life seems to be predetermined... One day while cleaning a hotel room, she meets a young, seductive, American couple which is playing a game of chess. First fascinated and then passionate about the game, Hélène learns with great tenacity she studies the rule of the game to perfection. She can count on Dr. Kröger, who is a mysterious inhabitant, to help her to achieve her goals. But this positive transition towards a liberty for Hélène does not go about without deeply changing her relationship with family, friends and inhabitants of the village.

A cocky young man travels to Oregon to work on an apple farm. Out of his element, he finds his lifestyle and notions being picked apart by everyone who crosses his path.

In a break from his heroic "Falcon" role, Tom Conway stars as Steve Barnes, a criminal attorney known for his unorthodox courtroom tactics. After accidentally killing a crooked nightclub owner, Barnes is stuck on the horns of a dilemma when his sweetheart, cabaret singer Georgia Gale (Martha O'Driscoll), is arrested for the crime The problem: How can Barnes clear Georgia of the murder without implicating himself?

Christoph, cop and self-confident macho, has trouble with his fiance. After a long night he wakes up in the arms of Edgar, a good-looking, gay auto-mechanic. His live gets more and more troublesome after his girl friend throws him out of their apartment and as last resort he moves to Edgars place. Working together with a new, good-looking, very self-confident, female collegue, but living with a good-looking gay guy makes him pretty uncertain about his sexuality and his role as a cop. Written by Konstantin Articus

A recently cheated on married woman falls for a younger man who has moved in next door, but their torrid affair soon takes a dangerous turn.

‘The Marathon’ is a feature film which contains humour in combination with impressive drama. The garage of four jass playing, smoking and beer drinking mechanics is threatened to be closed. The ‘genius’ idea to run the marathon of Rotterdam while being sponsored seems to be the only solution. The condition of the sponsor deal; making it to the finish line. However, training is difficult for the hedonists and it changes relationships, and even their future. Are all the efforts worth the fight when their seems to be more to it then just making it to the finish line…?

This third installment focuses largely on serial killers, with lengthy re-enactments of police investigations of bodies being found in a dumpster, and a staged courtroom sequence with Schwartz again making a cameo appearance as the serial killer on trial for raping and murdering a girl, allegedly captured on video. Schwartz has identified the girl allegedly killed in the video as his then girlfriend, who he claims was a willing participant.

Haru, an aging scriptwriter, has isolated himself somewhere in the woods of Nagano to work on his first novel. As the last surviving member of his kin, he intends to chronicle the family he grew up in.

A story about friendship, lie and truth...

Set in the world of New York City's elite private kindergartens, The Best and the Brightest centers on a fresh-faced young couple, Samantha and Jeff, who have only recently moved into town. The comedy centers on their dawning realization of the lengths they must go to in order to get their five-year-old daughter into school.

Chick Williams, a prohibition gangster, rejoins his mob soon after being released from prison. When a policeman is murdered during a robbery, he falls under suspicion. The gangster took Joan, a policeman's daughter, to the theater, sneaked out during the intermission to commit the crime, then used her to support his alibi. The detective squad employs its most sophisticated and barbaric techniques, including planting an undercover agent in the gang, to bring him to justice.

Henry Jekyll is a troubled man. His wife died of pneumonia. He wants his sister-in-law, but her father forbids any contact. And his experiments into the dual nature of man have yielded a personality-splitting drug that he has tested on himself, changing him into an uninhibited brute who seeks violent and undignified pleasures. Jekyll quickly becomes addicted to the sordid freedom induced by the drug. He can commit the most enjoyably revolting deeds, then return to his laboratory and use an antidote to change back to his original form, so that his lofty persona remains untarnished.

Upon reaching the train station to death, a dejected soul is informed that he is lucky and will have another chance at life. He is placed in the body of a 14-year-old boy named Kobayashi Makoto, who has just committed suicide. Watched over by a neutral spirit named Purapura, the soul must figure out what his greatest sin and mistake in his former life was, before his time limit in Makoto's body runs out. He also has a number of other lesser duties he must complete, such as understanding what led Makoto to commit suicide in the first place and learning how to enjoy his second chance at life.

A documentary about militant student political activity at the University of California, Berkeley in the 1960s.