Film Reviews

The protagonist, a lazy pen-pusher, gets the sack for his bureaucratic idleness, and learns that the way back into the job market depends on getting a letter of recommendation from a "grandmother"

August 1944 two months after D-Day, the Allies are advancing across France. A team of British and American commandos are dropped behind enemy lines on a secret mission to ambush a German Officer and steal maps charting the location of the enemy artillery along the front line.

Kim is a 15-year-old outsider who wears sombre make-up, likes Nordic sagas and spends her nights at her mother’s graveside. Kim’s father Markus has been trying to coax her into a normal family life since her mother’s tragic death, but that doesn’t interest the rebellious teen in the slightest. Meanwhile, her grandmother Gerlinde is diagnosed with cancer. She wants to avoid putting any extra strain on the family so remains quiet about the news. Nonetheless, she becomes good friends with her attentive carer Paula – her little ray of sunshine. When Kim runs off with daredevil dropout Alex, Markus sets off with Gerlinde and Paula in search of her. There are open doors ahead of them – and a farewell. Based on the novel of the same name by Gernot Gricksch, André Erkau’s tragicomedy once again combines both coarse and heartwarming humour.

Almodovar's first film of life in Madrid during the punk era and not one for the squeamish. He covers everything from drugs and sexual violence, to female masochism.

During the War of 1812 against Britain: General Andrew Jackson has only 1,200 men left to defend New Orleans when he learns that a British fleet will arrive with 60 ships and 16,000 men to take the city. In this situation an island near the city becomes strategically important to both parties, but it's inhabited by the last big buccaneer: Jean Lafitte. Although Lafitte never attacks American ships, the governor hates him for selling merchandise without taxes - and is loved by the citizens for the same reason. When the big fight gets nearer, Lafitte is drawn between the fronts. His heart belongs to America, but his people urge him to join the party that's more likely to win.

The greatest Olympic Wrestling Champion brother team joins Team Foxcatcher led by multimillionaire sponsor John E. du Pont as they train for the 1988 games in Seoul - a union that leads to unlikely circumstances.

A political drama centered around Israel's pullout from the occupied Gaza strip, in which a French woman of Israeli origin comes to the Gaza Strip to find her long ago abandoned daughter.

The Argentine, begins as Che and a band of Cuban exiles (led by Fidel Castro) reach the Cuban shore from Mexico in 1956. Within two years, they mobilized popular support and an army and toppled the U.S.-friendly regime of dictator Fulgencio Batista.

The new warden of a small prison farm in Arkansas tries to clean it up of corruption after initially posing as an inmate.

Taken spans five decades and four generations, centering on three families: the Keys, Crawfords, and Clarkes. World War II veteran Russell Keys is plagued by nightmares of his abduction by aliens during the war; the Roswell incident transforms Owen Crawford from ambitious Air Force captain to evil shadow government conspirator; the unhappily married Sally Clarke is impregnated by an alien visitor. As the decades go by, the heirs of each are affected by the machinations of the aliens, culminating with the birth of Allie Keys, who is the final product of the aliens' experimentation and holds the key to their future

Special Agent Strahm is dead, and Detective Hoffman has emerged as the unchallenged successor to Jigsaw's legacy. However, when the FBI draws closer to Hoffman, he is forced to set a game into motion, and Jigsaw's grand scheme is finally understood.

A mysterious man, Suba, gets himself a job at a fencing academy, and as he learns the way of the students, the school, and its maestro, they learn that there's more to him than meets the eye. He gains (or regains?) his fencing skills and his philosophy of teaching clashes with the maestro's. As they are thrown into conflict, Suba and the maestro's past appear to be linked. And the resolution of their mysterious relationship may be a duel to the death.

Hans der Beer's beloved polar bear Lars returns for more adventures, with a new feline friend.

The powerful story of Jackie Robinson, the legendary baseball player who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier when he joined the roster of the Brooklyn Dodgers. The film follows the innovative Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey, the MLB executive who first signed Robinson to the minors and then helped to bring him up to the show.

I'll Get By is an updated remake of the 1940 20th Century-Fox musical Tin Pan Alley. William Lundigan and Dennis Day play William Spencer and Freddie Lee respectively, successful song publishers who make hits out of such numbers as "I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo", "Deep in the Heart of Texas", "You Make Me Feel So Young", "There Will Never Be Another You", and other favorites (the rights to all of these songs were conveniently held by 20th Century-Fox). The partnership has some hard times, especially during the feud between ASCAP and the radio networks, when only public-domain songs like "I Dream of Jeannie" were permitted to be broadcast.