Film Reviews

The fanciful tale of an introverted little girl who grows up believing she has the power to make wishes come true. She must reconcile this belief with reality when, as a young woman, she journeys to Moscow and grapples with love, modernity and materialism.

A police detective falls in love with the woman whose murder he's investigating.

An adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' novel about a middle-aged American automobile tycoon who retires and goes to Europe, where he and his appearance-conscious, snobbish wife find differing sets of values... and new relationships.

A prison-camp convict learns that his younger brother will soon be joining him behind bars.

Zhang Ziyi plays the youngest of three generations of women who leads lives in Shanghai. Joan Chen plays the great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. The film recounts this family, the mistakes they make, and a cycle that the granddaughter breaks out of.

The lives of five seemingly unrelated lost souls intertwine in Sweden’s chilly capital in this delicate and wryly funny ensemble film. A precocious yet untalented young writer, a friendless advertising genius, a tight-lipped workaholic, a shy upper-class boy with a secret crush, and a recently dumped young woman all come to realize hard truths about love and life over the course of several days.

In Zola's Paris, an ingenue arrives at a tony bordello: she's Nana, guileless, but quickly learning to use her erotic innocence to get what she wants. She's an actress for a soft-core filmmaker and soon is the most popular courtesan in Paris, parlaying this into a house, bought for her by a wealthy banker. She tosses him and takes up with her neighbor, a count of impeccable rectitude, and with the count's impressionable son. The count is soon fetching sticks like a dog and mortgaging his lands to satisfy her whims.

A toy stuffed dog has just been sewn together when it hears a young child ask for an orange. The child's mother explains that they have no money, and so she cannot buy any oranges. The dog is then packed up along with a box full of other toys to be sold, but it soon winds up in the street. The dog picks up an orange from a curb side stand, and hopes to take it home to the child. But that night, before the dog can get back to the child's home, it must face a series of strange and frightening adventures.

This documentary on rock 'n' roll groupies, including the infamous Plaster Casters, features performances (musical) by such bands as Ten Years After, Terry Reid, Spooky Tooth, and Cat Mother.

A group of complete strangers find themselves isolated by a wealthy madman on his island compound. They are forced into a horrifying gauntlet where they must survive a barrage of ever deadlier species of shark.

A 2002 French experimental film directed by Philippe Grandrieux and starring Zachary Knighton and Anna Mouglalis. The story involves a young American who falls obsessively in love with a mysterious courtesan named Melania against the backdrop of a dilapidated Eastern European landscape.

Melody Time is an animated feature produced by Walt Disney and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures. Made up of several sequences set to popular music and folk music, the film is, like Make Mine Music before it, the contemporary version of Fantasia.

A lonely, unhappy owner of a Beverly Hills boarding house reflects on her lonely, unhappy life and the lonely, unhappy man she once loved. Director Daniel Mann's 1954 drama about lonely, unhappy people stars Shirley Booth, Robert Ryan, Alex Nicol, Marjie Millar, Eileen Janssen, Percy Helton, Ray Teal, Maidie Norman, Mabel Albertson, Ellen Corby, Harry Morgan, James Bell, Virginia Brissac, Laura Elliott, Philip Ober, Nana Bryant and Ian Wolfe.

A group of people visit a weird old man who is a student of the black arts. The man lives in an ancient, cursed castle. Soon people in the group start being killed off.

Good and sinful are two sides of a same coin. If good grows in strength so does evil. Finally there comes a point when one must overcome the other. Dr. Gayatri (Bipasha Basu) is an Indian American paranormal researcher at University of California, researching esoteric practices like voodoo, spirit possession, magic and healing powers. She seeks the hidden knowledge that goes into such practices, the knowledge that cannot be explained by science or logic. Her search for answers brings her and her team of scientists to India. In India she comes across an uncommon man named Varun (Sanjay Dutt) who is gifted with special intuitive and healing powers which he claims to have developed through meditation. He can affect people's minds through his mental powers. He is a blend of Indian philosophy and modern culture, a master at martial arts and a devotee of Lord Hanuman. He heals people by absorbing their pain. He worships and trains by day, while working as a bouncer at a club by night.