Film Reviews

Since early childhood Peter has been obsessed with the world of puppets, but his greater obsession is with a real girl, Lisa. He crafts his perfect woman out of her. But Lisa isn't a docile marionette. She's a living human being and she rebels against her creator. Based on the critically-acclaimed, brilliant and poignant novel by one of the best contemporary Russian writers, Dina Rubina, "Petrushka Syndrome" is a multidimensional metaphor, where a sense of duality pervades everything. People and dolls, life and art, the Creator and the creation depend on one another. And where does one draw the line between them?

Based on real events, A Hill in Korea charts the fortunes of a small group of British soldiers serving in the Korean War. Out on a routine patrol, the soldiers find that Chinese troop movements have cut them off from their own lines. They try to fight their way back to safety but with the enemy surrounding them on all sides, the prospects look bleak. Facing almost insurmountable odds, they decide to stand a fight.

Sixteen-year-old Michael Dunn arrives at St. Basil's Catholic Boys School in Brooklyn circa 1965. There, he befriends all of the misfits in his class as they collide with the repressive faculty and discover the opposite sex as they come of age.

Emanuelle goes undercover into a prison to expose the corrupted officials who are brutalizing the inmates. Emanuelle is shocked by the horrors and humiliation the prisoners are subjected to, but when her true identity is discovered, she finds herself at the receiving end.

The film is set in the middle of winter in Ystad and the main character is the middle-aged policeman Kurt Wallander, who this time investigating a drug tangle. It starts with his own goddaughter Eva found dead after taking an overdose. It turns out that heroin is unusually strong and Kurt are now beginning their search for those behind the drugs. But he has a big problem. His boss will not let him look for the person who he suspects has sold the new heroin , but she wants them to look for another drug dealer named Yngve Holm. But Kurt defy the boss's orders and go again and again to Malmo to try to unravel the case. Eventually he gets a hold of the person he suspected. He'll take some photos of him and shows them for their guddotters friend Emma who were drug dealers. She takes Kurt to a friend who claims to have seen the man. The man in the photo is called Heinrich Pasila. Wallander thinks one recognizes Pasila from an earlier murder of guddotterns mother, where the offender is found.

Four friends break into an abandoned insane asylum in search of a death certificate which will grant one of them a large inheritance. However, finding it soon becomes the least of their worries in a place haunted by dark memories.

Two hundred years after Lt. Ripley died, a group of scientists clone her, hoping to breed the ultimate weapon. But the new Ripley is full of surprises … as are the new aliens. Ripley must team with a band of smugglers to keep the creatures from reaching Earth.

When best buds Rick and Fred begin to show signs of restlessness at home, their wives take a bold approach to revitalize their marriages: they grant the guys a "hall pass", one week of freedom to do whatever they want. At first, it seems like a dream come true, but they quickly discover that their expectations of the single life - and themselves - are completely and hilariously out of sync with reality.

While dabbling in Satanism, Count Karstein resurrects Mircalla Karnstein who initiates him into vampirism. As a rash of deaths afflicts the village, Gustav the head of Puritan group leads his men to seek out and destroy the pestilence. One of his twin nieces has become inflicted with the witchcraft but Gustav's zeal and venom has trapped the innocent Maria, threatening her with a tortuous execution, whilst Frieda remains free to continue her orgy of evil.

A stone-encrusted body is unearthed at Pompeii, and people left alone with it keep dying of crushed skulls...

An adult swim class sets the stage for this sexually charged comedy-drama about love, loss, and second chances. Three strangers -- inextricably connected through personal heartbreak -- find themselves entering deep water as they learn that life isn't always about diving right in -- it's about getting your feet wet once in awhile.

London, 1888: on the night of the third Jack the Ripper killing, soft-spoken Mr. Slade, a research pathologist, takes lodgings with the Harleys, including a gloomy attic room for "experiments." Mrs. Harley finds Slade odd and increasingly suspects the worst; her niece Lily (star of a decidedly Parisian stage revue) finds him interesting and increasingly attractive. Is Lily in danger, or are her mother's suspicions merely a red herring?

In this black comedy the lives of a timid small-time printer and his young wife are turned inside out by the arrival of a stranger who moves in and takes over their world. Set in a village-like outpost in the heart of Tokyo, this is a wry commentary on Japanese xenophobia. Kiki Sugino heads a spritely ensemble cast.

Vittorio De Sica's A Brief Vacation (Una Breva Vacanza) stars Florinda Bolkan as a downtrodden working woman. Forced to support herself, her children, her physically incapacitated husband and her obtrusive brother and mother, Bolkan contracts tuberculosis. She is granted a brief vacation at a health spa, where a whole new world--and potential new life--is opened up to her.

In World War I France, a pilot falls in love with the wife of his friend and superior officer.