Film Reviews
A Study in Scarlet |
In London, a secret society led by lawyer Thaddeus Merrydew collects the assets of any of its deceased members and divides them among the remaining members. Society members start dropping like flies. Sherlock Holmes is approached by member James Murphy's widow, who is miffed at being left penniless by her husband. When Captain Pyke is shot, Holmes keys in on his mysterious Chinese widow as well as the shady Merrydew. Other members keep dying--Malcom Dearing first, then Mr. Baker. There is also an attempt on the life of young Eileen Forrester, who became a reluctant society member upon the death of her father. Holmes' uncanny observations and insights are put to the test. |
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The Sweet Hereafter |
A small mountain community in Canada is devastated when a school bus accident leaves more than a dozen of its children dead. A big-city lawyer arrives to help the survivors' and victims' families prepare a class-action suit, but his efforts only seem to push the townspeople further apart. At the same time, one teenage survivor of the accident has to reckon with the loss of innocence brought about by a different kind of damage. |
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Silence the Witness |
De Luca is killed by Marchetti's chauffeur. Marchetti ordered the murder because he was to be accused by De Luca. The two have a car accident while going home to get an alibi. There is a witness, Sironi, who calls the police. But when the police arrive the car has gone and so have the two men. Inspector Santi and young judge Novelli look into the strange case. Marchetti, however, is a powerful man and Sironi and his family begin to be obsessed first by threats then by assaults. |
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A Woman Is a Woman |
Exotic dancer Angéla attempts to have a child with her unwilling lover Émile. In the process, she finds herself torn between him and his best friend Alfred. |
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Rome, Armed to the Teeth |
A tough, violent cop who doesn't mind bending the law goes after a machine-gun-carrying, hunchbacked psychotic killer. |
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The Legend of Longwood |
When 12-year-old Mickey Miller moves from New York to Ireland, she soon discovers a link between herself and the 300-year-old legend of the mysterious Black Knight, who regularly haunts the sleepy Irish village. With courage and a sharp mind, she sets out to save a precious herd of white horses and to thwart the evil plans of a greedy, ambitious woman. |
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A Grandpa for Christmas |
An old-time movie-star singer/ hoofer rebonds with his estranged daughter and 9-year-old granddaughter. |
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Yumeji |
Artist Yumeji has gained fame and recognition for his skills at painting as well as notoriety for his untamed lifestyle. Despite his betrothal to a beautiful and timid young woman of high birth, his libido turns to his many female models. Despite this freedom from constraint, his lust and artistic sentiment cause him nothing but an increasing awareness of the elusive embodiment of true Beauty. While traveling he encounters a mesmerizing widow who relentlessly searches for her husband's body in the nearby lake, believing him killed at the hands of a ferocious roaming bandit. Infatuated with her beauty, he feigns to help her look for the corpse, only to unlock the mystery himself thereby sending him to further depths of debauchery and despair. This is the third and final film in director Suzuki Seijun's critically acclaimed Taisho Trilogy. |
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A Sister's Nightmare |
Police officer Jane Rydert's life goes into a tailspin the day her older sister, Cassidy, shows up at her door after sixteen years of confinement in a psychiatric hospital. |
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Master, a Building in Copacabana |
"Master" is the name of a 12-story apartment building in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro's neighborhood for nightlife. Over the course of four weeks in 2001, Eduardo Coutinho's film crew rented one of the 276 apartments and used it as home base to make a film about the building's residents. We get to know the building manager, who succeeded in turning the troubled residence into a family complex within just a few years. Using interviews and a few stolen moments in the corridors of the building, Coutinho explores this world. Most of the building's residents come from the lower middle class and are just getting by, but that's just about the only thing they have in common - so many people, so many stories, sometimes told in a self-confident tone, sometimes with averted eyes. The fact that a film crew is interested in their stories puzzles some of them. Hope, fear, dreams, memories, love and loneliness all appear from behind the doors of this average apartment building. |
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Have Rocket, Will Travel |
The Stooges are janitors working at a space center who accidentally blast off to Venus. They encounter a talking unicorn, a giant fire breathing tarantula, and an alien computer who has destroyed all human life on the planet and creates three evil duplicates of the Stooges. When the boys return home triumphant, they are given a hero's welcome. |
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L'amour fou |
A documentary on the relationship between fashion designer Yves Saint-Laurent and his lover, Pierre Berge. |
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Dial M for Murder |
An ex-tennis pro carries out a plot to have his wife murdered after discovering she is having an affair, and assumes she will soon leave him for the other man anyway. When things go wrong, he improvises a new plan - to frame her for murder instead. |
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Three Outlaw Samurai |
Shiba, a wandering ronin, encounters a band of peasants who have kidnapped the daughter of their dictatorial magistrate, in hopes of coercing from him a reduction in taxes. Shiba takes up their fight, joined by two renegades from the magistrate's guard, Sakura and Kikyo. The three outlaws find themselves in a battle to the death. |
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Django the Bastard |
A Union soldier returns from the dead to take revenge on three officers who betrayed his unit in battle. |
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