Film Reviews

Andy Hardy and his sister find romance during a family vacation in Catalina.

An unscrupulous newspaper editor searches for headlines at any cost.

SPICEBUSH interweaves various fragmentary narratives concerning education, luck. landscapes, gaining and losing a job, and the passage of time. The technique and style employed alternates between the documentary, the symbolic, and more conventionally scripted scenes. Filming individuals engaged in their careers conveys the documentary aspect. At a symbolic level, the fossil is a leitmotif suggesting past and present. The title of the film refers to the state butterfly of Mississippi, Spicebush Swallowtail. In the film, Mississippi is a place of origin. The Spicebush Swallowtail represents renewal or starting over. Throughout the film, a little girl appears in different guises and settings, functioning indirectly in the role of the chorus. The scripted scenes, shot in a documentary style, collaged with the other scenes begin to create the traces of a narrative structure.

Chicago February 14th 1929. Al Capone finally establishes himself as the city's boss of organised crime. In a north-side garage his hoods, dressed as policemen, surprise and mow down with machine-guns the key members of Bugs Moran's rival gang. The film traces the history of the incident, and the lives affected and in some cases ended by it.

Monte Walsh and Chet Rollins are long-time cowhands, working whatever ranch work comes their way, but "nothing they can't do from a horse." Their lives are divided between months on the range and the occasional trip into town. Monte has a long-term relationship with prostitute Martine Bernard, while Chet has fallen under the spell of the widow who owns the hardware store. Camaraderie and competition with the other cowboys fill their days, until one of the hands, Shorty Austin, loses his job and gets involved in rustling and killing. Then Monte and Chet find that their lives on the range are inexorably redirected.

This psychedelic tour of life after death is seen entirely from the point of view of Oscar (Nathaniel Brown), a young American drug dealer and addict living in Tokyo with his prostitute sister, Linda (Paz de la Huerta). When Oscar is killed by police during a bust gone bad, his spirit journeys from the past -- where he sees his parents before their deaths -- to the present -- where he witnesses his own autopsy -- and then to the future, where he looks out for his sister from beyond the grave.

Cliff has just turned 18 and his little sister has a gift for him: booze, a joint, a subway token and the command to have sex. Heading out on the town, Cliff finds friendship -- and more -- in the person of a young hustler named Butch. But Butch's dark side, along with a growing drug problem, leaves suburban family boy Cliff fearing for their future in this gay coming-of-age tale.

A group of Marines return to Vietnam with a news crew to relive their tragic war experiences.

John Logan is a poor little rich boy. He learns to love from three nubile L.A. newcomers that will do anything to be introduced into the sizzling nightlife of the City of Angels. Portraying the Malibu beach life by day, and the L.A. club life by night, Sizzle Beach U.S.A. is a stunning insiders critique on the sex and drug lifestyle of the West Coast swinger scene in the early 80s.

Two journalists attempt to uncover the truth behind the criminal organisation, known as The Vampires, who are terrorizing Paris.

After being assigned as study partners, two Chicana high schoolers find a bond that confuses them at times.

A team of softball players get lost in the woods after their bus breaks down. They get attacked, beaten, raped and murdered by some psychotic men. The women fight back with baseball bats and bows and arrows.

17-year-old Sami has an accident which resulted in him reluctantly sent to closed psychiatric hospital. Sami refuses to speak or show his feelings, even when the nurse Taneli is trying everything in order to understand how the crash really happened. While Sami's and his roommate's Rude's eccentric friendships gradually increases, the truth of past events begin to unravel.

Military doctor General Klenski is arrested in Stalin's Russia in 1953 during an anti-Semitic political campaign accused of being a participant in so-called "doctors' plot".

A trailer is burning in the middle of a plain. The bodies of two adulterous lovers are found. Scenes from both families, before and after the dramatic events, suggest an unusual connection between them. But what is their secret?