Film Reviews

The seven stages in the life of the modern Frenchwomen are disclosed by seven directors in a witty way: 1 - Childhood, 2 - Adolescence, 3 - Virginity, 4 - Marriage, 5 - Adultery, 6 - Divorce, 7 - The Single Woman.

An unflinching look at the how the battle over abortion rights has played out in the United States over the last 15 years

Wealthy American housewife Mary Morgan takes her bullied son George out of school for home education,including a trip to Southern Africa. Whilst in Mozambique George is bitten by a mosquito which crawls through a hole in his net and dies of malaria. After his funeral at home Mary feels a compulsion to return to Africa where she meets English woman Martha O'Connell,whose 24 year old son Ben, a teacher with voluntary service overseas,has also died of malaria. Ben gave his net to one of his pupils,believing adults cannot catch malaria. The two women are shocked to see the high death rate caused by the disease and,whilst Martha stays in Africa as a voluntary helper,Mary petitions the American government to change things. Martha turns up at Mary's house unannounced and,helped by Mary's ex-diplomat father,they address a senate committee on health spending,persuading them to do more to combat malaria. They meet with some success though a coda states that much more can be done.

A tranquil forest and all of its residents must face the destruction of man. A squirrel, born and raised in the forrest, fights to defend his home and faces trials and adversities along the way.

A movie studio is being torn down. TV interviewer Genya Tachibana has tracked down its most famous star, Chiyoko Fujiwara, who has been a recluse since she left acting some 30 years ago. Tachibana delivers a key to her, and it causes her to reflect on her career; as she's telling the story, Tachibana and his long-suffering cameraman are drawn in.

This time around Edmund and Lucy Pevensie, along with their pesky cousin Eustace Scrubb find themselves swallowed into a painting and on to a fantastic Narnian ship headed for the very edges of the world.

The arrival of a new girl causes a stir in classroom social structure.

French filmmaker Eric Lartigau directs the anarchic buddy comedy Bullit and Riper, originally released as Mais qui a tue Pamela Rose? French comedic television stars Kad Merad and Olivier Barroux are both the protagonists and the screenwriters. As a parody of Hollywood cop films, the story is set somewhere in the American Midwest as fabricated by the French. After losing his regular partner, FBI agent Richard Bullit (Merad) gets assigned to the book-learned cop Riper (Barroux) to investigate the death of a stripper. American movie stereotypes abound, such as shock jock Phil Canon (Gérard Darmon) and sheriff Steve Marley (Jean-Paul Rouve).

This remake of the 1946 movie of the same name accounts an affair between a seedy drifter and a seductive wife of a roadside cafe owner. This begins a chain of events that culminates in murder. Based on a novel by James M. Cain.

A young boy lives with his mother on a farm surrounded by deep forest in the remote wilds of the Finnish countryside. From time to time, the boy visits his father - a man of great violence - in prison. Locked in the stable is an unruly horse, the boy´s only other companion. Their simple life is disrupted when a stranger appears, with a note from the father and a bullet in his side. Reluctantly, mother and son offer the stranger refuge.

The Burlesque Lounge has its best days behind it. Tess, a retired dancer and owner of the venue, struggles to keep the aging theater alive, facing all kinds of financial and artistic challenges. With the Lounge's troupe members becoming increasingly distracted by personal problems and a threat coming from a wealthy businessman's quest to buy the spot from Tess, the good fortune seems to have abandoned the club altogether. Meanwhile, the life of Ali, a small-town girl from Iowa, is about to change dramatically. Hired by Tess as a waitress at the Lounge, Ali escapes a hollow past and quickly falls in love with the art of burlesque. Backed by newfound friends amongst the theater's crew, she manages to fulfill her dreams of being on stage herself. Things take a dramatic turn though when Ali's big voice makes her become the main attraction of the revue

SOMM: Into the Bottle raises the curtain into the seldom seen world that surrounds the wine we drink. How many people understand how wine is produced? How it is grown? What goes on in the cellar? From those questions to how many hands touch a bottle, to why wine costs what it costs, to how certain wines end up on a wine list, this is a never before seen look into the world of wine.

Thom Andersen's remarkable and sadly neglected hour-long documentary adroitly combines biography, history, film theory, and philosophical reflection. Muybridge's photographic studies of animal locomotion in the 1870s were a major forerunner of movies; even more interesting are his subsequent studies of diverse people, photographed against neutral backgrounds.

Apple. Intel. Genentech. Atari. Google. Cisco. Stratospheric successes with high stakes all around. Behind some of the world's most revolutionary companies are a handful of men who (through timing, foresight, a keen ability to size up other people, and a lot of luck) saw opportunity where others did not: these are the original venture capitalists. All were backing and building companies before the term 'venture capital' had been coined: companies that led to the birth of biotechnology and the spectacular growth in microprocessors, personal computers and the web. SOMETHING VENTURED uncovers the ups and downs of the building of some of the greatest companies of the twentieth century, and the hidden dramas behind some of the most famous names in business.

A rich man's wife finds she has a bad prenuptial agreement with an even worse husband. Over drinks with a stranger, she fantasizes about doing her husband in to void the prenupt. The stranger decides to turn her imagination into reality much to the wife's surprise.