Film Reviews

Kenny is an ice cream vendor in Chicago with a crisp white uniform and an apathetic heart. When he encounters Lolita, a sharp-tongued but despondent insurance actuary, their heated conversation, natural spark and mutual hopelessness lead to an unusual proposal for a meet-cute: to travel to San Francisco, where they will jump off the Golden Gate Bridge together.

Italian film

A story about the bizarre sexual relations of 38-year-old married man J and 18-year-old student Y. After an initial encounter, they embark on a sexual odyssey that visits the realms of obsession and sadomasochism.

Poor young cobbler Wu Di lives with his mother and is crazy about martial-arts picture books. One day he repairs the shoe of wandering swordswoman Yuelou and later helps save her in a fight with wanted criminal Tian Baguang, even though he has no martial-arts training. She tells him she owes him a life and can be found on Qin Mountain if he ever needs her. Yuelou is actually a princess who was due to marry the emperor but ran away after setting fire to her palace quarters. In love, Wu Di sets out to find her, fighting river pirate Dugu and his sidekick on the way, and also meeting a hermit Buddhist monk who offers to take him on as a pupil. Yuelou plans to attend a martial arts tournament to establish her name, little knowing that the emperor's chief eunuch Cheng has arranged for her to be secretly protected by Penal Bureau officer Yang Guo and to win the tournament, so the emperor can award her the prize and persuade her to reconsider marriage.

In 1978 in Hong Kong, a grisly murder takes place. Eight years later, on a Macao beach, kids discover the severed hands of a fresh victim. A squadron of coarse, happy-go-lucky cops investigate, and suspicion falls on Wong Chi Hang, the new owner of Eight Immortals Restaurant, which serves delicious pork bao. The hands belong to the missing mother of the restaurant's former owner; he and his family have disappeared; staff at the restaurant continue to go missing; and, Wong can't produce a signed bill of sale: but there's no evidence. The police arrest Wong and try to torture him into a confession. Can they make him talk? And what was in those pork bao?

The owner of a bank (Miss Bitterman) wants to own the Muppet Theatre so she can build a nightclub over it. After she tricks Pepe into giving her the only copy of the contract between her father and the Muppets, she changes it so the Muppets have very little time to pay a debt they owe. Meanwhile, the Muppets are trying to put on a Christmas show. After the Muppets are confronted by Bitterman, they make a lot of sacrifices to save up so they can keep the Theatre.

The small town of Babylon in Ukraine hears of the recent Russian Revolution, but attempts to communize it are met with resistance from the rich people living in the town.

The life of a bank manager is turned upside down when a friend from his past manipulates him into faking his own death and taking off on an adventure.

An inexperienced young actress is invited to play a role in a film based on Dostoyevsky's 'The Possessed'. The film director, a Czech immigrant in Paris, takes over her life, and in a short time she is unable to draw the line between acting and reality. She winds up playing a real-life role posing as the dead wife of another Czech immigrant, who is manipulated by the filmmaker into commiting a political assasination.

Through the eyes of grandmother Rumidjah, a poor old Christian woman living in the slums of Jakarta, we see the economical changing society of Indonesia and the influence of globalization reflected in the life of her juvenile granddaughter Tari and her sons Bakti and Dwi.

Maru, after becoming pregnant from a drunken one night stand with a immature young unemployed bachelor, is determined to follow tradition and marry him anyways.

The story takes place in the racecourses around Paris. A so-called major sells his tips to naive characters.

A private detective is hired to find a missing man by his wife. While his search is unsuccessful, the detective's own life begins to resemble the man for whom he is searching.

A stylish political thriller where love and war collide in Southeast Asia. Set in early 1950s Vietnam, a young American becomes entangled in a dangerous love triangle when he falls for the beautiful mistress of a British journalist. As war is waged around them, these three only sink deeper into a world of drugs, passion, and betrayal where nothing is as it seems.

Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers' surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia Query, a dancer and stand-up comedian who is reluctant to tell her mother, a physician who works with prostitutes, that she strips.