Film Reviews

Casey Jones is the story of a quirky young man with an irresistible propensity for violence. A lifelong outcast, Casey learned at a young age to channel his brutal urges into sports, but after being kicked off the local hockey team for excessive force during practice, Casey moves back in with his worrisome mother to seek solace at his boyhood home. His retreat is soon interrupted though when a vicious gang of street punks, the Purple Dragons, savagely beat him with pipes for attempting to remove their graffiti. After narrowly escaping the encounter with his life, Casey vows to single-handedly rid his neighborhood of crime. Armed with a golf bag loaded with clubs and sporting a fearful hockey mask, Casey stalks the alleyways by night, mercilessly trouncing any delinquents unlucky enough to cross his path. The misguided crusader soon goes off the deep end, and an unlikely ally from the sewers is forced to intervene before the vigilante annihilates every criminal in the city.

A successful author, Liz, searches for her daughter, Rachel, in the Sinai Desert. There she meets a Bedouin storyteller who relays the unusual love story of a Western tourist and the son of a Bedouin Sheik named Najim. Their relationship is torn apart when the American is exposed to a tribal ritual.

This film captures the criminal behavior of two young Copacabana thugs (the "cafajestes"). The two plan a blackmail coup against a rich old man, using nude pictures of a lady on a deserted beach. But things don't always happen as planned.

Al Goddard (Alan Ladd), a detective who works for the United States Postal Inspection Service, is assigned to arrest two criminals who've allegedly murdered a U.S. postal detective.

A father who experiments with his sons psychokinetic powers, is unaware that these experiments release a demon from hell, which lives in his sons closet, preparing to take over the young boys soul.

Determined to find out the true effects of marijuana on the human body, stand-up comedian and former Stoner of the Year Doug Benson documents his experience avoiding pot for 30 days and then consuming massive amounts of the drug for 30 days. More than just an amusing story of one man's quest to get superhigh, this documentary also examines the hotly contested debate over medical marijuana use.

One of Chris Marker's earliest documentaries (1957) and probably one of his best, the hour-long Letter From Siberia mixes new and found footage with inventive commentary, and is especially memorable for a passage in which footage is repeated while the offscreen commentary transforms its meaning with a different ideological interpretation. It is perhaps the earliest example we have of Marker's inimitable essayistic manner, hence an indispensable work.

Women will go to extreme lengths for those they love and single mother Samantha Rogers is no exception. Along with her young daughter, Milla, Sam struggles to make ends meet, taking her licks as a stunt double by day and cocktail waitressing at a rowdy bar at night. When Sam uses her skills to end a bar fight between two drunk women, down and out fight promoter Sonny Cool sees an opportunity to get back into the game. He tells Sam all about the "show," a high class, underground illegal all female bare knuckle fight tournament, where brutality and elegance mix with high stakes and deception. Is the price too much for her...? Bare Knuckles..... a knockout punch of strength and determination, inspired by a true story.

Comedy legend Martin Lawrence returns to the stand-up stage for a night of impressions and insight on everything from sex, relationships and President Obama, to Bill Cosby, Hollywood and more. Filmed live at LA's Orpheum Theatre.

The film is an artistically spare depiction of the Greek myth of Sysiphus, sentenced to eternally roll a stone up a mountain. The story is presented in a single, unbroken shot, consisting of a dynamic line drawing of Sysiphus, the stone, and the mountainside.

A group of young boys who have a collective crush on Bernadette. As a result of this, they have an unreasoning jealousy of Gérard, and do everything they can to disrupt their relationship. When Gérard catches one of the young boys spying on them, he thrashes him severely. In retaliation, the children try to inspire Bernadette to doubt Gérard’s love.

An FBI Agent pairs with a troubled Taiwan cop to hunt for a serial killer who's embedding a mysterious fungus in the brains of victims.

Wild Is the Wind represents a (perhaps deliberate) reversal of the situation in The Rose Tattoo (1955). Whereas in Tattoo, Anna Magnani played a widow who could never find a man to measure up to her late husband, in Wind her character, Giola, marries widowed rancher Gino (Anthony Quinn), who is haunted by the memory of his first spouse. The situation is dicier in Wind, since Italian immigrant Gino's deceased wife was Giola's sister. Eventually tiring of her husband's mood swings, Giola turns to his son, Bene (Anthony Franciosa), for emotional and sexual gratification. A Hollywood approximation of the Italian neorealist school of filmmaking, Wild Is the Wind was based on Furia, a story by Vittorio Nino Novarese. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

Clover is finishing a veterinary course when her brother dies and she is called home to her family's struggling Somerset farm.

A quasi-musical by Serge Bozon.