Film Reviews

It takes two or three generations for the monarch butterfly to reach the Canadian breeding grounds, but it is one "supergeneration" that makes the 2,000 mile return trip back south into central Mexico. The documentary film covers Dr Fred Urquhart's interest in monarch butterflies, with perspectives of Urquhart as a child wondering where the butterflies went, his years of research and study into their life and migration, to his time decades-later as a senior scientist looking back at his investigations and discoveries about the insect's life pattern.

World War II has long provided fodder for European filmmakers and East German director Konrad Wolf is no exception. In this uneven though at times compelling drama, he examines the conflict involved in a forbidden love. While the war is in full swing, a young German solder is assigned to a unit in charge of deporting Jews to the death camps. He falls in love with one of the Jewish women being deported, an impossible situation which he knows has no easy solution, if any. Alternately philosophical and at the end, at least, quite powerful, this film may still be too downbeat for most general audiences.

A man accepts a challenge to act as the Chief Minister for one day only, and makes such a success of it that soon he is embroiled in political intrigue.

George Haverstick, a Korean war veteran, hastily marries Isabel, whom he met in hospital while he was recovering from a nervous condition. To Isabel's horror, they drive to Florida on their honeymoon in an old hearse. They spend much of the time quarreling, and then, on Christmas eve, they visit George's war buddy, Ralph Baltz. However Ralph's wife Dorothea has just walked out on him, taking their child. Each couple then observes the marital difficulties of the other couple

Maureen Trant and her younger sibling Dani share a strong connection, but local boy Court Foster threatens to throw their bond off balance. Dani and Court meet first and have a flirtatious rapport -- but when he meets Maureen, he falls hard and they begin a passionate affair. The new couple try to keep their love hidden from Dani, but she soon learns the truth, disavowing her sister. But a heartbreaking accident later reunites the girls.

Jane McCoy, a recent college graduate, much to her parent's dismay, decides to scrap her plans for law school to pursue an acting career full-time. Struggling to make ends meet, she meets a confident and persuasive friend who shows her the way to make extra money go-go dancing. What starts as just an "easy money" job, however, rapidly becomes an all-consuming activity that slowly pulls Jane from her acting classes, her relationships with her boyfriend and family, and, most importantly, from her true self.

Sheila Levine is a Jewish-American princess and a native of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. An innovative, bright, but painfully introverted individual, she comes to New York City with her mother and father to take an apartment with a nightclub-hopping roommate. Persuaded to go to a nightclub one night, she meets a doctor named Sam Stoneman who is on the hunt for a one-night stand. Sheila develops an intense attraction towards Sam who seemingly is attracted to Sheila's desperately flirtatious roommate. She returns to Harrisburg for a time and comes back to win the heart of Sam only to discover that he has been conned into an engagement with her ex-roommate. Meanwhile, stalwart Sheila quickly climbs the ladder at her job as a "office-singer/typist" for a record company.

John Cleese, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam pay tribute to their late Monty Python colleague Graham Chapman in this hilarious, 3-D animated adaptation of Chapman's brazenly fictionalized life story. (TIFF)

After inheriting a casino from his dead uncle, Matthew Dragna, his girl friend J.J. (Robin Sydney) and a group of friends take a road trip to the outskirts of Las Vegas, where they find the run-down Mysteria Casino. But the trip takes a frightening turn when the kids discover that the casino is haunted by the ghosts of Vegas mobsters Roy "The Word" Donahue (Sid Haig) and his goon Gil Wachetta (Michael Berryman), looking to settle an old score. Matthew and J.J. must fight for their very souls as the ghosts seek their gruesome vengeance, and in the vein of The Shining, this horrifying tale builds to a bloody and surprising climax.

A story of a teenager and the strange events that take place in his small town.

Though almost forgotten today, Veit Harlan was one of Nazi Germany's most notorious filmmakers. His most perfidious film was the treacherous anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß - required viewing for all SS members. An unrepentant and blindly obsessive craftsman, no figure - save for Leni Riefenstahl - is as closely associated with the cinema of the Holocaust years. (Harlan's epic Kolberg was the basis for Inglourious Basterds's pivotal film-within-a-film Stolz Der Nation.) This documentary is an eye-opening examination of World War II film history as well as the story of a German family from the Third Reich to the present; one that is marked by reckoning, denial and liberation.

After failing to apprehend the terrorist behind a Paris attack that claimed dozens of lives, CIA agent Alice Racine is forced to live in London as a caseworker. Her mentor unexpectedly calls her back into action when the CIA discovers that another attack is imminent. Alice soon learns that the classified information she's uncovered has been compromised. Running for her life, she turns to a former soldier to help her prevent a lethal biological attack on the citizens of London.

It was a brutal murder that sent deranged psychopath Martin Kagan to prison. It was a naive deputy warden that granted him a stay of execution. Now, the police department's tactical defence instructor, John Lomax, wants revenge for his beloved sister's death.

Al Stanco has lived all of his life in Brooklyn and does some work for the local crime lord, Danny Parente. New to the neighbourhood is Gabriela, a filmmaker shooting a documentary on the real Brooklyn. Al and Gabriela become friendly but the relationship is strained when he discovers her true goal is to expose Parente's criminal activities. When Al sees the evidence Gabriela has uncovered, which implicates Parente in the death of many locals (including Al's own father), he seeks revenge in a dangerous confrontation with his boss.

Mikio Naruse’s final silent film is a gloriously rich portrait of a waitress, Sugiko, whose life, despite a host of male admirers and even some intrigued movie talent scouts, ends up taking a suffocatingly domestic turn after a wealthy businessman accidentally hits her with his car