Film Reviews

Paris, in the early 1960s. Jean-Louis Joubert is a serious but uptight stockbroker, married to Suzanne, a starchy class-conscious woman and father of two arrogant teenage boys, currently in a boarding school. The affluent man lives a steady yet boring life. At least until, due to fortuitous circumstances, Maria, the charming new maid at the service of Jean-Louis' family, makes him discover the servants' quarter on the sixth floor of the luxury building he owns and lives in. There live a crowd of lively Spanish maids who will help Jean-Louis to open to a new civilization and a new approach of life. In their company - and more precisely in the company of beautiful Maria - Jean-Louis will gradually become another man, a better man.

This fast-paced black comedy by wunderkind director Rainer Werner Fassbinder follows the frantic efforts of a starving and confused writer, Walter Kranz to beg, borrow or steal enough money to survive on, and at the same time make some sense of his confusing life. Unable to write enough to keep his publisher's royalty advances coming, he seeks out a woman he imagines is a prostitute and interviews her for material. He is also inspired to utter some poetry, which his brassy, outspoken wife identifies as coming from the famous homosexuality-advocating mystical German poet, Stefan George. This inspires Walter to take a closer look at the gay scene, and he quickly becomes a sort of celebrity there.

Two men are released from the Arizona Territorial Prison at Yuma in 1898. One, the Dutchman, is out to get both gold and revenge from the people of a small mining town who had him imprisoned unjustly. The other, McBain, is just trying to go straight, but that is easier said than done once the Dutchman involves him in his gold theft scheme.

A young girl zealously wants to go to school and learn to read and write. Almost everywhere she is met with hostility or indifference. The only young boy who takes her to his school is thrown out by the teacher, because helping her prevented him from arriving in time. On her way home she and other girls are taken as prisoners by boys playing as Taliban fighters. They tear her school book to pieces and threaten to stone their female captives.

This anthology film from Étaix’s peak period presents four comic episodes with an accent on the pitfalls of modern life: (1) a scary vampire novel keeps a man awake, (2) a moviegoer’s attempts to find a seat give way to an onslaught of absurd ads, (3) noise and pollution send a man to the doctor’s, (4) a hunter disrupts a rural idyll. In French with English subtitles. (Martin Rubin, Gene Siskel Film Center)

Set in the present where a group of ruthless gangsters, an unknown woman and an escaped convict have met, unwittingly, in The Forest of Resurrection, the 444th portal to the other side. Their troubles start when those once killed and buried in the forest come back from the dead, with the assistance of the evil Sprit that has also come back, come back from ages past, to claim his prize. The final standoff between Light and Dark has never been so cunning, so brutal and so deadly. This is where old Japanese Samurai mysticism meets the new world of the gangster and the gun. Gruesome, bloody and positively bold.

Django, bounty killer, hunter and repentant bandit wants to start a new life. No more bullets and blood, after years of killing and horror. Django wants to replace the sherrif and restore law and order to lawless land, but faces the history and bloodshed of his own past. Helped by the love of the daughter of a bandit Django can finally bring his life of violence to and end and spend his days in peace... If he can live that long!

A young woman studying the habits of webcam chat users from the apparent safety of her apartment witnesses a brutal murder online and is quickly immersed in a nightmare in which she and her loved ones are targeted for the same grisly fate as the first victim.

An eight-year-old boy discovers a family of tiny people, only a few inches tall, living beneath the floorboards of a Victorian country home.

What happens when a glamorous express, with high government officials, wealthy merchants, concubines and a gang of brigands on board, speeds towards the small town of Hanshui, where escaping bank robbers, corrupt officials, and gamblers await? Well, let's just say the Titanic had a smoother maiden voyage.

The story begins with Makoto Segawa, a freshman at Meikei University. On the day of his university entrance ceremony, Makoto meets a fresh-faced, quirky girl named Shizuru. Makoto has a complex which causes him to shy away from contact with other people, but she succeeds in getting him to open up to her naturally. All Shizuru wants is to be with Makoto, so she takes up a camera too. The two spend their days together taking photos in the forest behind the campus. However, Makoto has feelings for another student named Miyuki. Shizuru decides that if Makoto likes Miyuki, she wants to like her too. She wants to like everything that he does. One day, she tells Makoto that she wants to take a photo of them kissing in the forest as a present for 'her birthday'. He obliges for her sake, and they kiss in the forest.

A Scotland Yard undercover detective is on the trail of a saboteur who is part of a plot to set off a bomb in London. But when the detective's cover is blown, the plot begins to unravel.

Larita Filton is named as correspondent in a scandalous divorce case. She escapes to France to rebuild her life where she meets John Whittaker. They are later married, but John's well-to-do family finds out Larita's secret.

When a faun named Mune becomes the Guardian of the Moon, little did he had unprepared experience with the Moon and an accident that could put both the Moon and the Sun in danger, including a corrupt titan named Necross who wants the Sun for himself and placing the balance of night and day in great peril. Now with the help of a wax-child named Glim and the warrior, Sohone who also became the Sun Guardian, they go out on an exciting journey to get the Sun back and restore the Moon to their rightful place in the sky.

In the wake of the Spanish-American war, military doctor Bill Canavan (Cooper) arrives at a war-torn Filipino outpost. Infested with cholera and under attack from a vicious local Moro chieftain, the troops are terrified and their commanding officer has all but given up hope. Outnumbered and out of supplies, Canavan decides to trade his scalpel for a rifle and rally the few remaining troops into one last stand before the outpost and everyone inside becomes just another footnote in history.