Film Reviews

Australian film about a fictional sub-par Australian band and their journey to becoming famous

Ricky, Julian and Bubbles are about to get out of jail, and this time, Julian vows to go straight, even open a legit business. Soon the Boys will all be rich. At least that's what they've told the parole board. But when they arrive back at the park, they find it's not the same old Sunnyvale - and it's not the same old Jim Lahey, Trailer Park Supervisor.

The Murderers Are Among Us was the first German film after the Second World War. Filmed in the Soviet occupied section of Berlin in the summer of 1946. The film would be the first film about the wreckage from the war and the first film produced by DEFA.

Set to the intoxicating rhythms of Brazil, "Woman on Top" is a spicy, sexy comedy about the magic of food, love and music. Meet Isabella, a sultry enchantress born with the special gift of melting the palates and hearts of men everywhere. When she decides to break free from her rocky marriage and the stifling kitchen of her husband's restaurant in Brazil, she spirits off to San Francisco in pursuit of her dreams of a real culinary career.

Joseph McKelheer and Cory Knauf (The Hamiltons, The Violent Kind) star in this intense thriller set in the lingering light of the Alaskan midnight sun. Charlie Shepard, a modern day faith healer with a small flock of believers, is stunned when his family is brutally murdered. Six months later a young, mysterious girl (Courtney Halverson) appears and becomes the link to his family's killing and the murderers themselves, ultimately leading to violent consequences for all.

King Lines follows Chris Sharma on his search for the planet's greatest climbs. From South American fantasy boulders to the sweeping limestone walls of Europe, Sharma finds and climbs the hardest, most spectacular routes. Off the coast of Mallorca he discovers his most outrageous project yet, a 70 foot arch rising from the Mediterranean Sea...

Gilles' wife, Elise, who smiles when she thinks of him, cooks and scrubs and cheerfully makes love to him, suspects during her third pregnancy that he is having an affair with her coquettish younger sister, Victorine. Elise suffers, usually in silence. She listens to her husband rave; she asks her priest; she breaks picture frames; she weeps. She decides on a strategy to keep him. Will she succeed?

A man's life is altered unexpectedly after telling a lie to get out of work.

Set in a Tex-Mex border town, Not Forgotten is a classic psychological thriller about Jack and Amaya Bishop, a couple who must come to terms with their tortured pasts in order to save their kidnapped daughter. It is a tale taut with intrigue and steeped in Latino mysticism, where the line between what's real and what's imagined becomes hopelessly blurred.

Invisible Stripes is a 1939 Warner Bros. crime film about a gangster (George Raft) unable to go straight after returning home from prison. The movie was directed by Lloyd Bacon and also features William Holden and Humphrey Bogart. The screenplay by Warren Duff was based on the novel of the same name by Warden Lewis E. Lawes, a fervent crusader for prison reform, as adapted by Jonathan Finn.

The new science teacher Dr. Julian Olcott with a mysterious past arrives in an institutional boarding school for troublemaker girls. Along the night, the intern Mary Smith, who is blackmailing another teacher - Sir Alfred Whiteman - with some love letters, is slaughtered by a werewolf. The detective in charge of the investigation attributes the crime to a wolf, while her mate Priscilla believes she was killed by Sir Alfred. On the next days, other deaths happen in the school, reducing the list of suspects.

Suki is a young woman confronting her destructive mental illness using "The Siamese Burn," an experimental machine designed to eliminate multiple personalities. The closer Suki comes to being "cured," she's haunted by a thought... what if the last unwanted identity turns out to be her?

A young Danish man, Christoffer, lives a life of joy and happiness with his wife Maria in Stockholm. When his father dies his mother insists that Christoffer take over management of the family industry which is in danger of bankruptcy. He is torn between his chosen life and his sense of duty to his family and its past. When he chooses to step in as manager his family life and self-respect languish.

The time is the late '80s, a crucial period in the history of South Africa. President P.W. Botha is hanging on to power by a thread as the African National Congress (ANC) takes up arms against apartheid and the country tumbles toward insurrection. A British mining concern is convinced that their interests would be better served in a stable South Africa and they quietly dispatch Michael Young, their head of public affairs, to open an unofficial dialogue between the bitter rivals. Assembling a reluctant yet brilliant team to pave the way to reconciliation by confronting obstacles that initially seem insurmountable, Young places his trust in ANC leader Thabo Mbeki and Afrikaner philosophy professor Willie Esterhuyse. It is their empathy that will ultimately serve as the catalyst for change by proving more powerful than the terrorist bombs that threaten to disrupt the peaceful dialogue.

Adapted from Edgar Allan Poe's Fall of the House of Usher, director Jean Epstein studiously avoids cheap shocks in this tale of hereditary madness, choosing instead a tightly controlled, spookily subtle technique. The hero, having indirectly caused the death of his beloved, stubbornly tries to resurrect her spirit by devoting himself to painting and sculpture. Epstein conveys the twilight zone between life and death with lingering dissolves and brilliant utilization of slow motion.