Film Reviews

Lily and Alison face a life-changing event after they leave their Salton Sea home and follow the boys they meet back to Los Angeles.

The film starts with a story about how two monkeys band together and cooperate to survive in the wild, which is used to illustrate how human society is formed. By casting its characters in a desolate, uninhabited no man's land, the film explores the tension between human's animal instincts and their socially constructed selves. Pan Xiao, a young middle-class lawyer played by Xu Zheng, goes to a rural western town in the desert to handle the case of a falcon poacher who ran over and killed a policeman. Pan wins the case through sophisticated reasoning, forces the poacher to give him his car as a reward and begins to drive home. But unbeknownst to Pan, the car is carrying stolen falcons and before long he runs into a series of unlucky accidents and meets some unsavory characters. After he loses his glasses and accidentally hits another poacher (Huang Bo of Lost in Thailand), Pan is consumed by fear and guilt, and embarks on a real and metaphorical journey back to civilization.

Two mismatched personal trainers' lives are upended by the actions of a new, wealthy client.

When a girls friend is killed by a college hazing, she is the only one who can find out the truth.

When a family emergency forces a troubled teen to do the wrong thing for the right reason, a community discovers the meaning of forgiveness.

Two new female police officers struggle to survive a force filled with corrupt superiors and the brutal world of the criminal mafia.

It is the largest movement the world has ever seen, it may also be the most important - in terms of what's at stake. Yet it's not east being green. Environmentalists have been reviled as much as revered, for being killjoys and Cassandras. Every battle begins as a lost cause and even the victories have to be fought for again and again. Still, environmentalism is one of the great social innovations of the twentieth century, and one of the keys to the twenty-first. It has arisen at a key juncture in history, when humans have come to rival nature as a power determining the fate of the earth.

Sam, a door-to-door salesman, travels through the desert in search of clients, yet the area seems deserted. And his wife won't answer his phone calls. It's as if everyone was avoiding him. His only contact with the outside world is a local radio station. The host, a strange man by the name of eddy, takes calls regarding a child killer at large, and pushes listeners to hunt the man to death. That's when Sam realizes everyone thinks he's the killer..

A dozen foreigners are kidnapped by a terrorist group in the Philippines.

When a covert mission to rescue a kidnapped CIA operative uncovers a chilling plot, an elite, highly trained U.S. SEAL team speeds to hotspots around the globe, racing against the clock to stop a deadly terrorist attack.

Like some other kids, 12-year-old Trevor McKinney believed in the goodness of human nature. Like many other kids, he was determined to change the world for the better. Unlike most other kids, he succeeded.

Amanda, an ardent Jane Austen fan, lives in present day London with her boyfriend Michael, until she finds she's swapped places with Austen's fictional creation Elizabeth Bennett.

Rachel decides to take her three year old daughter to daycare. As the days pass, the woman feels that the teacher turns too with her daughter, reaching an almost obsessive relationship.

When school teacher Harriet Winslow goes to Mexico to teach, she is kidnapped by Gen. Tomas Arroyo and his revolutionaries. An aging American, Ambrose "Old Gringo" Bierce also in Mexico, befriends Gen. Arroyo and meets Harriet. Bierce is a famous writer, who knowing that he is dying, wishes to keep his identity secret so he can determine his own fate. Though he likes Arroyo, Bierce tries to provoke the General's anger whenever possible in an attempt to get himself killed, thus avoiding suffering through his illness. Winslow is intrigued by both Bierce and Arroyo, and the men are in turn attracted to her. She becomes romantically involved with Arroyo. When Winslow learns of Bierce's true identity (a writer whose work she has loved and respected for years), she is singlemindedly determined to fulfill his dying wish. Written by E.W. DesMarais

A television producer with a penchant for drinking and gambling is sent to Las Vegas to convince his troubled niece to enter rehab.