Film Reviews

Mirabel wins a $5,000 lottery which will enable her to live like a queen in New York. There she meets Sandro, a bellboy who is really a prince, so she does get to be a queen after all.

Taiwanese pop sensation Jay Chou, drawing on his years as an actor, director, and recording star, creates a fantasy playground of music, moves, and magic as a backdrop to an action comedy which pays homage to the wondrous musicals of the past, while exploding to life with today’s sound and spirit.

Wattstax is the 1973 documentary film about the Afro-American Woodstock concert held in Los Angeles seven years after the Watts riots. Director Mel Stuart mixes footage from the concert with footage of the living conditions in the current day Watts neighborhood. The film won the Golden Globe for Best Documentary Film.

Alice in Wonderland (1966) is a BBC television play based on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. It was directed by Jonathan Miller, then most widely known for his appearance in the long-running satirical revue Beyond the Fringe.

Post-war provincial Iceland: around 1950, Freyja, who'd been a plump teen, returns from America, a widow with a 20-inch waist, seven suitcases of dresses, and a list of who ever wronged or slighted her. She moves in with an aunt and socialist uncle: finding a new husband is high on her agenda, and she's mistrusted by Agga, a pre-teen who's our eyes and ears. The social order and Freyja are more complicated than they seem at first, and so may be her prospects. Class divisions, families ties, pride, the onset of puberty, and the power of Eros sliver the ice.

When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".

In late spring, 1890, Vincent moves to Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris, under the care of Dr. Gachet, living in a humble inn. Fewer than 70 days later, Vincent dies from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. We see Vincent at work, painting landscapes and portraits. His brother Theo, wife Johanna, and their baby visit Auvers. Vincent is playful and charming, engaging the attentions of Gachet's daughter Marguerite (who's half Vincent's age), a young maid at the inn, Cathy a Parisian prostitute, and Johanna. Shortly before his death, Vincent visits Paris, quarrels with Theo, disparages his own art and accomplishments, dances at a brothel, and is warm then cold toward Marguerite.

Smitten with a Jewish woman, a gentile asks his Jewish pal to advise him on how to act like a member of the community.

Mathematician Teresa just wanted to study during the College spring break. But her friends, who want her to live a little, drag her out to parties. The next thing she knows, she has been drugged, kidnapped, made a redhead, tattooed, and wearing leather?!? Her captors seem to be the most inept crooks ever. They seem to have a plan, if only she could figure out why it involves her.

The comic strip detective finds his life vastly complicated when Breathless Mahoney makes advances towards him while he is trying to battle Big Boy Caprice's united mob,

Thor fights to restore order across the cosmos… but an ancient race led by the vengeful Malekith returns to plunge the universe back into darkness. Faced with an enemy that even Odin and Asgard cannot withstand, Thor must embark on his most perilous and personal journey yet, one that will reunite him with Jane Foster and force him to sacrifice everything to save us all.

It sounds like a budding writer's dream: a bestselling first novel, a luxurious house in Malibu, and a trophy wife... But it all unravels when writer's block and a failed marriage send Richard McMurray (Campbell Scott, The Exorcism of Emily Rose) out into the streets.

Lainie Wheeler has two daughters, but her husband leaves them for a Thai monastery. She completely neglects her job in TV production but finds a new vocation in nursing terminal patients, even after the death of her friend in that home. She also finds a new lover, Matt Harper, who is also great with her kids, but still gets addicted to pills, causes a major accident, loses custody and needs long-term institutionalized therapy. After her release, a friend gets her another job in TV production, which makes her meet baseball star Harry Brewer. When he proves adulterous and gets too intimate, she ends up murdering him. Detective Webster investigates..

Basically, 'Herakles' is an omnium-gatherum of film clips depicting images of machismo. Some of those images are explicitly macho: we see various body-builders flexing their biceps and triceps. Other images seen here are not macho in the literal sense, but are indirectly related to testosterone or cojones on some level: we see military aircraft making bombing raids, and footage of car crashes.

Das Experiment is a shocking psycho thriller about the potential for brutality that humans hide. Even more shocking is the fact that it’s based on an actual occurrence—a 1971 psychological experiment at Stanford University that was aborted prematurely when the experimenters lost control.