Film Reviews

Somewhere deep in the jungle a chemical corporation dumps tons of toxic waste in a still active volcano. Two environmentalists try to expose these illegal ways of getting rid of hugely dangerous waste, but they get caught by the vigilantes working for the company. One of them, the super-hot Maria Giulia Cavalli, manages to escape and she is saved by a snake farmer who lives alone in the jungle. Together they try to bring down the company, but it’s too late. Years of chemical poisoning have spawned a deadly monster that is set out to exact revenge on humans that have unknowingly brought him to life. Directed by legendary Antonio Margheriti, the unholy master of Italian B movies, Alien from the Deep is one of the most beloved Italian rip-offs. A wildly entertaining ride, the movie is an inventive crossover where lots of different genres and styles are mixed.

After botching his latest assignment, a third-ranked Japanese hit man becomes the target of another assassin.

Set in 1944 France, an American Intelligence Squad locates a German Platoon wishing to surrender rather than die in Germany's final war offensive. The two groups of men, isolated from the war at present, put aside their differences and spend Christmas together before the surrender plan turns bad and both sides are forced to fight the other.

Writer, ex-con and 40-something bottle-baby Tim Madden, who is prone to black-outs, awakens from a two-week bender to discover a pool of blood in his car.

This early cinematic instance of a close-up—or, more accurately, a medium close-up shot of the chest and face of the maker of this film and others like it, Georges Demenÿ saying “Je vous aime”—was made at the request of Hector Marichelle, professor and director of the National Deaf-Mute Institute in France, who planned to use filmed speech to teach deaf students to speak and lip read. This required close views of the performer's lip movements. The project was given to Demenÿ by Étienne-Jules Marey, who headed the Station Physiologique in Paris and whose chronophotographic scientific research of motion is among the most important contributions to the invention of movies. Despite these educational and scientific beginnings, however, this project led Demenÿ to pursue and influence the commercialism of cinema.

An ex-con on the run from his criminal past, hides out from those he ratted on by chaperoning a field trip to New Orleans.

A sister and brother, the last heirs of a family of acrobats, are called upon by a Buddhist monk sect to retrieve an artifact that their ancestors have protected throughout the ages.

In this Derek Jarman version of Christopher Marlowe's Elizabethan drama, in modern costumes and settings, Plantagenet king Edward II hands the power-craving nobility the perfect excuse by taking as lover besides his diplomatic wife, the French princess Isabel, not an acceptable lady at court but the ambitious Piers Gaveston, who uses his favor in bed even to wield political influence - the stage is set for a palace revolt which sends the gay pair from the throne to a terminal torture dungeon.

Gripping, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful, Waiting for Superman is an impassioned indictment of the American school system from An Inconvenient Truth director Davis Guggenheim.

In 1941 America Kay and her husband are happy enough until he enlists after Pearl Harbor. Against his wishes, his wife takes a job at the local aircraft plant where she meets Hazel, the singer from across the way the two soon become firm friends and with the other girls become increasingly expert workers. As the war drags on Kay finally dates her trumpet playing foreman and life gets complicated

A study in culture bridging, including ... a new US-born husband, trying to work within the traditional ways, a new China-born wife, eager to join the "dream" of America, two family-minded fathers, lots of gender-related social bifurcations.

An orphan in 1850 Missouri gets into a variety of scrapes, including a murder mystery. Entertaining David O. Selznick production of Mark Twain classic with more slapstick than Twain may have had in mind. Cave sequence with Injun Joe is unforgettable.

Three unique horror stories connected by a bookend story tells of the horrifying past a young couples potential dream house has endured.

A New York playboy, Wayne Carter, dates wild women until he falls for a hard-working stenographer, Helene Andrews.

Show girl Jill Deverne is married to song writer Fred Deverne, and everyone is involved in the Broadway night life and endless parties. Jill is being pursued by a gangster, and she leaves her husband after he spends the night with a floozie. Jill ends up as the gangster's moll, but she soon gets tired of the lifestyle.