Film Reviews

Vampir-Cuadecuc is a 1970 experimental feature film by Catalan filmmaker Pere Portabella. The entire film is photographed on high contrast black & white film stock, which gives it the appearance of a degraded film print, evoking early Expressionist horror films such as F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu or Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr. It was shot on the set of Jesus Franco's Count Dracula, starring Christopher Lee and Herbert Lom. The sound track is by frequent Portabella collaborator Carles Santos, and the only spoken dialogue in the film appears only in the last scene, which features Lee reading from Bram Stoker's original novel.

Uptight French chef, Sara Westbrook, gets fired up when her upscale café, Chez Varenne, is suddenly overshadowed by a new restaurant moving in next door run by a group of rowdy firemen. Led by handsome former fire fighter Gill Callahan and his friend Danny, The Five Alarm Grill is soon a big success while Sara and Patsy, her pastry chef, struggle to bring in customers. Sara suddenly softens when she meets Gill's ten-year-old daughter Hannah. Ignoring the obvious tension between her dad and Sara, Hannah is soon playing matchmaker. Can Gill and Sara's burgeoning romance survive the temptation to compete with each other, or will the heat of competition drive them apart?

During a space voyage, four scientists are altered by cosmic rays: Reed Richards gains the ability to stretch his body; Sue Storm can become invisible; Johnny Storm controls fire; and Ben Grimm is turned into a super-strong … thing. Together, these "Fantastic Four" must now thwart the evil plans of Dr. Doom and save the world from certain destruction.

Joe Mazzello, best known for his acting roles in Jurassic Park, HBO's The Pacific, The Social Network, etc, wrote and made his directorial debut with this story based on his brother's experience as a collegiate baseball star who was skipped over in the Major League Baseball draft. Story centers around an intramural baseball game with his misfit teammates that becomes incredibly important to him as he tries to come to grips with his dashed dream.

5 friends have a plan to rob a transporter that can change their lives.

Dive into more than a century of decadence with this tantalizing look at the evolution of burlesque. Cabaret star Leslie Zemeckis traces the art form from vaudeville-style variety show through its extinction and contemporary rebirth. Vintage photos, film clips and ads illustrate burlesque's resilient history and how the public's sexual appetite kept it alive amid moral and legal ado.

Framed for the murder of a record company president in 1952 Hollywood, young, aspiring singer Aggie O'Hanlon is sentenced to life in prison and tries to adjust to her life life behind bars in a hellish womens prison where she is befriended by other "lifer" inmates who help her out when Aggie finds herself marked for murder by an unknown source who thinks she knows more about the murder than she does.

The true story of a rich girl who was abducted by American revolutionaries in the 1970's. Her time spent with her captors made her question herself and her way of life and she joined forces with the cause that her abductors were fighting for. This created a US scandal and Patty Hearst has become a pop culture fixture. Written by Josh Pasnak

The story about the friendship between two women, family problems and difficult childhood.

Third film based on Boris Akunin's "Priklucheniya Erasta Petrovicha Fandorina" series of novels. On a train from St. Petersburg to Moscow general Khrapov was killed and no one else but Erast Petrovich is under suspicion because the killer pretended to be Fandorin. There are initials BG on the handle of the knife Khrapov was stabbed with, the initials belong to a terrorist organization which keeps both capital cities (Moscow and St. Petersburg) in fear. This time Fandorin is not the only one trying to solve the crime, general Pozharski, a famous detective takes over the investigation...

The Waterbury family are completely happy until mysterious men take their father away and they have to move up to Yorkshire without him. The three open-hearted children soon make many friends including their Old Gentleman whom they regularly wave to on his morning train journey. Bobbie, the eldest girl, makes contact with him to try and get help for the problems they are facing. Meanwhile the children find themselves involved in several unexpected dramas on the railway

Fresh Dressed chronicles the history of Hip-Hop | Urban fashion and its rise from southern cotton plantations to the gangs of 1970s in the South Bronx, to corporate America, and everywhere in-between. Supported by rich archival materials and in depth interviews with individuals crucial to the evolution of a way of life--and the outsiders who studied and admired them--Fresh Dressed goes to the core of where style was born on the black and brown side of town.

The daughter of a struggling musician forms a symphony orchestra made up of his unemployed friends and through persistence, charm and a few misunderstandings, is able to get Leopold Stokowski to lead them in a concert that leads to a radio contract.

A young musician and singer named Johnny has been notified by a law firm that his mother, an aging rock star whom Johnny hasn't seen or heard from since he was 3 years old, has died in a helicopter accident. Johnny has been willed her castle and all of her property and money, but he must visit the actual castle to claim these things.

Poverty, Inc. explores the hidden side of doing good. From disaster relief to TOMs Shoes, from adoptions to agricultural subsidies, Poverty, Inc. follows the butterfly effect of our most well-intentioned efforts and pulls back the curtain on the poverty industrial complex - the multi-billion dollar market of NGOs, multilateral agencies, and for-profit aid contractors. Are we catalyzing development or are we propagating a system in which the poor stay poor while the rich get hipper?