The Movie:

Made a directly after his breakthrough film, 1960's Breathless but not released until 1963, Jean-Luc Godard's film Le Petit Soldat is a very different picture than that auspicious debut and it sees the director playing less with his obvious influences and instead carving out his own unique style.

The politically charged film takes place during the Algerian war for independence from France. The setting is Geneva, and introduces us to Bruno Forestier (Michel Subor), a Frenchman who has deserted the army he was in, now making a living as a newspaper photographer. He also does work for an underground organization with anti-Algerian leanings based out of Switzerland. He's also very much in love with a beautiful Russian woman named Veronica Dreyer (Anna Karina, in her debut role). When this group asks him to assassinate a radio host with Algerian sympathies, he ...Read the entire review

The Movie:
Vampires are a perennial subject for horror filmmakers, and that bloody fellow Dracula holds a special place in many people's hearts. So, what better subject to build a satire around Christian sexual ethics (and especially Christian scare films) and also community theater people? While this doesn't seem like a natural fit, it sort of works in Richard Griffin's Sins of Dracula, though this film isn't as enjoyable as some of his previous work.

Billy (Jamie Dufault) is a devout Christian, who sings in the church choir and loves the Lord, but he longs for something else. He wants to express himself. His girlfriend Shannon (horror veteran Sarah Nicklin), who is not devout in the least, encourages him to join her in her community theater troupe, led by the flamboyant director Lou Perdition (Steven O'Broin). Billy is a very sheltered lad, and doesn't know at first how to deal w...Read the entire review

THE FILM:
If you could go back in time, to the dawn of television, and tell those who were about to enjoy the brand new medium that, one day, people would stare in entertained awe as men manned massive trawlers in order to bring in the seasonal haul of fish, crab, lobster, et. al., one imagines a blank stare, followed almost immediately by a shriek in recognition of how horrifying this superficial future must be. All kidding aside, the fact that Deadliest Catch has been one of Discovery Channel's most popular programs, highlighting the hardships of those who make the sea their workplace and the dangerous job of harvesting same their struggle, is indeed a head-scratcher. Sure, the series (now in its ninth season) illustrates how difficult it is for modern fisherman, but the attempt to paste some kind of narrative on the otherwise nasty occupation has always smacked of forced sensationa...Read the entire review

Perhaps spurred on by the success of the hit Discovery Channel program "Deadliest Catch" (which makes an "appearance" here), Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Verena Paravel climbed on board a New England fishing boat to film Leviathan, a nearly wordless 90-minute documentary. Captured on GoPro cameras mounted on sticks, the movie has no traditional narrative, no interviews, no obvious structure -- it's a series of raw takes that directly captures the mood and tone of life working on one of these ships.

At this point, readers may guess, and guess correctly, that Leviathan will only appeal to a very specific type of viewer. (At the very least, prospective viewers should check out the trailer before committing.) Although the footage captured by Castaing-Taylor and Paravel is frequently stunning, free of traditional restriction of movement, and chock full of entirely unique angles of the fish...Read the entire review

THE FILM

"The Company Men" is not a comfortable film to sit through. It is most certainly not escapism. Dealing with the disturbing subject matter of unemployment, the picture summarizes a national reality in a blunt matter, carrying the woe and aggravation to a dramatic stage for a more fulfilling consideration, using the extraordinarily gifted ensemble to explore a shared fear. Finding catharsis in bleak matters, the picture satisfies with its sincerity, allowing viewers to sympathize and reflect on the nature of job loss through this efficiently directed eulogy for American industry.

With their shipyard conglomerate nearing stock market calamity, executives Bobby Walker (Ben Affleck), Phil Woodland (Chris Cooper), and Gene McClary (Tommy Lee Jones) have found themselves out of a job, pushed into an ice cold employment field that doesn't offer many comforting prospects...Read the entire review

The Product:
Sure, we can act all cynical and start making jokes. We can call out the dogs of disgraceful character assassination and somehow equate working for children with working over children. We can mock his voice, his mannerisms, his gentleness and genuine concern for pre-adolescents, and we don't have to turn every posit into a proclamation of pedophilia. Outside the realm of satire or farce, Fred Rogers remains an iconic figure in children's television, using his unusually sedate and somber program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood as a bastion for personal self esteem and express individual worth. While other shows were talking 'down' to most "meddling kids", the PBS fixture was finding new and novel ways to talk to them, to open up the small fry's frame of reference. This is especially true of his latter day episodes, pieces purposefully aimed at tackling tricky subjects with war...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Based on a true story that was originally published in Esquire magazine by journalist Scott Anderson, writer/director Richard Shepard's Hunting Party tells the story of a cameraman named Duckie(Terrence Howard) and a news reporter named Simon Hunt (Richard Gere), a pair of danger loving journalists who wind up in war town Bosnia in the 1990s at the height of the war that had erupted in that area at that time. Though they're originally just there to cover the war like any other journalists, Hunt winds up speaking his mind on the country's nationally broadcast television channel and speaking out against the government and the reasons behind the war. As such, he's more or less booted off the air and goes into an exile of sorts, while Duckieworks his way up the ladder and winds up following the network's biggest anchorman, Franklin Harris (James Brolin), and young upstart ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Widely regarded as the best of the films that 'The Venoms' made, Cheng Cheh's follow up to The Five Deadly Venoms is really just a sequel in name only and was actually released under the more appropriate alternate title of Crippled Avengers. The film has nothing to do with the first one outside of the fact that the principal cast members who made that picture so memorable and so dynamic return - but let's not nitpick, as this picture delivers everything fans of period martial arts films could want in a fight film.

The movie starts off with a bang as a man named Tian-du Dao (Chan Kuan Tai) arrives home just in time to see a gang called the Tinan Tigers cutting off his wife's legs and chopping off his young son's hands. The wife dies, but the son grows up to be a deadly martial artists, trained by his father in the Tiger Style he wields with deadly precision. T...Read the entire review

The Feature:

After the Philadelphia Phillies won the 2008 World Series, what made them a formidable bunch heading into 2009 was that they hadn't lost any real significant pieces to their puzzle. They still had strong hitting in Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins, their pitching staff included Cole Hamels and Brad Lidge, and during the season, they upgraded it with the addition of coveted lefthander Cliff Lee. And they got to the Series in 2009 ready to defend their crown. However, compared to the relatively new Tampa Bay Rays, the New York Yankees were almost as old as the Phillies were from a franchise point of view, and have much more success in closing out a Series. Their trophy case has a trophy case, for pete's sake.

But legacy aside, the Yankees were a formidable bunch, perhaps the strongest in several years. And while the Phillies landed Lee during the season, the Yankees signed tw...Read the entire review

The Movie:
In the superstar laden world of film, it may seem odd that animators often get the celebrity short shrift. Certainly there are exceptions, people whose contributions have entered the public consciousness at large (Walt Disney, Max Fleischer, and, more recently, Pixar's John Lasseter and his cohorts), but all in all, animators tend to work long and hard for very little recognition. How many general readers would recognize the name Eyvind Earle, for example? Or, in the even more unlikely moniker department, Michel Ocelot? And yet Ocelot has carved out one of the most distinctive bodies of animated work over the past several decades, and Azur and Asmar: The Princes' Quest continues that tradition with an at times absolutely audacious visual splendor that will leave most viewers bug-eyed.

The era of CGI, both in traditional film and in completely animated features, has ja...Read the entire review

The Movie

In the opening scene of Come Drink With Me we witness a roving clan of thieves laying waste to a government convoy and the kidnapping of an important political officer. The reasoning behind their actions is that they intend to use their captive friend as a bargaining chip so that they can force the government to release their leader who has recently been locked up for his criminal activity.

In order to free the hostage without having to give up their prisoner, the local officials decide to send in Golden Swallow (Cheng Pei Pei of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon fame), a brilliant swordswoman disguised as a male, to take on the bandits and save the day. She soon, by chance, meets a likeminded individual named Drunken Cat (Yueh Hua of The Iron Bodyguard) who teams up with her to help stop the thugs in their tracks. Though at first he appears to be nothing m...Read the entire review