A delightful mixture of history, humor, and drama!
9 October 2001 | by Eric Norton

Peter the Great takes a Russian man of African heritage – Ibrahim Petrovich Hannibal – under his wing as the tsar builds his grand navy. After having a disastrous affair in France, Ibrahim vows to never fall in love again, until he sees the daughter of a wealthy boyar. Peter the Great insists the two be married, but Ibrahim goes against the tsar’s wishes, refusing to force her to marry him since she doesn’t consent. When another man tries to marry her, however, Ibrahim’s loyalties and generous nature are put to the test.Read More »

Bob Stewart, Allmovie, wrote:
This 1973 Frederick Wiseman documentary, filmed at the Juvenile Court in Memphis, Tennessee, won the Columbia University School of Journalism’s 1974 Dupont Award for “Excellence in Broadcast Journalism.” In 144 minutes, Wiseman shows a wide variety of cases before the Memphis Juvenile Court, from child abuse and sexual offenses to armed robbery and foster home placement, and it examines such issues as the range and limits of choices available to the court, psychology of offenders, constitutional points, procedural questions, and community protection vs. the desire for rehabilitation.Read More »

Plot:
1938. A small group of Dutch students stop their tennis game momentarily to hear of England’s entry into World War II. Erik and his friends don’t show much concern at first. But when Queen Wilhelmina flees Holland for London and the Germans move in, it becomes necessary to choose sides.

Soldier of Orange, directed by Paul Verhoeven (Turkish Delights) is based on the true life adventures of Erik Hazelhoff who received numerous decorations including Holland’s highest honor — the Militaire Willems-orde. It is interesting to see how Erik’s friends take different courses: a Jew inevitably dies once the German’s arrive; another associate joins the Nazi army; a third becomes active in the Dutch resistance movement; and a fourth betrays everyone in order to save his Jewish girlfriend.Read More »

Quote:
A mentally unstable Vietnam war veteran works as a nighttime taxi driver in New York City where the perceived decadence and sleaze feeds his urge to violently lash out, attempting to save a teenage prostitute in the process.Read More »

Quote:
A gang planning a ‘job’ find themselves living with a little old lady, who thinks they are musicians. When the gang set out to kill Mrs Wilberforce, they run into one problem after another, and they get what they deserve.Read More »

Synopsis
The autobiography, both real and imaginary, of Marina Abramovic [1], Body Art artistic. The film composes the life aesthetic of a woman in her era, with a personal history strongly marked by the Yugoslavia of Tito, everyday violence, the experience of physical and psychic limits… The voluntary evocation of the past makes something more secret, more intimate crop up: an unknown evolution that is embodied in fictions felt like authentic fragments of truth. Balkan Baroque jumps from one identity to another, from a true story to an imagination, from a dream to a ritual… – the language of the body often taking over from the word, interrupting it or, on the contrary, stimulating it.Read More »

Children liberated from a Nazi concentration camp have to overcome hunger, thirst and vicious dogs in an abandoned mansion surrounded by the forest.Read More »

Quote:
The film perfectly balances both gorgeous footage of the continent as well as fascinating interviews and anecdotes of the many researchers and workers of the McMurdo research station. It fits in well with Herzog’s already substantial canon. It is a beautiful look at a beautiful continent populated by a forklift driver with a PhD, a woman who once traveled to South America in a sewage pipe on the back of a truck, researchers who play electric guitars on top of research station to celebrate discovering three new species of aquatic life in one day, and many more. Their stories converge where all the lines on the map meet at the end of the world. Herzog shot the film with a crew of just himself and the camera operator, and the result is a film with some of the most beautiful footage I’ve ever seen.Read More »

Synopsis
In the 1980s, encouraged by the government, a large number of families leave Chinese cities to settle in the poorer regions of the country, in order to develop local industry. The film’s main character is a 19 years old girl who lives in the Guizhou province, where her parents have settled. That’s where she has grown up, where her friends are and where she first experiences love. But her father believes that their future lies in Shanghai. How can they all keep on living together when they don’t share the same dreams?Read More »