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Film Reviews: A young college grad sets off from his village to follow the pilgrim trail.
Film Reviews: "Film Noir" is a stylish, sexually explicit animation that plays like "The Big Sleep" meets "Fritz the Cat."
Film Reviews: All good things must come to an end -- in this case, the lucky streak that's made every adaptation of Jack Finney's 1955 sci-fi novel "The Body Snatchers" distinctive and effective, until now.
Film Reviews: Almudena Carracedo's debut docu relates a rousing true story of solidarity, perseverance and triumph, following garment workers over a four-year period as they unite to demand minimum wage and decent working conditions in L.A. sweatshops.
Film Reviews: "Cloud" is so cloaked in symbolism that reality gets subsumed in a Frenchified haze.
Film Reviews: "Captain Ahab" vividly imagines the formative years of Captain Ahab.
Film Reviews: "American Pie" is neatly transformed into Spanish paella in "Love Expresso," a comedy about a quartet of twentysomething emotional sub-literates that combines broken hearts and breaking wind to deja vu effect. A couple decent comic scenes and two good perfs rise above the pop soundtrack, navel-gazing and scatology. Any offshore interest is likely to stem from the fact that Hispanic teens have happily guzzled down "Expresso" and made the late June release the surprise local B.O. hit of the year.
Film Reviews: While the current "No End in Sight" charts the serial strategic blunders made by the U.S. in Iraq, "War Made Easy" takes a different if equally damning tack. Media/political critic Norman Solomon accuses the Bush administration -- and many before it -- of using misleading language, news manipulation, half-truths and outright lies to win public support for military actions of questionable necessity. Overlapping with other recent docus, pic nonetheless presents a stimulating argument. Already screening around the country in grassroots benefit/activist-rallying gigs (and available on DVD), pic commences niche theatrical release with a run at San Francisco's Roxie Cinema starting Aug. 24.
Film Reviews: A coach with a sticky past motivates a raggedy bunch of women's hockey players to go for gold in "Chak de! India," a patriotic heartwarmer that scores some old-fashioned entertainment goals despite its flaws.
Film Reviews: A young Hong Kong rebel finds inner peace and a sense of purpose in "The Drummer."
Film Reviews: A ravishing look at the Indian classical dance form Mohini Attam, "The Dance of the Enchantress" neither explains nor interprets, satisfied to passively watch as teachers and students train and perform in and around palaces and temples of Kerala.
Film Reviews: Tale of an already fragile family falling apart is too banal for serious drama, not light enough for bedroom farce.
Film Reviews: Rumor has it that "The King of Kong," Seth Gordon's wildly entertaining docu about warring "Donkey Kong" champions, already picked up by Picturehouse for an Aug. 17 release, will be made into a mainstream feature.
Film Reviews: In writer-director Ilya Chaiken's sophomore outing, almost everything of dramatic import transpires offscreen, starting with the attacks on the World Trade Center and ending with the Iraq war.
Film Reviews: Lovers run amuck in the wilderness in experimental drama "Our Private Lives."
Film Reviews: Classy production values and a textured lead performance by Darshan Jariwala are undercut by a lack of real drama in "Gandhi My Father," a sideways look at one of India's most iconic figures through his fractured relationship with his son.
Film Reviews: Fans will do some nutty things for the bands they love, but Fernando Kalife's "7 Days" is best read as an unintended cautionary tale about what can happen when fans go over the cliff.
Film Reviews: "Love for Sale" is a tale of a woman with dreams for a better life.
Film Reviews: Another videogame adaptation, "Postal" is otherwise quite different from what audiences expect from oft-dissed helmer (and scenarist) Uwe Boll. This energetic if scattershot farce aims to be the "It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World" of bad-taste satires on an out-of-control post-9/11 world. Like that non-classic, its sheer exertion often impresses more than the number of actual laughs scored. Still, this anything-goes exercise isn't dull -- one just wishes the outrageousness were more consistently funny.
Film Reviews: An old SS officer with unrepentant Nazi sympathies is the subject of "Hafner's Paradise."
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