Metropolis, based on a 1949 Japanese comicbook novel by Osamu Tezuka, is animated with voiceovers in Japanese and subtitles in English. Directed by Tarô Rin, the visual images are far more impressive than the story, and oddly the futuristic city has no computers. When the film begins, an aging autocrat named Duke Red (voiced by […]

Many films over the years have focused on the adjustment of immigrants to life in the United States. Maryam raises that genre to a new level of tension, concentrating as it does on Iranian Americans. When Maryam Armin (played by Mariam Parris) was an infant, circa 1965, her parents moved to suburban New Jersey, where her father

Fairy tales are excellent subjects for good movies, as the Czech film Little Otik (Otesánek) easily demonstrates. Actually, the film is a tale within a tale, taking place in contemporary Prague to show in part how humans persist in repeating the same mistakes, generation after generation. Mrs. Bozena Horak (played by Veronika Zilková) wants a child, but both

In 1953 Philip K. Dick wrote a futurist short story to rival George Orwell’s 1984. Nearly fifty years later, Dick’s Impostor has been brought to the screen, more convincingly than the 1956 film version of Orwell’s novel, thanks to director Gary Fleder. The story is set in the year 2079. Spencer Olham (played by Gary Sinise) begins the

Hart’s War, loosely based on the novel (which is also loosely based on the experiences of his father Nicholas, former Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson) by John Katzenbach, takes place in 1944-1945, mostly within a prisoner-of-war compound located at Augsberg, near a German munitions factory (though actually filmed in the Czech Republic). Lieutenant Thomas W.

Hard Luck, directed by Jack Rubio, tells a sad tale bookended by a scene in which three youngsters playing along the beautiful coastline of Gold Beach, Oregon. When the film actually begins, all three are about twenty years older. Trevor “Lucky” O’Donnell (played by Kirk Harris, who is also the screenwriter) was convicted of murder

The title of the film Dark Blue World comes from the name of a sad song sung at an emotional low point of the story, which deals with the unrequited loves of two members of the Czech air force who escaped Nazi occupation of their homeland and served in the British air force during World War II.

Gosford Park, directed by Robert Altman, is a series of character studies played by the cream of British actors and actresses, albeit a film looking for a plot. An Agatha Christie tagline announces “Tea at four. Dinner at eight. Murder at midnight.” (But misses duck hunting at noon.) When the film begins, various guests arrive

“To be rich is glorious,” said Deng Xiaoping, but what about those who are desperately poor in China today? Beijing Bicycle, directed by Wang Xiaoshuai, portrays the life of ordinary people swept up in the quest for inequality within a dictatorship of the proletariat. Guei (played by Cui Lin) comes from the country to the city

After Nazi Germany attacked Poland in 1939, the Soviet Union demanded military bases from Finland. Helsinki refused, whereupon the Red Army attacked Finland in November 1939 in what is known as the Winter War. Using skis, the Finnish army held back the Soviets for several months but ultimately surrendered, signing a treaty of peace in