AMERICAN PASTIME HITS A HOME RUN The film American Pastime, directed by Desmond Nakano, begins in Los Angeles during early 1941, when the happily Americanized Nomura family (portrayals of the director’s parents and grandparents) is entertaining members of the multicultural mix of the city with great expectations for the future, including a baseball scholarship for […]

THE ORWELLIAN WORLD COMES ALIVE IN RED ROAD Red Road, directed by Andrea Arnold, focuses on Jackie (played by Kate Dickie), who is obsessed with Clyde (played by Tony Curran), a felon recently paroled for an offense of some sort. The film takes place in Glasgow, is in English, but has English subtitles for the

YEAR OF THE DOG CELEBRATES ANIMAL RIGHTS In the Chinese twelve-year Zodiac cycle, the most recent year of the dog was 2006. The film Year of the Dog, which evidently takes place in 2006, revolves around Peggy (played by Molly Shannon), whose best friend is her beagle dog, Pencil. She sleeps with her dog and

300 PORTRAYS SPARTANS HOLDING BACK MIDDLE EASTERN HORDES The film 300, directed by Zack Snyder, is based on a comic book by a graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley that seeks to portray life in Sparta and the Battle of Thermopylae from August 11-13, 480 bce, between a coalition of twelve Greek city-states

GRBAVICA: THE LAND OF MY DREAMS IS ABOUT A NIGHTMARE EXISTENCE What is life in Bosnia like today? That Bosniaks find difficulties in their daily lives is an understated answer to the question, as portrayed in Grbavica: The Land of My Dreams, directed by Jasmila Žbanić. The focus in the movie is on Esma (played

G.I. Jesús, directed by Carl Colpaert, is the second anti-war film about Iraq. The movie focuses on Jesús Feliciano (played by Joe Arquette), who returns home to a trailer park outside Los Angeles from a tour of duty in Iraq with one month of leave before redeployment. He suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, as illustrated

Offside, directed by Jafar Panahi, is yet another remarkable film about the unequal treatment of women in Iran. When the film begins, a girl dressed as a boy (played by Sima Mobarak-Shahi) is on a bus that is headed for the soccer stadium where Iran will play Bahrain. The year is 2005. The winner will

Fracture, directed by Gregory Hoblit, is another in the perfect crime genre. At the beginning of the film, aeronautical engineer Theodore Crawford (played by Anthony Hopkins) leaves work, visits the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica to witness his wife Jennifer (played by Embeth Davidtz) swimming in the hotel pool with Robert Nunally (played by Billy

Perfect Stranger, directed by James Foley, begins with journalist Rowena (played by Halle Berry) presenting Senator Sachs (played by Gordon MacDonald) with evidence that she plans to run a story in a New York newspaper of his affair with another man. Married and with gubernatorial ambitions, the Senator offers to do anything in order to

Descent, directed by Talia Lugacy, is a slow-moving story of the date rape of Baltimoran African American Maya (played by Rosario Dawson) and her revenge. Maya is a student at Claremont University (the filming is at Farleigh Dickinson University) who is flattered into bed by fellow student Jared (played by Chad Faust), whereupon he imposes