DOWN TO EARTH PATRONIZES AFRICAN AMERICANS In Down to Earth, Lance Barton (played by Chris Rock) is trying to make it as a comedian at the Apollo Club in Harlem, but he just has not developed the knack. All of a sudden, while distracted by a pretty woman, he is killed by a passing truck, […]

In Training Day, Jake Hoyt (played by Ethan Hawke) is a rookie cop assigned to an experienced undercover narcotics detective, Alonzo Harris (played by Denzil Washington), whose efforts account for 15,000 man-years in sentences over a thirteen-year career. At 5 A.M., Hoyt is awakened by an alarm, and his wife Lisa (played by Charlotte Ayanna) prepares

What would you do if you had only twelve hours to live? That question is posed by titles at the beginning of Too Tired to Die, directed by Wonsuk Chin. When the movie starts, twentysomething Kenji (played by Takeshi Kaneshiro) has a dream that an Arab boy is being chased through Baghdad by two soldiers under

  Americans are accustomed to equate Mexican food with enchiladas, tamales, tortillas, refried beans, and Spanish rice with hot sauce. But that is actually Tex-Mex food. In the film Tortilla Soup, directed by María Ripoll, the real Mexican cuisine is beautifully presented at meal after meal. We even see how the food, including tortilla soup, is

The Blue Ridge Mountains provide the scenic background for Songcatcher, directed by Maggie Greenwald. Dr. Lily Penleric (played by Janet McTeer) is Associate Professor of Music at Columbia University, where the male faculty have turned her down once again for promotion to the rank of Professor despite the fact that her publications outnumber those on the

In Sordid Lives, small-town Texans are portrayed as overweight, taking life too seriously, and with major hang-ups about sex. The plot revolves around a funeral scheduled for Peggy Ingraham (played in a casket by Gloria LeRoy), who got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night at a sleazy motel and fatally

China’s economic progress has been fueled by the migration of hardworking men and women, recruited by factories to move from the countryside to the major metropolitan centers. Some migration has occurred without such recruitment, as the cities are magnets for enterprising young people, and many end up in construction jobs. However, some of the migrants

Most of The Shipping News takes place in the spectacular setting of frigid Newfoundland, but the original venue is Poughkeepsie, where the father of Quoyle (played by Kevin Spacey) has recently died. Voiceovers at the very beginning inform filmviewers that Quoyle was a disappointment to his father in many ways, for example being unable to swim immediately

Simon Magus, directed and written by Ben Hopkins, is a British film about a nineteenth century Silesian village (though actually filmed in Wales) in which most of the land is owned by a squire (played by Rutger Hauer), while Jews live in ramshackle housing and the nearby Gentiles are housed in brick dwellings. A railroad

Second Skin (Segunda Piel) is the second Spanish film this year to focus on bisexuality. Unlike the more lighthearted I Will Survive (Sobreviviré), the plot in Second Skin is tragic throughout. Alberto (played by Jordi Mollá) is an aeronautics engineer who has inherited a thriving business from his father; in time, we learn that he was a spoiled child, accustomed