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In December of 1981, the town of El Mozote, El Salvador was razed to the ground; its one thousand inhabitants--men, women and children--were dead. This film tells the story they are unable to tell. The elements of this tragic story should not sound unfamiliar: protracted civil war; an elite, highly motivated military force facing guerrillas who blend into the populace; superpower intervention; and civilians who can't get out of the way, who have nowhere to go--nowhere because this is their home. --John Porter
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If you've grown bored with Gen-X filmmakers imitating the violent hipness and Seventies supercoolness of Quentin Tarantino, then you'll appreciate the oddball territory staked out by The Delicate Art of the Rifle. The tenuous plot of this satiric thriller serves as an effective coat rack upon which the filmmakers artfully hang their paranoid conspiracy theories about history and genealogy, economics, real and virtual violence, education, the dangers of philosophy, and much more.
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Wong Suet Mui is plotting revenge on the Six Cliques. Her parents died at their hands sixteen years earlier trying to protect a magic harp known as The Demonic Strings. She has spent the subsequent years learning to master the harp and all the power that lies within it. Now the time has come to put her plan in action. With the help of a courier who just might be her long lost brother, Wong Suet Mui draws the Six Cliques out in the open so that she may destroy them using the all-powerful strings. A final confrontation ensues.
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Is The Closest Thing to Heaven one of those corporate recruiting films, promoting another big city in the south, to a growing high-tech company looking for a new home? You might just start to think that, as the film greets you with shots of the modern Charlotte, North Carolina skyline. But when we are introduced to our guide and narrator, Howard, a dapper, southern gentlemen complete with white suit, gray beard and white fedora who rides a curiously decorated bicycle, it will be obvious that odd times are ahead.
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Mired in a dead-end job at a third-rate Los Angeles boutique, a young artist with an attitude named Soosh (Moira Kelly) schemes her way into residency at a local convent in order to save enough money to escape to India and paint. She soon learns, however, that everything has a price and that, while the convent may be cheap, it certainly isn't free. Surly nuns, 5 a.m. kitchen duty and middle-of-the-night demands from lonely elderly residents often make the arrangement seem to be more trouble than it's worth.
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Ever wonder why young boys go wrong and wind up committing crimes? It happens every day of course but we only see the final results, not the inexorable process that changes them from innocents to criminals. This is a clinical, sometimes painful, picture of such a conversion. 14-year-old Peter is looking for the love and attention which his young, attractive mother cannot or will not give him. At school he wants to belong to a group of tough kids trying to outdo each other in cruelty and brazenness.
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Jonas is your typical sixteen year old. He likes basketball, a girl named Lina, and goofing around with his little sister. Then, one day, all that changes. An aging doctor comes calling on Jonas' coach with an offer to help improve his team's conditioning program. The doctor takes a special interest in Jonas. In fact, he insists on knowing every detail of Jonas' life, from his physical condition to his personal habits. What is on the doctor's mind; what does he find so fascinating about this boy? Is his interest professional or prurient?
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What's troubling Sonia? She collects rocks and places them mysteriously around her bedroom door. Normally a bright pupil, she's distracted in class, clumsy at ballet lessons, and withdrawn at home. The answer may lie in her recurring nightmares. But with her father's attention focused on her mother's diminishing health, Sonia has no one to whom she can turn for help. Then she meets the older girl next door, Melanie, who listens to loud music late at night and is trying to get her motorcycle running so that she can catch up with her father, a rock singer who's always on the road.
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Childhood ended for Francis when her parents died. Since then, she has cooked, cleaned and cared for her brothers. But this stagnant life is no longer an option for her, as Francis desires something much more; a life of her own. Dwight, a mysterious new stranger, becomes a catalyst for Francis to reach for that dream. Hank, Francis' oldest brother, does not approve of Dwight. In fact, Hank seems to have a very strong animosity for Dwight. This proves difficult for Francis, as she has had little time for romance and her search for love and understanding seems to have found its reward.
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Let me give you the recipe for one very strange -- and potentially volatile -- cocktail. Take a group of black high school students from Brooklyn's notorious Bed-Stuy section. Drop them on an Israeli kibbutz for ten weeks. Mix vigorously. Serve. It's easy to wonder: why Israel and not, say, Africa? The answer seems fairly simple to the person behind this rather novel idea -- the students' teacher, Stewart Bialer, himself a Jew. Why not? Things get off to a rocky start. Misconceptions abound on all sides. The Bed-Stuy kids expect the kibbutz to be made up of mud huts with straw floors.