Variety

Christine is desperately seeking employment. She doesn’t want to leave New York City and return to Michigan to teach, and doesn’t feel confident that her writing will bring in sufficient income. Although Christine’s story is happening in 1983, the same story could be told as a result of today’s recession. What do you do when you can’t find a job in your field? Well, you branch out and find the first job available. It turns out that the first available job is as a ticket holder in a box office at an adult theater in Times Square.

44 Inch Chest

Colin Diamond (Ray Winstone) is a pot-bellied British gangster happily married to Liz, his wife of twenty-one years (Joanne Whalley). The problem is she’s not happily married to him. When Liz tells Colin she’s leaving him for a lover, he slides from incredulity to rage. Marital delusions wrecked, he resorts to gangster methodology. He assaults his wife (mostly off-screen) to get the lothario’s name—a studly French waiter (Melvil Poupaud). Colin has a four-man crew with whom he toils at their underworld trade.

Amreeka

There are a plethora of films which recount the arrival of distinct ethnic groups to America, ranging from the Eddie Murphy’s pathetic Coming to America to the Charlie Chaplin’s classic The Immigrant to the Patricia Riggen’s subtle _[Under The Same Moon](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00180IPM6?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&lin

The White Ribbon

Once I watched Casablanca on television two times in a month. One more time, and I think I would have started believing the film was sending me messages.

Trouble the Water

If you missed the exhaustively, deservedly lauded Trouble the Water in theaters last year, now you can catch it on the small screen.

The Drifter

Professional surfer, Rob Machado, captured scenes from his journey through the remote areas of Indonesia. All of this came together into a beautifully narrated film. The Drifter is an amazing visual experience with some interesting observations and wicked waves along the way. The script was largely taken from Machado's own journal entries from his trip and co-written by Nathan Myers. The film opens with Machado in Bali.

New Muslim Cool

You might come to this film with some knowledge of hip-hop, or you might not. You might even have some knowledge of Islam, too. Neither is required, however, because New Muslim Cool is, when you get right down to it, a story of a man trying hard to know and be himself in the world. Jennifer Maytorena Taylor gives us Hamza Pérez (formerly Jason), a Puerto Rican Muslim from the streets of Boston who, along with his Muslim community from Beantown, has transplanted himself to Pittsburgh, PA to start a mosque and put down some roots.

Julie and Julia

Is it ever too late to follow your bliss? In Julie and Julia, director Nora Ephron seems to be shouting directly into the ears of the audience, “Not on your life!” The film, which is truly Ephron’s masterpiece, is based on two books: writer Julie Powell’s tome of the same name and Julia Child’s memoir My Life in France.

Kanchivaram: A Communist Confession

There are two times in a Hindu's life when one is supposed to wear silk: at one’s wedding and at one’s own funeral. In the village of Kanchivaram (Kanchipuram), the silk weavers are only ever able to have enough silk to tie the toes of the dead together, and no daughter of a weaver has ever worn a silk sari on her wedding day. Kanchivaram tells the story of a man of change. Weaving silk for a pittance, as his father did before him, Vengadam wants nothing more than to weave his daughter a silk sari for her wedding day.

The Dhamma Brothers: East Meets West in the Deep South

What would happen if the American prison system was based on a treatment model versus a punitive model? The administrators at the W. E. Donaldson Correctional Facility wondered what would happen if they introduced the ancient Vipassana meditation techniques to prisoners. The Vipassana program is modeled after a program in India. The administrators hoped that the Vipassana meditation program would have a calming effect on the prison population. Donaldson Correctional Facility is a maximum security prison located in the countryside southwest of Birmingham, Alabama.

Dreamer

From the beginning, Dreamer appears to be a film about a man traveling backwards in time. Daniel, the main character, is a 30-year-old white man living in Chicago. As he struggles to make sense of this reverse sequence of events, Daniel’s awareness and motivation falter. He is unable to follow-up with a needed job opportunity. He wakes up beside a woman he does not recognize. Another morning, he finds himself bleeding profusely from a wound on his side without apparent cause.

Easy Virtue

To say that Stephan Elliott was taken aback when approached to direct Easy Virtue would be an understatement. Asking the man behind the beloved drag queen road movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert to adapt a Noel Coward play didn’t exactly seem logical. But the producers of the film insisted there was a method to their madness.

Good Dick

Good Dick is not porn—in fact, it’s a love story. You could call it a romantic comedy, but by “romantic comedy” I mean the polar opposite; there’s not much romance and its comedy leans more towards the dark side. Yet the central theme is certainly a romantic one.

Compulsion

Nesrine Malik’s scathing review of the ITV drama Compulsion got me thinking a lot more about modern day adaptations of pre-twentieth century literary works featuring ethnic Indian actors.