What started as a six-film documentary series about the San Francisco Bay Area’s wildlife and open space led to filmmaker Amy Irving’s interest in a wild parrot flock hovering around Telegraph Hill.  With the aid of a self-professed parrot sage, Mark Bitter, a project finally emerged culminating with the full length documentary feature and book, THE WILD PARROTS OF TELEGRAPH HILL.

The beginning of THE DEVIL’S REJECTS recalls the opening of THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.  The local cops are investigating an abandoned farmhouse (in Texas, where else?) only to discover scrapbooks and evidence of dozens of murders. So, Sheriff Wydell (William Forsyth) ambushes the Firefly family, shades here of BONNIE AND CLYDE, which writer/director Rob Zombie claims to pay homage to. No surprise here as there are more than a few set up look-alike scenes. But Otis (Bill Moseley) and sister Baby (director’s real wife Sheri Moon Zombie) escape and go into hiding with their father, the errant Captain Spaulding (Sid Haig), unforgettable, in the nastiest way, from Rob Zombie’s first zombie hit HOUSE OF 1000 CORPSES. The rest of the story does not count from here – the body count does – and Zombie proves that his first successful feature was no fluke.

The plot of THE ISLAND can be summed up in one line. One clone discovers the truth, escapes with a female and frees all the others. But this is not a bad thing for a high octane Hollywood blockbuster. More often than not, the less of a story there is to bog down the action sequences, the better. THE ISLAND of the title refers to the hoax and hope offered to the clones housed in a contained facility in the mid-21st century.  The clones, unaware that they are clones or agvates as they are called, dream that it will be their turn to win the random lottery to land themselves eventually in the idyllic paradise of THE ISLAND.  In reality as uttered in the movie’s key line by Ewan McGregor playing Lincoln Six-Echo:  “There is no island!”

Plot: A detective in Foreign Affairs is busy tracing down a gang of international diamond smugglers. Unable to solve a crime, he consults a scientist regarding the mystery of diamond thefts and finds out mere men are not responsible. He learns of the existence of great jellyfish monsters which have undergone atomic mutation and are hungry for the earths carbon. Unless they are stopped soon, they will destroy the planet earth.

Review: DOGORA is yet another triumph by Toho by creating the strangest monsters ever to try to destroy the planet earth. The film again perfectly follows Toho formula. It contains mystery, investigation by boy scout detective, scientists with hot assistant, military action, monsters and most of stupid American.

EXILS (English title EXILES), traces the road trip journey of a couple as they make their way, mostly on foot (they have no money), from Paris to Algeria, the country of their ancestry.  No rhyme or reason as to why they suddenly decide to take the trip is given.  But that is the style of Roma (Gypsy)/Algerian director Tony Gatlif’s (GADJO DILO) latest feature that won him last year’s best director prize at Cannes.  The couple is Zano (Romain Duris), the son of French colonials who originally fled Algeria and Naima (Lubna Azabal), the daughter of Algerian Arab immigrants.