Leslie Fong Movies

Writer/director Tim Greene takes Charles Dickens' classic novel of an orphan in Victorian England and transports it to present-day Cape Town, South Africa, for his feature debut, Boy Called Twist. Newcomer Jarrid Geduld stars as the boy, who is sent to an orphanage when his mother dies shortly after giving birth to him. He's given his new name by Mrs. Corlet (Terry Norton), an orphanage director with a literary bent. Years later, with the orphanage in dire financial straits, Corlet sells a group of the older orphans to Bedel (Goliath Davids), who brings them to a farm where they are fed little and worked mercilessly. When Twist dares to demand more food, Bedel beats him, then brings him to a family-run funeral home, where he starts work as a gravedigger. He does well there, until his fellow workers grow jealous of him and start trouble. Faced with returning to the farm, Twist chooses to run away. At a highway rest stop, he's found by Dodger (Tertius Swanepoel), who brings him to the vicious Bill Sykes (Bart Fouche) and his pretty girlfriend, Nancy (Kim Engelbrecht). They take Twist to Cape Town, where he falls in with Fagin (Leslie Fong) and his crew of young scam artists, including Charley Bates (Ndyebo Mgaga). Twist is arrested for robbing an old man, but rather than press charges, Ebrahim (Bill Curry), a wealthy Muslim, takes Twist in and shows him a new way of life. Greene drew a lot of attention when he raised the production cost of the film by getting a thousand people to donate one thousand rands apiece. Greene attended the film's U.S. premiere at the 2005 New York African Diaspora Film Festival. ~ Josh Ralske, Rovi

"You've got to ask yourself a question: 'do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?" Dirty Harry provoked a critical uproar in 1971 for its "fascist" message about the power of one, as it also elevated Clint Eastwood to superstar status through his most enduring screen persona. Harry Callahan (Eastwood, in a role meant for Frank Sinatra) is a sardonic, hard-working San Francisco cop who can't finish his lunch without having to foil a bank robbery with his 44 Magnum, "the most powerful handgun in the world." When hippie-esque psycho Scorpio (Andy Robinson) goes on a killing spree, Harry and new partner Chico (Reni Santoni) are assigned to hunt him down, but not before the Mayor (John Vernon) and Lt. Bressler (Harry Guardino) admonish Callahan about his heavy-handed tactics. Racing against a deadline to save a kidnap victim from suffocating to death and unbothered by the niceties of Miranda rights and search warrants, Callahan brings in Scorpio, only to see him released on technicalities. "The law's crazy," opines Harry in disgust, before taking it upon himself to ensure that Scorpio doesn't kill again. Directed in violent and efficient fashion by Don Siegel, with a propulsive score by Lalo Schifrin, Dirty Harry was the fourth Siegel-Eastwood collaboration after Coogan's Bluff (1968), Two Mules for Sister Sara (1970), and The Beguiled (1970). Critics at the time strongly objected to the heroic image of a cop's violations of a suspect's Miranda rights, forcing Siegel and Eastwood to deny that they were right-wing reactionaries. All the same, Dirty Harry proved to be highly popular and spawned four sequels: Magnum Force (1973), The Enforcer (1976), Sudden Impact (1983), and The Dead Pool (1988). ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Tokyo Rose is a standard wartime melodrama with the slight advantage of topicality. Lotus Long plays the title role, an American-educated Japanese woman broadcasting enemy propaganda to American troops. Captured GI Pete Sherman (Byron Barr) is one of a group of POWS slated to be interviewed on Tokyo Rose's radio program. Instead of advising his comrades to surrender (as ordered), Sherman uses his innate Yankee knowhow to hoist the treacherous oriental deejay on her own petard. Managing to make his escape, Sherman hooks up with the Japanese Underground, convincing anti-militarist Charlie Otani (Keye Luke) to aid in a kidnapping plot aimed at Tokyo Rose. This story wasn't any more believable when it was done on TV's Hogan's Heroes. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi