Paul Trijbits Movies

Oldboy helmer Park Chan-wook directs his second English language film with this crime drama surrounding two friends on different sides of the law who both have their eyes on the same woman. Neal Purvis and Robert Wade (Skyfall) provide the script for the Ruby Films/1984 Private Defense Contractors production. ~ Jeremy Wheeler, Rovi

Charlotte Brontë's classic romance is revived once again with this Ruby Films production directed by Cary Fukunaga (Sin Nombre) and adapted by screenwriter Moira Buffini. Raised by her aunt Sarah (Sally Hawkins) after her parents die of typhus, young Jane Eyre (Amelia Clarkson) is later shipped off to a stark boarding school as the result of her perceived insolence, and suffers greatly at the hands of the cold, unusually strict administration. Upon turning 18 and completing her education, Jane (Mia Wasikowska) finds work as a governess for Adèle Varens (Romy Settbon Moore), the ward of Edward Fairfax Rochester (Michael Fassbender), master of Thornfield Hall. It doesn't take long for the young Adèle to warm to Jane, and upon returning home the charming Rochester, too, falls under the spell of his modest yet captivating governess. Later, he ends his courtship with the beautiful Blanche Ingram (Imogen Poots) in favor of proposing to Jane, who excitedly accepts. On what was supposed to be the happiest day of Jane's life, however, a scandalous secret is revealed, and the emotionally shattered governess takes flight. Subsequently taken in by kindly clergyman St. John (Jamie Bell) and his two sisters, Jane begins a new life as a teacher under an assumed name. But her passion for Rochester still burns bright, prompting Jane to make a life-altering decision after learning a crucial secret about her own family. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

A handful of teenagers make the mistake of baring their souls to the wrong person in this thriller. Eva (Imogen Poots) is a young model whose good looks and poise disguise her aching doubts about herself and her wishes she could be more like others. Jim (Matthew Beard) is still wrestling with the demons brought on by a painful childhood and tries to beat back his fears with drugs. Emily (Hannah Murray) feels plain and unattractive and is filled with resentment towards her ambitious father and mother. And Mo (Daniel Kaluuya) struggles with his sexual desires for children, in particular the sister of a close friend. These four young people are frequent visitors to an internet chat room, where they can talk about their fears and anxieties while being drawn out by the compassionate moderator. But the man who runs the chat room is not all he seems. William (Aaron Johnson) is the unstable and neglected son of a successful author (Megan Dodds); he's grown to hate his more confident brother Ripley (Richard Madden) and has established the chat room in order to manipulate others to his own ends by getting them to share their secrets and using this knowledge against them. Chatroom was the second English-language feature from Japanese horror veteran Hideo Nakata. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A mother and daughter find themselves locked in an ugly battle over the same man in this drama from writer and director Andrea Arnold. Mia Williams (Katie Jarvis) is 15 years old and lives in a shabby apartment block with her mother, Joanne (Kierston Wareing), and younger sister, Tyler (Rebecca Griffiths). Mia is a reckless and rebellious teenager who frequently argues with her mother and sister and has run afoul of the authorities at school, leading to her being suspended. With plenty of time on her hands, Mia spends her days drinking when she can find alcohol and partying in a empty flat near her apartment. Joanne is a single mother, and she's begun dating a new man, Connor (Michael Fassbender); when Joanne brings him home to meet the girls, Mia is immediately attracted to him, and it's soon clear Connor feels the same way about her. Mia attempts to seduce Connor to take him away from her mother, and when she succeeds, Joanne's greatest anger is not with the man who has slept with her underaged daughter, but the girl who is now a rival for the affections of her lover. Fish Tank was an official selection at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

A handful of characters in a small British town deal with love, disappointment and temptation in this independent drama. Nan Wilson (Patricia Loveland) has come home after a long stay in the hospital, and finds herself sharing her house with her sister Gail (Rachel McIntyre). Gail doesn't comfortably connect with the outside world, and would prefer to stay in her room reading romance novels rather than reach out to others, but Nan struggles to find a common ground between them. Mr. and Mrs. Gladwin (Frank Bench and Betty Bench) have been married for six decades, but they've slowly began to drift apart, with time and misunderstanding creating a wall that separates them from one another. And after the woman he loved dies unexpectedly, Rob (Liam McIlfatrick) turns to narcotics to dull the pain, and has visions of living happily with her again. The first feature film from writer and director Duane Hopkins, Better Things was screened as part of the Critics' Week series at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Director Dan Reed's revenge thriller Straightheads constitutes a long, penetrating meditation on the psychological fallout experienced by two attack victims. This cathartically ultraviolent picture opens on a deceptively placid note - with romance blossoming between Alice (Gillian Anderson) and a much younger electrician, Adam (Danny Dyer). When the pair's relaxing sojourn at a country estate leads to a skirmish with a trio of backwoods toughs, Danny is beaten unconscious and scarred, and Alice brutally raped. In an attempt to cope with the trauma, the two put their heads together, pack guns, and venture out to the scene of the attack - where they plan to find the responsible parties and turn the tables by exacting an ugly toll of sexual violence on their psychotic victimizers. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

A lavish country party that should have been the best night of their lives unexpectedly begets a shocking cycle of violence for a confident career woman and her handsome young love interest in this brutal and unforgiving thriller starring Gillian Anderson and Danny Dyer. Adam (Dyer) is just getting his career off of the ground, so when the beautiful, older, and much more professionally experienced Alice (Anderson) invites him to a party, he readily accepts. Upon arriving at the classy soirée the pair immediately discover that they share an exhilarating sense of sexual chemistry, eventually wandering off alone for some highly charged sex. Still reeling from their earth-shaking bout of lovemaking, Adam and Alice speed down a quiet country road and suddenly find themselves thrown into the middle of a vicious attack in which both are severely injured. But their physical scars don't run nearly as deep as their emotional scars, and before long Alice becomes overtaken by her drive for vengeance and determined to make her tormentors pay for their violent transgression. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Co-directors Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell's historical documentary Deep Water chronicles one of the most infamous nautical tragedies of the past several decades. In autumn 1968, Britisher Donald Crowhurst, the proprietor of a down-and-out manufacturing business for marine electrical components, avowed to enter the first Golden Globe sailing competition -- a nonstop, one-man circumnavigational race against eight other competitors. In financing the boat via a deal with English entrepreneur Stanley Best, Crowhurst used his house as collateral. Relinquishing the voyage, or failing to complete it, would thus have instantly rendered Crowhurst homeless and driven his family into Chapter 11. But the voyage was doomed from the start: Crowhurst failed to finish building the craft prior to his October 31st departure, but set sail just the same, and thus sealed his own grim fate. Indeed, two weeks after Crowhurst sailed out of Devon, the boat began to leak substantially; recognizing that a trip into the Southern Ocean could spell disaster, a desperate Crowhurst radioed home with indications of phony distances and falsified his logbook; he then made an illegal pit stop in Argentina to repair the boat, and joined up with the rest of the competitors on the opposite side of Cape Horn, in the Atlantic. When Robin Knox-Johnston won the overall competition, Crowhurst and Nigel Tetley went head-to-head to win 5,000 pounds for the fastest voyage; Crowhurst recognized that a victory would yield scrutiny of his logbooks and unveil his deceptions to the world; he thus intended to preserve his reputation by coming in second. He didn't count, however, on Tetley's boat capsizing -- which led to Crowhurst's own victory. Foreseeing disaster, Crowhurst decided to end his life by drowning himself. In telling Crowhurst's sad story, Osmond and Rothwell intercut narration from Crowhurst's journals, archival film, and interviews with the sailor's family, friends, and colleagues. What emerges is a portrait of a man sinking rapidly into a pit of despair as he comes face to face with his own darkest nightmares of personal failure. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Academy Award nominees Stockard Channing and Bob Hoskins co-headline the British romantic comedy Sparkle, the third outing by the critically-praised writing and directing team of Neil Hunter and Tom Hunsinger (Lawless Heart, Boyfriends). Neophyte Shaun Evans plays Sam Sparks, a young man who migrates from Liverpool to London proper with his single mother, Jill (Lesley Manville) - a chanteuse in local pubs. In need of a job, Sam makes the cut at a public relations boutique by sleeping with the sixty-something head of the agency, Sheila (Channing), then (in a Graduate-like twist) falls for a girl closer to his own age, Kate (Amanda Ryan) - only to discover with horror that she's Sheila's daughter. As the expected complications ensue, Vince (Hoskins), the sexagenarian who arranged Sam and Jill's apartment in London, nurtures a deep-seated passion for Jill and decides to make his feelings fully known to her. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Two brothers are caught on differing sides of the battle for Irish freedom in this politically minded historical drama from veteran British filmmaker Ken Loach. It's 1920, and Damien O'Donovan (Cillian Murphy) has recently graduated from medical school. Damien plans to leave the small village in Ireland where he was born to take a job in London, much to the annoyance of his brother Teddy (Padraic Delaney), who is an Irish loyalist and wants to see the British stripped of their rule of his land. While visiting Peggy (Mary Riordan), a longtime friend of the family, Damien and Teddy witness a visit by "Black and Tans," British soldiers who supposedly keep the peace in Ireland; the soldiers turn violent and murder Michaeil (Lawrence Barry), Peggy's grandson, when they discover he only speaks Gaelic. Damien is radicalized by the event, and with Teddy joins the local chapter of the Irish Republican Army, who use violence to drive British troops out of the country. While the IRA is a poor and ill-equipped fighting force, their willingness to give their lives for their cause is taken very seriously by the British, who step up their reprisals against the locals; the Black and Tans even begin directing their violence and torture against women and children, including Damien's girlfriend, Sinead (Orla Fitzgerald). In 1921, Britain attempts to end the violence in Ireland by creating the Irish Free State, a compromise government which will give the Irish greater autonomy while Great Britain still retains final political control of the nation. Teddy sees this as a victory and believes it's an important first step to a truly free Ireland, but Damien sees the IRA's goal as nothing short of complete independence, and the brothers and allies soon become rivals in a battle neither side can win. The Wind That Shakes the Barley received the Golden Palm award as Best Picture at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Instant life or death decisions, pushing way past the limit of one's abilities while on the brink of disaster, remaining standing and breathing against all odds, looking mortality straight in the face without flinching -- all these elements were thrillingly blended in the Discovery Channel documentary series I Shouldn't Be Alive. Each episode re-created a miraculous example of human survival, with the actual participants serving as eyewitness narrators. Thrust by fate or design into a potentially fatal situation or a danger-prone moral dilemma, these ordinary men and women had but a fraction of a second to determine their ultimate fate. At the end of each program, the viewer was allowed to wonder if he or she would have made the right choice under such demanding circumstances. A life-affirming exercise in "seeking the light" after descending into the pit of darkness, I Shouldn't Be Alive was put together by the same staff responsible for the popular 2003 documentary Touching the Void, and first aired on October 14, 2005. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

The unimaginable pain and anguish felt by the families of those killed in suicide bombings gets a human face in this documentary from filmmakers Steven Silver and Andrew Quigley. In 2002, a suicide bombing in Jerusalem left 20 dead and 50 injured, and two years after the tragedy even the most innocuous city landmarks can release a tidal wave of angst for the families of those killed in the blast. From firsthand accounts of the pain felt by survivors to the lingering suspicions and animosity that extend the damaging effects of the bombing well beyond the range of the explosion, Silver and Quigley's film explores the lingering effects of this vicious cycle. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Two outsiders witness an onslaught of bloody Rwandan genocide in this fact-based drama from director Michael Caton-Jones (Scandal). In 1994, Joe Connor (Hugh Dancy) is a British schoolteacher who has volunteered to spend a year at the École Technique Officielle, a school in the Rwandan capital of Kigali. Connor's arrival in Rwanda occurs after the nation's Civil War between the Tutsis and the Hutus has dissipated (c. August 1993). Yet despite the official end of this well-publicized struggle, political negotiations between the two groups have reached a stalemate, and the Hutus begin systematic preparation for a mass-genocide of the Tutsi people (who have assumed political power via the establishment of the RPF). Connor has already seen signs of the coming conflict in the abuse meted out to Marie (Claire-Hope Ashitey), a Tutsi student who was one of his star pupils, as well as the bitter hatred expressed by François (David Gyasi), a Hutu janitor at the school. As the genocide erupts, with extreme Hutu factions slaughtering Tutsis by the thousands, the École Technique becomes a base of operations for Belgian peacekeeping forces from the United Nations. Most extended visitors from the West (especially America and Europe) flee Rwanda as the fighting breaks out, but Connor decides to stay, and in fact strikes up a friendship with Father Christopher (John Hurt), a Catholic priest who has come to the nation as a missionary. As Father Christopher serves mass and strives to offer solace to the Tutsis and moderate Hutus caught in the fighting, he and Connor use the school as a safe haven for Tutsi refugees; however, after five days of genocidal killing, the U.N. troops move out, leaving little hope for the people they were supposed to protect. Beyond the Gates was produced by David Belton, who helped write the film's story; Belton was a correspondent with the BBC who was assigned to Rwanda when the fighting broke out. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi