Thomas Morris Movies

Angels and Demons re-teams director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks for the sequel to their international blockbuster adaptation of Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code. Although the book Angels and Demons was written before the novel The Da Vinci Code, the movie transpires after the events of the earlier movie. Hanks stars as professor Robert Langdon, the most respected symbologist in the United States, who uses his knowledge in order to decode a symbol on the skin of a murder victim. The clues put him on the trail of an international conspiracy involving the Catholic Church. Ewan McGregor and Ayelet Zurer also star in the Sony Pictures production. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Pier Luigi Pizzi directed a stage production of composer Jacques Offenbach's ballet The Tales of Hoffman (AKA Les Contes de Hoffman), with accompaniment by the Macerata Opera, which was filmed and has been issued in this home release. Vincenzo La Scola stars as Hoffmann, Desiree Rancatore as Olympia, Sara Allegretta as Giulietta, Annalisa Raspaglioli as Antonia, and Elsa Maurus as Niklausse. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi

Erotic Tales offers three short films with strong sexual content. Dito Tsintsadze's An Erotic Tale is about a writer attempting to pick up a still-attached woman. Bob Rafelson's Porn.com is about a struggling filmmaker who is hired to make a Nazi-themed pornographic film. Fridrik Thor Fridriksson's dialogue-free On Top Down Under intercuts a woman using an icicle for erotic release while her lover plans an icy death for himself. ~ Perry Seibert, Rovi

Austrian director Stephan Wagner makes his feature debut with this edgy deadpan film noir about two friends who -- upon opening an antique shop -- learn more about the themselves and the world around them than they cared to know. Former thug Bernd (Thomas Morris) grows weary of the crime racket and particularly of his psychotic partner Erwin (Wolfgang S. Zechmayer) and decides to buy a curio shop from an old man with his buddy Paul (Simon Licht). Paul manages to pool some money together for the purchase thanks to the family of his girlfriend Eva (Eva-Marie Straka). Problems arise when Paul throws his relationship with Eva in jeopardy when he involves himself in an increasingly intense affair with Lisa (Tatjana Alexander). Meanwhile, Bernd, who is using the shop as a cover for his drug-dealing ring, garners some unneeded notice from his scorned colleague Erwin. Matters come to a head when Bernd is ordered by crime boss Dragan to kill Erwin while Paul's romantic double-dealing finally catches up with him. Kubanisch rauchen was screened at the 1999 Denver Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, Rovi

Based on a true story, Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List stars Liam Neeson as Oskar Schindler, a German businessman in Poland who sees an opportunity to make money from the Nazis' rise to power. He starts a company to make cookware and utensils, using flattery and bribes to win military contracts, and brings in accountant and financier Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) to help run the factory. By staffing his plant with Jews who've been herded into Krakow's ghetto by Nazi troops, Schindler has a dependable unpaid labor force. For Stern, a job in a war-related plant could mean survival for himself and the other Jews working for Schindler. However, in 1942, all of Krakow's Jews are assigned to the Plaszow Forced Labor Camp, overseen by Commandant Amon Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), an embittered alcoholic who occasionally shoots prisoners from his balcony. Schindler arranges to continue using Polish Jews in his plant, but, as he sees what is happening to his employees, he begins to develop a conscience. He realizes that his factory (now refitted to manufacture ammunition) is the only thing preventing his staff from being shipped to the death camps. Soon Schindler demands more workers and starts bribing Nazi leaders to keep Jews on his employee lists and out of the camps. By the time Germany falls to the allies, Schindler has lost his entire fortune -- and saved 1,100 people from likely death. Schindler's List was nominated for 12 Academy Awards and won seven, including Best Picture and a long-coveted Best Director for Spielberg, and it quickly gained praise as one of the finest American movies about the Holocaust. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi