Sanjeev Singh Movies

This political documentary uses social commentary and media analysis to determine how President Barack Obama's landmark 2007 campaign leveraged issues, perceptions, culture and news in order to find such immense success against seemingly impossible odds. ~ Cammila Collar, Rovi

Director Fruit Chan (Dumplings) takes the helm for this remake of Ringu director Hideo Nakata's 1996 shocker about a film crew that unleashes a malevolent supernatural force after discovering footage of a woman's murder. As the production gets underway in Transylvania, director Marcus Reed gradually realizes that his set is cursed, and begins digging to get to the bottom of the bloody mystery. Henry Thomas, Kevin Corrigan, and Eli Roth star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The heightened racial tensions of post-9/11 America are at the center of this 2007 drama, the feature debut from director Hesham Issawi. Co-writer Sayed Badreya stars as Mustafa, an Egyptian-born entrepreneur facing the daily challenges of an Arab Muslim living in Los Angeles and hoping to open a restaurant with his Jewish best friend, played by Tony Shalhoub. As Mustafa is met with friction for this unlikely plan, several other stories of adversity in the Arab-American community unfold around him. ~ Matthew Tobey, Rovi

A impoverished young mother with few creature comforts but an unbreakable spirit determines to see that her growing daughter receives an education after suffering a crippling setback in this affecting drama from director Darrell James Roodt. Yesterday's family is poor, and despite the daily toil suffered by her husband in the mines of Johannesburg she still manages to maintain a bright outlook on life thanks to her energetic seven-year-old daughter, Beauty. Upon falling ill, Yesterday is diagnosed with AIDS and her already harsh life appears to take a turn for the worse. Though Yesterday herself never received an education, the revelation of her declining condition inspires the young mother to cling to life so that she may see her growing daughter attend her first day of classes and die knowing that there is hope for a better life. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

An elderly man tries to achieve one of his greatest ambitions by turning a rank amateur into a champion in this drama. German-born Bertold Bohmer (Armin Mueller-Stahl) was a competitive distance runner in his youth who had one great dream -- to win the Comrades Marathon, a punishing 54-mile race that stretches between two cities through an arid desert in South Africa. Now in his mid-sixties and living in South Africa, Bohmer never achieved this goal, but as a trainer he's helped a number of other athletes achieve theirs, and he's coaching four African runners as they prepare for the Comrades. But Bohmer is abruptly fired from his training assignment, only to be replaced by a much younger man, Gasa (Paterson Joseph), who refocuses his runners in middle-distance competition. Bohmer is despondent until he discovers Christine (Nthati Moshesh), a young woman he sees jogging one day. Bohmer's trained eye tells him that she has the natural gifts and talent to win the Comrades, but he learns that she's never trained for a competitive athletic event in her life -- and she's an illegal alien from Namibia to boot. After a police raid on her home, Christine has little recourse but to accept Bohmer's invitation to stay with him, and while he spares no expense in coaching her for the Comrades, she begins to chafe under his rigorous training program; furthermore, when Gasa hears about the remarkable new runner Bohmer has discovered, he tries to convince her to join his team. Renowned South African vocal group Ladysmith Black Mambazo contributed several songs to The Long Run's soundtrack. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Alan Paton's classic novel about two fathers coming to terms with personal loss and the emotional scars inflicted on South Africa during the era of apartheid was brought to the screen for a second time with this adaptation, the first major film produced in South Africa after Nelson Mandela's election ended mandatory white rule in that nation. Rev. Stephen Kumalo (James Earl Jones) is a minister from a poverty-stricken farming community who travels to Johannesburg for the first time in search of his son Absalom (Eric Miyeni), who moved to the city some time back and has gone missing. Kumalo regards the big city as a den of iniquity, and his low expectations are not betrayed; he is robbed and beaten shortly after he arrives, and when he visits his brother John (Charles S. Dutton), he discovers that Absalom has become a petty thief with a pregnant girlfriend, his sister Gertrude (Dambisa Kente) is a prostitute, and John has renounced his faith in God and advocates the violent overthrow of South Africa's white leadership. James Jarvis (Richard Harris) -- a wealthy white landowner from the same part of the country as Kumalo -- has also arrived in Johannesburg, also with sad personal business to attend to; his son, a well-liked activist for the rights of the city's black majority population, was killed during a robbery. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

Temistocles Lopez's Chain of Desire, based on Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, plays like an AIDS-era version of The Yellow Rolls Royce, in which a series of unrelated amorous lovers are connected by a "chain of desire." The film begins as Alma D'Angeli (Linda Fiorentino) flees from a lover and runs into a church, where she finds solace and a young Latino worker, Jesus (Elias Koteas). They make love. Then Jesus comes home to his wife Isa (Angel Aviles) and gets intimate with her. The next morning, Isa goes off to see Dr. Jerald Buckley (Patrick Bauchau), with whom she is having an affair. After seeing Isa, Jerald heads off to visit Linda (Grace Zabriskie), a sexy dominatrix. Linda returns home to her husband, Hubert (Malcolm MacDowell), a harried television commentator. After an unsatisfactory interview with women who claim to have had affairs with John F. Kennedy, he relieves his tensions by seeking the arms of Keith (Jamie Harrold), a teenage hustler. And the trail continues on as gay social worker Ken (Tim Guinee) offers Ken a place for the night, followed by Ken's lover David Bango (Dewey Martin) and hot dancer Diana (Holly Marie Combs), who wants David to deflower her. Coming on the scene after that is famed artist Mel (Seymour Cassel), who has a tryst with Diana, but he finds that he has to answer to his vindictive wife, Cleo (Assumpta Serna). At the end, all the characters arrive at a hip nightclub, where Alma, the singer at the club, has learned that the lover she had spurned at the beginning of the film has been diagnosed with AIDS. ~ Paul Brenner, Rovi

After spending his time in jail for manslaughter, a formal world-champion kick boxer B.J. Quinn (John Barrett) is released after doing time and sets out to regain his former stature as a top-notch fighter. Unfortunately he begins his comeback at a drunken party (he's drunk) and he tangles with the current top-dog of kick boxing, Jacques Denard. Denard beats him to a pulp, which sends our hero Quinn into hiding where he teams up with another kick boxer, and together they begin to train for a real-time head-on with the champion Denard. ~ Rovi