Browse Movies : 2012 : NR

Puts a very human face on the debate around health care by taking us behind the doors of Oakland's Highland Hospital, a safety-net hospital fighting for survival while weathering the storm of a persistent economic downturn. The film, employing a composite day-in-the-life structure offers a raw, intimate, and often uplifting look at how patients, staff and caregivers cope with disease, bureaucracy, frustration, hope and hard choices.

After their mother passes away, sisters Nicole and Annie reluctantly return to their childhood home to pay their last respects. While staying overnight in the house, the sisters sense a mysterious presence in their midst: noises startling them in the night, objects moving about, a fallen picture of an unknown woman posed next to their mother. Annie begins experiencing a series of intense and disturbing dreams - visions that lead her to uncover something terrible about her mother's past that is finally revealing itself.

In Last Ride, a desperate father takes his ten year old son, Chook, on the run after committing a violent crime. As the two journey into the desert and an unknown future, their troubled relationship and the need to survive sees them battling the elements and each other. Chook eventually takes control, and the choice he is forced to make has a devastating effect on both their lives.

Only the Young is the story of the children that inhabit a small desert town in Southern California – a town dominated by foreclosed homes and underpasses, unfilled swimming pools and skate parks. The three teenagers of focus must find things to do in a place that offers nothing – but in observing their day-to-day lives, we see them discover friendship, first love, heartbreak, and what it means to be young.

Starlet explores the unlikely friendship between 21 year-old aspiring actress Jane (Dree Hemingway) and elderly widow Sadie (Besedka Johnson) after their worlds collide in California's San Fernando Valley. Jane spends her time getting high with her dysfunctional roommates and taking care of her chihuahua Starlet, while Sadie passes her days alone, tending to her garden. After a confrontation at a yard sale, Jane finds something unexpected in a relic from Sadie's past. Her curiosity piqued, she tries to befriend the caustic older woman. Secrets emerge as their relationship grows, revealing that nothing is ever as it seems.

Just days before Bernard Madoff captured headlines as the largest Ponzi schemer in U.S. history, Marc Dreier, a prominent Manhattan attorney, was arrested for orchestrating a massive fraud scheme that netted hundreds of millions of dollars from hedge funds. Brazen forgeries and impersonations branded the white collar crime spree remarkable. "Unraveled" is set in the purgatory of house arrest -- an Upper East Side penthouse -- where the Court has ordered Dreier confined until his sentencing day. The film weaves Dreier's struggle to prepare for the possibility of life imprisonment with first-person flashbacks, which reveal his audacious path of destruction. Destroyed by his own hubris, Dreier attempts to grasp his tragic unraveling. With unprecedented access, "Unraveled" exposes a mastermind of criminal deception.

July 4, 1976, Entebbe, Uganda - Led by Lieutenant Colonel Yonatan Netanyahu, crack Israeli commandos burst inside a non-descript airline terminal, killing stunned terrorists and evacuating 103 hostages. A lone shot sounds in the night, and Yonatan Netanyahu, brother of current Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, lay dead. Follow Me is an intimate story that penetrates the tough exterior of the only soldier killed in Entebbe. Using Yonatan's own poetry, letters and prose, the film delves into the mind of this reluctant young hero, where duty to family and country, love, turmoil, and doubt over the core value of war raged.

Pim, an introverted child, occupies his time drawing and fantasizing while keeping his emerging desires a secret. As a teenager, he grows infatuated with Gino, the handsome boy next door. When a hunky young man from the local fair starts living with Pim and his mother, he seizes the opportunity to leave home and move in with Gino's family. His plan backfires as Gino departs, romancing and living with a girl from across the border. It seems like Pim's dreams will never come true, but then one rainy day Gino returns home...

Based on a true story, Quill: The Life of a Guide Dog is the sweet tale of a yellow Labrador Retriever guide dog for the blind named Quill. We follow Quill from the litter to his selection as a guide dog shortly after his first birthday. After training at a school for guide dogs, Quill is paired with a blind man named Watanabe who at first is reluctant to rely on him. But Quill's great patience, gentleness and skill eventually win him over and they become inseparable friends.

Does hell exist? If so, who ends up there, and why? Featuring an eclectic group of authors, theologians, pastors, social commentators and musicians, Hellbound? is a provocative, feature-length documentary that looks at why we are so bound to the idea of hell and how our beliefs about hell affect the world we are creating today.

When Nirvana burst onto the scene in 1991, the music they played spoke directly to an angry and disenfranchised generation. Grunge took over MTV and radio overnight… but just three years later, the drug-related deaths of several musicians and the suicide of Kurt Cobain closed the books on an all too brief era. Patty Schemel, the acclaimed drummer for Courtney Love's seminal rock band Hole, was in the middle of all of it. The openly gay woman who always felt different never dreamed she would be in a multi-platinum band, touring with legends… or that, thanks to drug addiction, she could lose it all. Given a video camera just before Hole's infamous Live Through This world tour, Patty filmed everything the shows, the parties, and startlingly intimate footage of Kurt and Courtney. This footage has never been seen... until now.

An epic drama spanning the years 1939 to 1952, this is the gripping story of Simon (played as the adult by Bill Skarsgaard, son of Stellan), who grows up in a loving working-class family on the outskirts of Gothenburg but always feels out of place. Intellectually gifted, he stubbornly persists in acquiring an education normally reserved for young men of the professional classes, much to the chagrin of his parents, who fear that he will become stuck up. He finally convinces his father to send him to an upper-class grammar school, where he meets Isak, the son of a wealthy Jewish bookseller who has fled Nazi persecution in Germany. Simon is dazzled by the books, art and music he encounters in the home of Isak's father Ruben (Jan Josef Leifers), which makes Simon long to know more about his own family background. Isak, on the other hand, draws comfort from learning to do something with his hands, helping Simon's dad (Stefan Godicke) make boats. When Isak faces trouble at home, he is taken in by Simon's family and the two households slowly merge, connecting in unexpected ways as war rages all over Europe. The film is based on the Swedish bestseller of the same name, written by Marianne Fredriksson. It offers a unique depiction of fate, destiny and free will and vividly portrays the situation for Jews in Sweden during World War II.

Every Halloween, sleepy Fairhaven, Massachusetts erupts with the most ambitiously creative spookery in the world. Endless styrofoam tombstones and backyard beasts come courtesy of a few supremely dedicated local "home haunters" who've devoted their lives to the art of handmade monstermaking. The American Scream follow s three of these horrific households to uncover the triumphs and tragedies that come with carrying the blackened banner of true Halloween spirit.

Follows the tale of a couple who are about to get married but see a series of mishaps, including missing bridesmaids and crashed cars, wreak havoc to their upcoming wedding day.

Chely Wright: Wish Me Away is the story of Chely Wright, the first Nashville music star to come out as gay. Over three years, the filmmakers were given extraordinary access to Chely's struggle and her unfolding plan to come out publicly. Using interviews with Chely, her family, her pastor, and key players in the music world, alongside Chely's intimate private video diaries, the film goes deep into her back story as an established star and then forward as she steps into the national spotlight to reveal her secret. Chronicling the aftermath in Nashville and within the LGBT community, Chely Wright: Wish Me Away reveals both the devastation of her own internalized homophobia and the transformational power of living an authentic life.

In central China, a Master coach recruits poor rural teenagers and turns them into Western-style boxing champions. Through hard work and discipline, these boys and girls come of age, trained in the art of boxing and the game of life. They are filled with Olympic dreams, hoping to become China's next amateur heroes. But the pull of professionalism also weighs upon their shoulders. Their coach hopes to show them the way. The top student boxers face dramatic choices as they graduate--should they fight for the collective good as amateurs or for themselves and their own personal gain as professionals? It's a metaphor for the choices that everyone faces now, in the New China.

Robert Longfellow (Martin Donovan) is a famous playwright who can't seem to catch a break. His recent Broadway play was met with horrible reviews and an early cancellation, and his marriage is being tested as an old flame (Olivia Williams) has reentered his life during a particular moment of weakness. Retreating back to his childhood home to visit his mother (Katherine Helmond), Robert crosses paths with his childhood neighbor, Gus (David Morse). A right-wing, ex-con who still lives at home with his mother, Gus is Robert's polar opposite in every possible way. When Gus holds Robert hostage at gunpoint during a drunken reunion gone terribly wrong.

Nobody noticed when thirty-eight year old Joyce Vincent died in her apartment above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. When her skeleton was discovered three years later, her television was still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of Joyce's life- not even a photograph. Who was Joyce Vincent? And how could this happen to someone in our day and age--the so-called age of communication? Dreams of a Life is Carol Morley's quest to discover who Joyce was and how she came to be so forgotten.

Explores the thin line between anxiety and naked horror in the life of Suzy (Suziey Block), a young woman in Los Angeles who can’t get comfortable in her own skin. A loner who wallows in nostalgia and finds herself wandering aimlessly through life in the city, she can’t shake the gnawing suspicion that a true menace grows just outside her field of vision. As she scrambles to take control of her life, her anxiety rises to a fever pitch that boils over into a waking nightmare.

Legendary dancers and choreographers Merce Cunningham, Paul Taylor, Suzanne Farrell, Mark Morris, Judith Jamison and Bill Irwin appear alongside new innovators to reveal the passion, discipline, and daring of the world of dance in Never Stand Still. Filmed at the iconic Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, this thrilling documentary features amazing performances by world-renowned dancers interwoven with intimate interviews, behind-the-scenes insights, and rare archival footage.