Frank Darabont takes on his third Stephen King film adaptation with the creepy creature feature, The Mist. The Shawshank Redemption was a straight up drama and The Green Mile had elements of fantasy, but The Mist is Darabont’s first full-on adaptation of a Stephen King horror story. While the The Mist isn’t in the same league as either Shawshank or Green Mile, it’s nonetheless a worthy addition to Darabont’s King-related resume as well as one of the better films based on King’s work.

Heinrich Harrer runs from trouble at home in WWII Austria to climb Mt. Nanga Parbat. After meeting unforseen obstacles, he comes into contact with the forbidden city of Lhasa. Written by Scott Hussey {shussey@greenhills.net}

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Family man Phil Weston, a lifelong victim of his father’s competitive nature, takes on the coaching duties of a kids’ soccer team, and soon finds that he’s also taking on his father’s dysfunctional way of relating…

Several players from different backgrounds try to cope with the pressures of playing football at a major university. Each deals with the pressure differently, some turn to drinking, others to drugs, and some to studying. Written by Kevin {Kibble@vm.temple.edu}

A DEA agent provides former Marine Tim Kearney with a way out of his prison sentence: impersonate Bobby Z, a recently deceased drug dealer, in a hostage switch with a crime lord. When the negotiations go awry, Kearney flees, with Z’s son in tow. Written by Anonymous

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Mrs. Anna Leonowens and her son Louis arrive in Bangkok, where she has contracted to teach English to the children of the royal household. She threatens to leave when the house she had been promised is not available, but falls in love with the children. A new slave, a gift of a vassal king, translates “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” into a Siamese ballet, expressing her unhappiness at being with the King. She attempts to escape with her lover. Anna and the King fall in love, but her British upbringing inhibits her from joining his harem. She is just about to leave Siam when she hears of the King’s imminent death, and returns to help his son, her favorite pupil, rule his people. Written by Randy Goldberg {goldberg@nymc.edu}

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Sam is a recent widower who is seeking someone new. Sam’s son Jonah, is also looking for a new mother, so when Jonah puts his father on national radio, hundreds of women write to him. One of the women is Annie. She’s engaged to Walter, but he’s a bit strange. Annie goes to great lengths to meet Sam. Written by Rob Hartill

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Veronica mingles with Heather I, II and III to be as popular as them, even though she hates them. She hates them enough to wish they were dead, but she would never want to be their cause of death though. When she starts dating Jason Dean, however, she finds herself involved in the murdering of most of her enemies, covered up as suicides. Written by Lars J. Aas {larsa@colargol.edb.tih.no}

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The day after they get the word they’ll go home in two weeks, a group of soldiers from Spokane are ambushed in an Iraqi city. Back stateside we follow four of them - a surgeon who saw too much, a teacher who’s a single mom and who lost a hand in the ambush, an infantry man whose best friend died that day, and a soldier who keeps reliving the moment he killed a civilian woman. Each of the four has come home changed, each feels dislocation. Group therapy, V.A. services, halting gestures from family and colleagues, and regular flashbacks keep the war front and center in their minds. They’re angry, touchy, and explosive: can a warrior find peace back home? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

If it weren’t for the brilliant job done by Mortensen as a ruthless Russian mobster and by Naomi Watts as a concerned midwife, Eastern Promises could be considered a real step down from A History of Violence. However, Mortensen and Watts lift Eastern Promises up and it’s because of their performances this movie works reasonably well as a character-driven drama, rather than a straight-up thriller.

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