A troubled loner, Bob Maconel, imagines blowing up the tower in Los Angeles where he works. He takes a revolver to his office intent on killing colleagues, and then himself. At home, he holds conversations with his fish, who encourage him to do it. His supervisor picks on him. As he’s screwing his courage to the sticking place, he drops a bullet; while on the floor looking for it, another colleague does exactly what Bob has been planning. Bob emerges a hero and the one colleague he likes, a woman with a bright smile, is severely wounded. Can Bob help her through despair and find himself and joy in life? Or, as everyone says, is this impossible for a man like him? Written by {jhailey@hotmail.com}

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Elvis lives! I knew it all along. No way could The King die on a toilet. It’s much more reasonable to believe he traded places with an impersonator to live out his life in relative obscurity, playing dive bars and Indian casinos, having a grand ol’ time pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes.

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Film adaptation of street tough Jim Carroll’s epistle about his kaleidoscopic free fall into the harrowing world of drug addiction. As a member of a seemingly unbeatable high school basketball squad, Jim’s life centers around the basketball court and the court becomes a metaphor for the world in his mind. A best friend who is dying of leukemia, a coach (”Swifty”) who takes unacceptable liberties with the boys on his team, teenage sexual angst, and an unhealthy appetite for heroin — all of these begin to encroach on young Jim’s dream of becoming a basketball star. Soon, the dark streets of New York become a refuge from his mother’s mounting concern for her son. He can’t go home and his only escape from the reality of the streets is heroin for which he steals, robs and prostitutes himself. Only with the help of Reggie, an older neighborhood friend with whom Jim “picked up a game” now and then, is he able to begin the long journey back to sanity. Written by Mark Fleetwood {mfleetwo@mail.coin.missouri.edu}

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Nicolas Cage, Sam Rockwell and director Ridley Scott team up for the first time and the result is one of 2003’s most entertaining movies. “Matchstick Men” is a fast-paced comedy/drama with a snappy script full of well-disguised plot twists. You don’t know where the story’s going, but you do know you want to go along for the ride. It’s refreshing to be able to sit through an entire movie where the plot isn’t telegraphed ahead of time.

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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.

Vietnam vet Travis Bickle is 26, a loner in the mean streets of New York City, slipping slowly into isolation and violent misanthropy. In solving his insomnia by driving a yellow cab on the night shift, he grows increasingly disgusted by the low-lifes that hang out at night: “Someday a real rain will come and wash all the scum off the streets.” His touching attempts to woo Betsy, a Senator’s campaign worker, turn sour when he takes her to a porn movie on their first date. He even fails in his attempt to persuade child prostitute Iris to desert her pimp and return to her parents and school. Driven to the edge by powerlessness, he buys four handguns and sets out to assassinate the Senator, heading for the infamy of a ‘lone crazed gunman’… Written by Tim Jones {jonestd@vax.sbu.ac.uk}

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A gold mining camp in the California foothills is besieged by a neighboring landowner intent on stealing their claims. A preacher rides into camp and uses all of his powers of persuasion to convince the landowner to give up his attacks on the miners. Written by David J. Kiseleski {davidk269@aol.com}

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We follow a bunch of high school kids through a period in their puberty. Their lives mainly consist of watching the girls in the shower and making life a living hell for their teachers and for each other. The movie is packed with practical jokes and eccentric characters, like Pee Wee with the short dick (which he measures every morning) who met up for sex with the school “mattress” Wendy already wearing a rubber, or the fat teaching bitch Beulah Balbricker who is determined on making life a living hell for the boys. The name “Porky’s” is the name of a striptease bar the boys get thrown out of and humiliated in in the beginning of the movie. They have their minds set on revenge, but that’s not easy as the owner’s brother is sheriff. Only by forgetting their internal differences can they defeat Porky and his gang. Written by Rune Dahl Fitjar {rfitjar@online.no}

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Held yearly for centuries, the Ocean of Fire–a 3,000 mile survival race across the Arabian desert–was a challenge restricted to the finest Arabian horses ever bred, the purest and noblest lines, owned by the greatest royal families. In 1890, a wealthy sheik invited an American, Frank T. Hopkins, and his horse to enter the race for the first time. During the course of his career, Hopkins was a cowboy and dispatch rider for the U.S. cavalry–and had once been billed as the greatest rider the West had ever known. The Sheik puts his claim to the test, pitting the American cowboy and his mustang, Hidalgo, against the world’s greatest Arabian horses and Bedouin riders–some of whom are determined to prevent a foreigner from finishing the race. For Frank, the Ocean of Fire becomes not only a matter of pride and honor, but a race for his very survival as he and his horse attempt the impossible. Written by Sujit R. Varma

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I loved the trailer and video clips from “Saw,” so my expectations were relatively high going into the screening. Prepared for a gory good time, I wanted to like “Saw.” I wanted it to make me squirm, make me hide my eyes, and just get lost in a gross-out horror/thriller. But what I couldn’t have prepared myself for was just how horrific “Saw” turned out to be. And that’s not a compliment.

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