Well-to-do Chicagoan, Larry Darrell, breaks off his engagement to Isabel and travels the world seeking enlightenment, eventually finding his guru India. Isabel marries Gray, and following the crash of 1929, is invited to live in Paris with her rich, social climbing, Uncle Elliot. During a sojurn there, Larry, having attained his goal, is reunited with Isabel. While slumming one night Larry, Isabel and company are shocked to discover Sophie, a friend from Chicago. Having lost her husband and child in a tragic accident, Sophie is living the low-life with the help of drugs an abusive brute. Larry tries to rehabilitate her, but his efforts are sabotaged by Isabel who has tried in vain to reignite Larry’s interest in her. Written by Richard Blinkal {phelam@netcom.com}

A romantic comedy set against the backdrop of America’s nascent pro-football league in 1925. Dodge Connolly, a charming, brash football hero, is determined to guide his team from bar brawls to packed stadiums. But after the players lose their sponsor and the entire league faces certain collapse, Dodge convinces a college football star to join his ragtag ranks. The captain hopes his latest move will help the struggling sport finally capture the country’s attention. Welcome to the team Carter Rutherford, America’s favorite son. A golden-boy war hero who single-handedly forced multiple German soldiers to surrender in WWI, Carter has dashing good looks and unparalleled speed on the field. This new champ is almost too good to be true, and Lexie Littleton aims to prove that’s the case. A cub journalist playing in the big leagues, Lexie is a spitfire newswoman who suspects there are holes in Carter’s war story. But while she digs, the two teammates start to become serious off-field rivals for her fickle affections. As the new game of pro-football becomes less like the freewheeling sport he knew and loved, Dodge must both fight to keep his guys together and to get the girl of his dreams. Finding that love and football have a surprisingly similar playbook, however, he has one maneuver he will save just for the fourth quarter… Written by Orange

An unknown and lethal virus has wiped out five billion people in 1996. Only 1% of the population has survived by the year 2035, and is forced to live underground. A convict (James Cole) reluctantly volunteers to be sent back in time to 1996 to gather information about the origin of the epidemic (who he’s told was spread by a mysterious “Army of the Twelve Monkeys“) and locate the virus before it mutates so that scientists can study it. Unfortunately Cole is mistakenly sent to 1990, six years earlier than expected, and is arrested and locked up in a mental institution, where he meets Dr. Kathryn Railly, a psychiatrist, and Jeffrey Goines, the insane son of a famous scientist and virus expert. Written by Giancarlo Cairella {vertigo@imdb.com}

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September 1914, news reaches the colony German Eastern Africa that its motherland is at war, so Reverend Samuel Sayer became a hostile foreigner; German imperial troops burn down his mission, driving him mad- shortly after his well-educated, snooty sister Rose Sayer buries him and leaves by the only available transport, the crummy river steamboat ‘African Queen’ of grumpy boorish compatriot Charlie Allnut. As if a long difficult journey without any comfort weren’t bad enough for such odd companions, she is determined to find a way to do their bit for the British war effort (and revenge her brother) and aims high as God is obviously on their side: construct their own equipment, a torpedo and the converted steamboat, to take out a huge German warship, the Louisa, which is hard to find on the giant lake and first of all to reach, in fact as daunting an expedition as nobody attempted since the late adventurous explorer John Speakes, but she presses till Charlie accepts to steam up the Ulana, about to brave a German fort, raging rapids, very bloodthirsty parasites and the endlessly branching stream which seems to go nowhere but impenetrable swamps… Despite fierce rows and moral antagonism between a bossy devout abstentionist and a free-spirited libertine drunk loner, the two bachelors grow closer to each-other as their quest drags on… Written by KGF Vissers

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Robert Duvall and Michael Caine are terrific in the family-friendly comedy/drama, “Secondhand Lions.” These two venerable actors with over 11 decades of work between them are fresh and fun to watch as two crotchety old men who, on first glance, seem to live by the old adage, “Shoot first, ask questions later.”

“Secondhand Lions” follows the story of Hub (Duvall) and Garth McCaan (Caine), elderly brothers spending their retirement years in solitude on a farm in Texas. The only significant intrusions on their peace are the traveling salesmen who show up uninvited and leave hastily when shotgun rounds answer their requests for money.

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A disillusioned war veteran, Capt. Rannulph Junah (Matt Damon), reluctantly agrees to play a game of golf. He finds the game futile until his caddy, Bagger Vance (Will Smith), teaches him the secret of the authentic golf stroke which turns out also to be the secret to mastering any challenge and finding meaning in life. Written by M. Fowler

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Set in the Rocky Mountains of Montana in the early 1900s, this is a tale of love, betrayal, and brotherhood. After being discharged, Colonel Ludlow decides to raise his three sons in the wilds of Montana, where they can grow up away from the government and society he has learned to dispise. The three brothers mature and seem to have an unbreakable bond, until Susanna enters their lives. When Samuel, the youngest of the three, returns from college he brings with him his beautiful fiance, Susanna. The eldest son, Alfred, soon finds himself in love with his brother’s fiance, and things get worse when he discovers a growing passion between Susanna and Tristan. Colonel Ludlow’s favorite son, Tristan is willful and as wild as the mountains. As the brothers set out to fight a war in Europe, suspicion and jelousy threatens to tear apart their once indestructable bond. Written by saunders11@yahoo.com

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