Judy Maltz, a journalism professor at Penn State University, had an amazing story to tell. Maltz, who produced and co-directed the film No. 4 Street of Our Lady, was descended from a family of Polish Jews who had survived the Holocaust thanks to the efforts of a woman who almost single-handedly saved the lives of 15 people by hiding them in her small home for two years, risking her life by feeding and caring for them all during the Nazi occupation of their small town.

Unless there’s a last–minute gold rush of five-star movies between now and the end of the year, the 2009 Oscars belong to director/producer Lee Daniels and his film Precious – Based on the Novel Push By Sapphire.

Winner of the Outstanding Narrative Award at the Los Angeles Film Festival, and the Audience Award at the Woodstock Film Festival, writer/director Suzi Yoonessi’s Dear Lemon Lima is a warm, tender drama about a young girl’s coming of age in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Since his breakout role on HBO’s Six Feet Under, Ben Foster has appeared in one high–profile feature film after another. He played the mutant Angel in X–Men: The Last Stand, drug–addled teen Jake Mazursky in the crime drama Alpha Dog, and psychotic cowboy Charlie Prince in the western remake 3:10 to Yuma.

The 2009 Savannah Film Festival Oct. 31–Nov. 7 Locations: Trustees Theater, 216 E. Broughton St.; Lucas Theatre, 32 Abercorn St. Judges: Actress Patti D’Arbanville (“Rescue Me”), actress/producer Rita Gam, writer/director Ingrid Rockefeller, writer/director Michael Sucsy (“Grey Gardens”) and writer/director David Twohy (“Pitch Black”) Awards ceremony: At 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7, Trustees Theater Tickets: Morning and afternoon screenings and panels: $5 for the general public $3 for students, seniors and military Free for SCAD students, ...

REMEMBER ME * I'm not saying it's impossible for the surprise ending of Remember Me to work (not to worry; no spoilers here); however, it needs to be attached to a project a lot more distinguished than the one on display here. But because the bulk of Remember Me is clumsy, mawkish and marked by some truly heinous dialogue, the conclusion proves to be staggering in its tastelessness, and one gets the impression that scripter ...

ALICE IN WONDERLAND **1/2 Here's the problem with the vast majority of movies based on Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel, Through the Looking-Glass: They're too tame, too hesitant and too conventional to really tap into the more unsettling aspects of an immortal fantasy that provides as much satisfaction for adults as for children. The most disappointing adaptation is arguably 1951's Alice in Wonderland, the animated Disney version that misinterpreted the tale ...

THE CRAZIES ** With the new version of The Crazies in wide release, should viewers head to the theater to check it out or mosey toward the DVD store with the intent to rent George Romero's 1973 original? Given the options, perhaps an alternate plan should be set in motion (maybe a museum, or a nightclub?), but between the pair, it's best to target the couch. Subsequently re-released as Code Name: Trixie, writer-director Romero's ...

SHUTTER ISLAND *** Just how obvious is the big "twist" that concludes Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese's adaptation of Dennis Lehane's novel? So obvious that some folks who haven't read the book are figuring it out simply by watching the trailer. But just how accomplished is the picture anyway? Enough that viewers will happily be led down the rabbit hole by a director with the ability to distract them with every technique at his disposal. Delivering ...

THE WOLFMAN *1/2 Back in the 1990s, three Hollywood heavyweights wrestled the horror genre away from the kiddies long enough to make a trilogy of terror that delighted anyone who enjoyed seeing monster movies that were adult in nature, literate in approach and steeped in atmosphere so pungent, you could almost cut it with a scalpel. Yet while Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 gem Bram Stoker's Dracula and Kenneth Branagh's underrated 1994 effort Mary Shelley's Frankenstein ...

The 82nd Annual Academy Awards will be held this Sunday, March 7, meaning we only have a few more days to mull over the possible outcome.

The Road Zombies seem to be de rigueur in today’s strain of post–apocalyptic motion pictures, yet this adaptation of the novel by Cormac McCarthy (No Country for Old Men) offers nothing quite so fanciful. The undead shambling through this bleak movie’s ravished landscapes are, technically speaking, still human, though many have taken to eating human flesh, and all seem to be moving forward as though propelled by a natural instinct to survive at all ...

9 **1/2 Not to be confused with Rob Marshall's upcoming musical Nine (or, for that matter, with the summer hit District 9), this single-digit offering is actually director Shane Acker's expansion of his own Oscar-nominated short film from 2005. That animated work ran approximately 12 minutes; this new version clocks in at 80 minutes, shorter than most theatrical releases but still thin enough to outstay its welcome by at least a quarter-hour. Set in ...

Fast & Furious The best part of Fast & Furious is its tagline - "New Model. Original Parts." - which means that the studio wonk who created it deserves the big bucks more than anybody who actually appears in the film. It's a catchy line because it advertises the fact that all four stars of 2001's The Fast and the Furious - Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Jordana Brewster - ...

Knowing With its plotline involving extraterrestrials, a kid in potential peril, and a man obsessed with uncovering the truth behind unexplained phenomena, this could easily have been tagged Clod Encounters of the Absurd Kind. Sober in its intentions but laughable in its execution, Knowing begins promisingly, as a letter written by a little girl in 1959 finds itself, 50 years later, in the hands of John Koestler (Cage), an MIT professor whose wife died ...

As the fond memories of our brush with celebrity during last summer's shoots for The Last Song and The Conspirator begin to fade, the state and the greater Savannah area are still making efforts to secure the future of the entertainment industry here.

For all his business acumen and professional savvy, Black Maria Film & Video Festival founder John Columbus thinks like an artist.

Every Memorial Day weekend in Telluride, Colo., a collection of short films is screened for those interested in ecology, conservation, wildlife, beautiful landscapes and thrilling adventure - the great outdoors, as it were.

What do sumo wrestlers, transgender elder care workers, émigrés in Vietnam and beauty pageant contestants all have in common? If you answered that they were all encompassed by the spectrum of Jewish cinema in the 21st Century, you’d be right.

Stepping into the home of Hal and Nancy Miles is sort of like wandering unexpectedly into a long lost vault buried somewhere between the studios of Disney and Warner Brothers.