Sy Richardson

In 1898 Cuba, five Buffalo Soldiers find a gold cache, desert and return to America where they help defend a black town from the KKK, all the while trying to avoid capture by lawmen and military authorities alike. A group of mostly black infantrymen return from the Spanish-American War with a cache of gold. They travel to the West where their leader searches for the men who lynched his father.

A police veteran and his rookie partner fight Los Angeles gangs. A confident young cop is shown the ropes by a veteran partner in the dangerous gang-controlled barrios of L.A. about to explode in violence in this look at the gang culture enforced by the colors that members wear. —Keith Loh <loh@sfu.ca> A tough, experienced Los Angeles police officer is paired with an over-confident younger officer in a taut police drama. The story takes place in the gang infested areas of Los Angeles' inner city where the colors gang members wear show gang affiliation. —robsturner@earthlink.net

They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it. They control our lives without us realizing it. They live. Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker, discovers a pair of special sunglasses. Wearing them, he is able to see the world as it really is: people being bombarded by media and government with messages like "Stay Asleep," "No Imagination," "Submit to Authority." Even scarier is that he is able to see that some usually normal-looking people are in fact ugly aliens in charge of the massive campaign to keep humans subdued. —Melissa Portell <mportell@s-cwis.unomaha.edu> John Carpenter's slow and deliberate immersion of the daunting and worrying fable of the corrupt, deceiving and indifferent economic, social and political society, that has wrapped itself around its people and who in turn have blindly accepted their fate. Multicultural in more forms than anticipated, are the leading and upwardly mobile alien race who have gelled themselves into the Human psyche and exploited it to its full potential. This is the story of an everyman, a no one, a Nada who stumbles upon their secret, via an underground movement, whose mission is to sabotage their plans and awaken the world to its sinister plans. With the help of a pair of sunglasses, that shows the world as it really is, not in color, but a black and white parallel world that the sub-conscious has chosen to ignore. With subliminal messages as "OBEY," "CONFORM," "MARRY AND REPRODUCE," "CONSUME," "WATCH TELEVISION" and "SLEEP." It is through this thought control that the aliens have this world tied up and neatly packaged for its own manipulative uses, to further themselves at the expense of the meek, mild and the lowly sufferers of a job less and hungry world. This is the battle of self-awareness and one mans struggle with a reality check that has these alien beings staging war against the up-rising and rebellious armies from the gutters and streets. They Live You Sleep; where will your consciousness take you when the sleep is washed from your eyes. Welcome to the real world. —Cinema_Fan They influence our decisions without us knowing it. They numb our senses without us feeling it. They control our lives without us realizing it. They live. Horror master John Carpenter (Halloween, The Thing) directs this heart-pounding thriller. Aliens are systematically gaining control of the earth by masquerading as humans and lulling the public into submission. Humanity's last chance lies with a lone drifter who stumbles upon a harrowing discovery - a unique pair of sunglasses that reveal the terrifying and deadly truth. —Anonymous John Nada is a man without job who walks around a big American city trying to find something to do. He finally finds a job as a worker and a place to spend the nights, but one day something terrible happens to him. John discovers a pair of sun-glasses through which he can see the true face of people. Many persons in this city are in fact aliens (from the Andromeda) and most of them are important members of our society. They keep humans in ignorance and they rule our world as they like. Nada must find the rest of the men that know what's happening (those who made the strange sun-glasses) and join them in the fight against the aliens. —Chris Makrozahopoulos <makzax@hotmail.com>

On Christmas Eve Johnny Modine's father is murdered by a psycho cut-throat. The cop swears bloody revenge, though he's taken off the case. He doesn't suspect yet that he's also target in a diabolic plan of revenge. On Christmas Eve Johnny Modine's father is murdered by a psycho cut-throat. The cop swears bloody revenge, though he's taken off the case. He doesn't suspect yet that he's also target in a diabolic plan of revenge. —Tom Zoerner <Tom.Zoerner@informatik.uni-erlangen.de>

The film opens on 12 October 1978, with several police officers dragging Sid Vicious (Gary Oldman) out of the Hotel Chelsea following the death of his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen (Chloe Webb). Sid is soon driven to a police station and upon arrival is asked to describe what happened. Police officers become frustrated when Sid is visibly troubled and unable to speak. A little more than a year earlier, in 1977, close friends and band members Sid and Johnny Rotten (Andrew Schofield) meet Nancy, a heroin-addicted groupie who had come to London to bed the Sex Pistols. Sid dismisses her at first, as her sexual intentions are obvious, but begins dating her after feeling sympathy for the rejection she faces from fellow punk stars and after she sells him heroin; it is implied that she introduces him to the drug. The two fall deeply in love, but their self-destructive, drug-fueled relationship frays Sid's relationship with the rest of the band, which eventually breaks up on 17 January 1978, in the midst of a disastrous American tour which features Sid strung out of his mind, often drunk or on meth, and physically violent. Although several of his friends and acquaintances warn him of Nancy's devastating effect on his life, Sid stubbornly ignores these warnings. Sid, now living in New York, attempts to start a solo career with Nancy as his manager, only to be dismissed as a has-been. By now, both he and Nancy are heavily addicted to heroin, and Nancy has spiraled into a deep depression. Sid loses interest in Nancy sexually and wants out of a suicide pact he made with her. Their love affair ends tragically one night when, during an argument in which Sid announces his plans to stop using heroin and return to England to re-start his life, a suicidal Nancy begs him to kill her. She attacks him and they fight in a drug-induced haze, leading to him stabbing her, although whether or not it was intentional is left to interpretation. They fall asleep and later Nancy awakes and stumbles into the bathroom, where she collapses and dies. Sid is bailed out temporarily by his mother who is also a heroin addict. After getting a pizza, some kids convince him to dance with them. Some time later, a taxi picks Sid up and he believes he finds Nancy alive in the back seat. The two embrace as the cab drives off. A postscript says that Vicious died of an intentional heroin overdose, and he now shares a grave with Nancy. Their gravestone reads: "R.I.P. Nancy and Sid."

In the Mojave Desert, a motorcycle cop pulls over a 1964 Chevrolet Malibu being erratically driven by Dr. J. Frank Parnell. Despite warnings from the space-out Parnell, the policeman opens the trunk, sees a blinding flash of white light, and is instantly vaporized, leaving only his boots behind. Parnell drives off, continuing his erratic driving. Otto Maddox, a young punk rocker in L.A., is fired from his job as a supermarket stock clerk when his manager nitpicks his work placing products in displays. He goes to a punk rocker party where he catches his girlfriend cheating on him with his best friend Duke. Depressed and broke, Otto is wandering the streets when a man named Bud drives up and offers him $25 to drive a 1978 Olds Cutlass Salon out of the area, saying it's his wife's car. Bud tells Otto that his wife is at the hospital about to deliver twins and that he needs to get her car out of the bad neighborhood. Otto follows Bud in the car to the Helping Hand Acceptance Corporation, where he learns that the car he drove was being repossessed and Bud's story was a ruse. After defiantly pouring out the beer they give him, he refuses to join Bud as a "repo man," and goes to his parents' house. He learns that his burned-out ex-hippie parents have donated the money they promised him for finishing school to a crooked televangelist. He decides to take the repo job. Bud teaches Otto what he calls the Repo Code and about the lifestyle of a repo man which involves dressing like a cop, working very late hours, getting little sleep and snorting speed to keep awake. Bud also tells Otto about the Rodriguez Brothers, Hand Acceptance's chief competition in the repo business. They engage the brothers in a brief race in the LA River with Bud yelling insults as the Rodriguez' speed off. After repossessing a flashy red 1976 Cadillac, Otto sees a girl named Leila running down the street. He gives her a ride to her workplace, the United Fruitcake Outlet. On the way, Leila ducks down in the footwell when she spots two men in the next car who dress like government agents. She shows Otto pictures of aliens that she says are in the trunk of a Chevy Malibu. She claims that they are dangerous because of the radiation that they emit. Meanwhile, Helping Hand is offered a $20,000 bounty notice for the Malibu. Most assume that the car is drug-related, because the bounty is so far above the actual value of the car. Parnell arrives in L.A. driving the Malibu, but he is unable to meet his waiting UFO compatriots because of a team of government agents led by a woman with a metal hand. When Parnell pulls into a gas station, Helping Hand's competitors, the Rodriguez brothers, take the Malibu. They stop for sodas because the car's trunk is so hot. While they are out of the car, a trio of Otto's punk friends, Duke, Debbi and Archie, who are on a crime spree, steal the Malibu. After they visit a night club, Parnell appears and tricks the punks into opening the trunk, killing one of them and scaring the other two away. Later, he picks up Otto and drives aimlessly, before collapsing and dying from radiation exposure. Otto takes the Malibu back to Helping Hand and leaves it in the lot. The car is stolen from the lot by an unidentified thief, and a chase ensues. By this time, the car is glowing bright green. Eventually, the Malibu reappears at the Helping Hand lot with Bud behind the wheel, but he gets shot by government agents who arrive on the scene in a helicopter. The various groups trying to acquire the car soon show up; government agents, the UFO scientists, and the televangelist. Anyone who approaches it bursts into flames, even those in flame-retardant suits. Only Miller, an eccentric mechanic at Helping Hand, is able to enter the car. He slides behind the wheel and beckons Otto into the Malibu. After he settles into the passenger seat, the Malibu lifts straight up into the air and flies off, streaking around downtown Los Angeles at high speed. Otto happily says the ride is "intense" and Miller replies