Show Time in St. Louis

Spine Tingler takes you back to a time when going to the movies was an event and a cultural institution. The straightforward documentary tells the story of William Castle, the poor man’s Alfred Hitchcock, and a master of 1950s and ´60s B-horror movies, famous for the outlandish gimmick promotions that accompanied them. For instance, The Tingler, the 1959 Castle classic starring Vincent Price that lends the documentary its title, required theatres to install electric buzzers under select seats to shock audience members at key times in the film, a setup Castle christened “percepto.” Castle’s delightfully low-budget, campy flicks and their ilk defined the horror genre for nearly three decades before the emergence of the´70s slasher genre, and the documentary provides insight to the mentality of a different, and infinitely more fun, movie-going era. It's a great primer for those not familiar with Castle’s work but nothing groundbreaking for cinephiles who have seen it all. — Keegan Hamilton

Imagine the 2000 election if Al Gore hadn't been allowed to campaign on TV or radio, if someone almost succeeded in killing him and if he really did lose the election unfairly. Would Americans leave their jobs behind to protest in Washington D.C.? Or would they just move on? Although Orange Revolution doesn't pose this exact question, it certainly forces you to entertain the possibility. The documentary follows Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko as the once-handsome man morphs to an unrecognizable, lumpy-skinned survivor of a semi-successful poisoning. After his near-death experience, Yushchenko loses a fraudulent election and his followers are outraged. In late November of 2004, more than half a million Ukrainians migrate to the country's capital (through sleet and snow, mind you) to protest in a nonviolent revolution. Many set up camp in a tent city outside the Central Electoral Commission and work together to eat, sleep and fight for democracy. As evidence people still give a shit, this inspirational documentary is a wake up call for every apathetic voter and cynic.
— Jeanette Kozlowski

The Paper

Times are tough at The Daily Collegian, Penn State’s student newspaper. Circulation is down. Too often, the letters to the editor column sits empty. Reporters continually bungle the paper’s diversity coverage, most embarrassingly referring to a black poker player as “Queen of spades.” The university’s public-affairs machine infuriates the Collegian staff by blocking access to the administration and football team. The editor in chief declines to make a bigger issue of rape on campus because it happens way too often to be “newsworthy.” Individual reporters struggle with boredom, sexism and frustration with journalistic objectivity. In short, The Daily Collegian faces the same problems as every other newspaper in America. Aaron Matthews’ documentary follows the staff through the 2005-06 school year. The Collegian’s young journalists are clueless, self-righteous and earnest (sometimes painfully so), but they are also dedicated, articulate and resourceful, and all together they &mdash and Matthews &mdash effectively demonstrate how a newspaper functions &mdash or doesn’t. — Aimee Levitt

Manual of Love

A breezy, comic examination of the four stages of love &mdashfalling in love, the romantic crisis, the affair and abandonment &mdash Veronesi’s quartet of stories are linked by briefly shared characters and framed by a popular self-help book that gives the film its title. Each of the four stories is marked by a peculiarly Italian sense of passion that dwarfs the rather limp American conventions of “romantic comedy.” Tommaso (Silvio Muccino) falls in love with the force of a cannonball, lacking even a shred of doubt. Ornella (Luciana Littizzetto) exacts a brilliant and terrifying vengeance after she’s been betrayed by her husband, but not in a Fatal Attraction, clichéd manner. And Goffredo (Carlo Verdone), abandoned by his wife, wallows in his misery without resorting to drink, self-abuse or the support of a goofy, comic friend. The result of all this unbridled passion and lovemaking is a charming and unexpectedly inspirational trip through not just the human heart, but the soul. — Paul Friswold

Call of the Wild

The best thing to happen to Ron Lamothe is that both he and director Sean Penn chose to make a movie about Chris McCandless &mdash the subject of Jon Krakauer’s best-selling book Into the Wild &mdash at the very same time. Without Penn’s large-scale production crew upstaging and thwarting Lamothe at every turn, this self-indulgent documentary would have little to offer except for the most obsessed fans of McCandless, whose 1992 death remains something of a mystery. Lamothe works under the theory that he and McCandless share a spiritual bond because they both graduated college in 1990 and spent a few years traipsing the globe in search of adventure and identity. But the similarities end there. After retracing McCandless’ travels ad nauseam, Lamothe arrives in Alaska where a local drunk sums it up best: McCandless died because he was a “dipshit” who had no business living in the wilds of Alaska. Lamothe’s film offers a counterpoint to the McCandless mythology, if nothing else. — Chad Garrison

Chicago 10