Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

Irina Palm (Belgium, UK, 2007, 103 min. dir: Sam Garbarski  cast: Marianne Faithfull, Miki Manojlovic.

If there was an Academy Award for most bizarre original idea, Irina Palm would win it hands down. The story of a grandmother who takes up a career jerking off men through a hole in the wall at a London sex club in order to raise money for an operation to save her grandson’s life; is one that had to be dreamed up in a cloud of ganja smoke.

Marianne Faithfull, the whiskey-voiced British pop star of the 1970’s, and theme song chanteuse for Alan Rudolph’s film, Trouble in Mind, is now a grandmother. Sadly for those who remember when, she looks the part.

Her cute little grandson needs £6000 so he can be flown to Australia for a complicated operation done only by a doctor there. Not much demand for sixty-plus plump ladies in the sex trade, but handwork is anonymous. All Maggie (Marianne) has to do is sit on a small chair and respond to a buzzer as men put their penises through a hole in the wall. She applies a little lubrication and a lot of creative stroking.

We never see their penises nor witnesses them ejaculating. Too bad because it might have made Irina Palm a must-have sex tape. And without penises we can’t witness what makes her hand jobs so amazing. Why are all these guys willing to wait in line for her? How has she becomes such a profit center for club boss Miki (Miki Manojlovic)?

The trouble in mind with Irina Palm is it never pushes to real porn or flat-out comedy. Think of this story in the hands (bad pun) of David Fincher or Woody Allen. Those would be two fascinating remakes.

Irina Palm is a curiosity worth watching, especially if you want to see what happens to old pop stars. And I can’t help speculating what the pitch meeting must have been like as the writer spun the tale for the producer.  He would start with, “If sex is mostly fantasy then anyone can do it behind a wall.� The producer is hooked. He leans forward listening for more. So do we.

Unstoppable (USA 2010, 98 min. dir: Tony Scott, cast: Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson).

For every boy who every wanted a Lionel train set, this movie is the present under the Christmas tree. Tony Scott’s big bicep film is replete with big engines, tough men, and enough train talk to satisfy the most finicky foamer (the name railroad pros give to amateur train lovers).

The story has been told before. In 1962 a locomotive broke away from a rail yard in East Syracuse, NY and got half way to Rochester. Kurosawa announced his plans to shoot the story. He never did, but his script was the basis for Runaway Train with Jon Voight. In 2005 engine 8888 broke away from Toledo, Ohio and made it to Kenton before being subdued. Railroaders called that engine the Crazy Eights. For years after, people in Ohio played the number 8888 in the lottery.

The power unit in Unstoppable is labeled 777 after that Crazy Eights engine. It breaks out of a yard in Pennsylvania and goes on an unstoppable rampage on the main line until Denzel Washington and Chris Pine can figure out how to control it. The unstoppable train is, of course, stoppable. We we know that from the beginning. But the economy of story telling and the power of Tony Scott’s streamlined visuals make the journey worth the predictable ending.

Making Unstoppable is probably as good a story as is on screen. Anyone who shoots a train movie should receive an award for frustration, patience, and persistence. You can’t turn these beasts around for another shot like a car. Every move takes hours. Even though the gags are done at slower speeds and made to look faster by computer re-imaging, every stunt is life threatening. A helicopter pilot was killed filming Runaway Train in Alaska.

Major railroads don’t want film companies on their tracks, so filmmakers need to find a little spur line with its own engines. Then you have to rent your own train of cars (called a �consist� in railroad lingo). When it’s all over you’ll talk like a railroad man and no matter how accurate you’ve tried to be, the foamers will tear your movie apart on their blogs by noting every inconsistency. Want to see the mistakes in Unstoppable? Go to TrainOrders.com.

Hard enough to make a film, but then what do you do with it? MovieWithMe reviews films that are already available  at Netflix and Amazon, but we get lots of inquiries from filmmakers asking us to review their new films. We have a place for that, called CONTENDERS. You can shoot your own video review, upload it to YouTube, and embed in the CONTENDERS section of MovieWithMe.com. Easy, effective, says exactly what you want to say, and gives you another link.

But what about entering your film in a film festival? If you’ve ever walked around the big festivals like Cannes or Berlin or Toronto, you will see people with badges from the most obscure festivals looking very serious as if they were actually working rather than using the pass to see a lot of free movies. Ever hear of the Carthage Film Festival (Tunisia) or Giffoni Film Festival (Italy)? You’ve just finished your Master’s film at Columbia; what do you do next?

The best answer is a new site, FilmFestivalLife.com that just went up in beta. It joins a list of better known sites like WithoutaBox, Reelport, and ShortFilmDepot. The difference is, FilmFestivalLife.com gives you organizational tools to choose and manage festivals to target, and also gives you feedback on what’s good and what’s not. Avoid the Brooklyn Film Festival and Festival European Short Film Film Festival, but by all means look into Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival and the Circuito Off-Veneice International Short Film Festival. (And while we’re at it, my advice is to never go to Sundance unless you are invited and can’t find a better excuse like “I’m shooting”).

What Luca Zamai, who leads this effort, is trying to do is create a kind of Yelp for film festivals where you can find the best and worst comments from filmmakers who have been there. I think the staff is also planning to add their opinions and be a filter for the good, bad, and ugly side of film festivals.

The next thing they should add is a section for film fans who want to go to festivals. How to try to scam tickets in Cannes (the best way I’ve been told is to buy them from the Cannes Police, since free ones are always circulating among the higher officers). Or how to eat cheaply in Berlin (Eat Turkish, or eat at Imbiss fast food stands, or go to the Nordsee fresh fish restaurant on the lower floor of the shopping center).

Stuff like this is invaluable for insiders and outsiders alike. It’s about time someone collected it on one lively site.