New Books, Films, Databases, and other Resources: Films Feb. 2014

If you need a job Charlie Malik can find a spot for you in the dockside railyards. All he needs in return is that you show up on time, work hard, and kick back part of your pay. Two New York City longshoremen, Axel Nordmann, an Army deserter, and Tommy Tyler, an easy-going freight car loader, join forces against a corrupt New York waterfront union official. The two share a bond that cuts across society's black/white divide.

There is an old belief that everyone is rewarded with the heaven or hell that he deserves. For Phil, the nasty, self-centered weather forecaster in "Groundhog Day," that hell reveals itself one morning in the Groundhog Capitol of the USA, Punxsutawney, Pa. He has journeyed there to do a remote broadcast about his namesake, the groundhog Punxsutawney Phil, and wakes up the next morning in the same bed, with the radio playing the same song, and it gradually becomes clear to him that he is reliving precisely the same day. It will be Groundhog Day again tomorrow, too, and on the day after that. Finally, Phil begins to ponder the question "What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and everything that you did was the same, and nothing mattered?"