Two Women

"Mr. Mari's Girls" a diverse group of Women in Trouble – ranging from a junkie-model in need of a fix, to a pregnant high-school girl, to a "hard-as-nails" lesbian eager to marry her blind girlfriend – who come to millionaire Mari for help and advice, and stay around for the most malignant catfight ever put on film. "Two Girls For a Madman" Two young girls in New York City studying to be ballet dancers are chosen by a crazed sex fiend to be his next victims. He rapes one of them at gunpoint and then proceeds to stalk and terrorize both of them. "Tortured Girls" Unaware of the local Hooded Strangler lurking around her door, poor "Helen Doe" decides to visit her aunt but, instead, winds up at the "House of Horror on the hill." There, she and six other Tortured Females are held by white slavers and persuaded to accept "a glamorous life of easy virtue" through beatings, whippings, and being forced to watch go-go dancers (?!). Worse, adding to the madness is nothing less than – are you ready? – "a half-witted, monkey-chattering, Mongolian hunchback." Honest.

The first movie produced by Afghanistan filmmakers after the fall of the Taliban, Osama is a searing portrait of life under the oppressive fundamentalist regime. Because women are not allowed to work, a widow disguises her young daughter (Marina Golbahari) as a boy so they won't starve to death. Simply walking the streets is frightening enough, but when the disguised girl is rounded up with all the boys in the town for religious training, her peril becomes absolutely harrowing. Golbahari's face–beautiful but taut with terror–is riveting. The movie captures both her plight and the miseries of daily life in spare, vivid images. At one point, her mother is nearly killed for exposing her feet while riding on the back of a bicycle; for the entire scene, the camera shows only her feet, with the spokes of the wheel radiating out behind as she lowers her burka over them.