Remarkably sophisticated for its time, in both narrative and visual technique, Aelita: Queen Of Mars is a clever blend of science fiction and pro-Communist filmmaking, though it's certainly not a straightforward propaganda piece.
Matinee serial-style space opera set in a crystalline Martian city - a silent film accompanied by new music.
There’s a lot of interesting stuff to explore here and it’s a shame that we don’t get into it in more depth.
Ellie is stuck in a cyclical nightmare grappling with a medical condition that erratically resets her memory. Left unable to remember her loving husband or young daughter, each reset leaves her disoriented and haunted with vivid memories and scattered recollections of an unfamiliar life she’s never lived. What is the cause of her rare illness, and can her husband really help cope with her affliction?
Mirzoeva has acquired a great deal of strong interview material to support the lesson, most notably a very frank and melancholy contribution from Mikhail Gorbachev.
A documentary about the ten year Soviet presence in Afghanistan and its impact on world politics.
All the ingredients are present for a classic thriller, except the budget. Some of the sets are as shaky as the dialogue.
Cliff is the owner of Omega Bar, a place for criminals and diamond dealers. When his friend Grigg runs into trouble, he agrees to help him in exchange for a handful of diamonds.
While all of the statistics - and Eiselt and Lee ensure they keep on coming - are brutal, the positive energy of activism is at the heart of this documentary.
Following the preventable deaths of their partners due to childbirth complications, two bereaved fathers galvanise activists, birth-workers and physicians to reckon with one of the most pressing American crises of our time – the US maternal health crisis.
Wells shows how interactions that were solid within their own moment become more ambiguous as time has gone by and the adult understanding of Sophie has grown.
Sometime in the Nineties, somewhere in a Turkish coastal resort, a young, divorced father is spending the vacation with his daughter pre-teen daughter Sophie.
It takes a certain personal courage for Bloch to do what she does here, at times physically inserting herself between groups on the verge of conflict.
Disturbed by the resurgence of fascism and anti-Semitism around the world, a psychoanalyst based in New York travels to Germany, Israel, and Palestine to confront her own deep-seated feelings about Germans and Palestinians, and the tensions between the Holocaust and the Nakba.
Where narrative fails, look for symbolism; and there are symbols aplenty. It’s just not clear that they mean anything coherent.
It's a distant future, on a savage planet, where only women can survive. The lonely teenager Roxy frees a criminal buried in the sand. Once freed, the woman, who goes by the name of Kate Bush, starts spreading fear and death again.
I'm not sure that I have ever seen a film as horrific as this.
A look at the suffering caused by Russia's nuclear testing programme in Kazakhstan, where villagers who knew nothing of what was happening have suffered appalling, generational effects of radiation poisoning.
Guadagnino is tilting at windmills and there isn’t even any wind.
A college professor finds herself at a personal and professional crossroads when a star pupil levels an accusation against one of her colleagues and a dark secret from her own past threatens to come to light.
Kogonada is the directorial equivalent of a careful tea maker himself, he knows how to infuse his films with complex ideas without getting preachy or overtechnical about it.
In a near future, a family reckons with questions of love, connection, and loss after its A.I. helper unexpectedly breaks down.
As the surveys continue, different ideas of happiness emerge along with moments of shared humanity.
Amber is one of the many agents working for the Bhutanese government to measure people’s happiness levels among the remote Himalayan mountains. But will he find his own along the way?
Reece is very much an actors’ director and he draws out splendid performances from his cast.
Rumours of demonic possession at a religious convent prompts a church investigation into the strange goings-on among its nuns. A disaffected priest and his neophyte are confronted with temptation, bloodshed and a crisis of faith.
Michele Civetta's début has all the elements of the Gothic in their proper places, with a hint of giallo, but there is simply no narrative glue to hold them together.
A discontented New York family woman called unexpectedly to Tuscany to execute her estranged mother's will. There, she deciphers visions of her forgotten childhood and confronts a terrifying spectre.
As a whole, it appears way too kinetically ostentatious for its own sake, sadly making it less than the sum of its parts, but there are things to appreciate here.
An Israeli filmmaker throws himself in the midst of two battles doomed to fail: one against the death of freedom, the other against the death of a mother.
The effects and gadgets are secondary to David's quest. That is Spielberg all over. Wherever there is a heartbeat, he stimulates it. Wherever there are tears, he finds them.
Scientists create a robot boy, with emotions, in a globally warmed, flooded future world.
He was known as an enigmatic type when alive and the film retains this air of mystery, which might prove frustrating for some hoping for a deeper dig.
Alvin Ailey was a visionary artist who found salvation through dance. Told in his own words and through the creation of a dance inspired by his life, this immersive portrait follows a man who, when confronted by a world that refused to embrace him, determined to build one that would.
Delicately scored by Katsuhiko Maeda, the early part of the film has a real magic about it, its sweet-natured heroine conveying an infectious sense of wonder.
A blow-up sex doll develops a sense of self and begins to explore the world around her.
Weiwei is such a fascinating subject that even a documentary that never seems to stray into the experimental is compelling, but white text on a black screen does not a revolution make.
Renowned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has garnered international attention as much for his ambitious artwork as his political provocations and increasingly public clashes with the Chinese government.
It’s a decidedly quirky tale of the sort that will infuriate some viewers, who will feel they’ve been egregiously ripped off – but if you like that sort of thing, you’ll be in your element.
A man who finds contentment in the simple pleasures - buttered toast, bicycle rides and walking his dog - discovers that his beloved dog park has been transformed into a 'blog park', a digital sanctuary where youths gather to open their laptops. He feels compelled to take action, to set things right.
