It gets dull after a while, but the context—a Soviet fabricated show trial ordered by Stalin to frame and prosecute ‘anti-communists’ in the eyes of the public—is still an eye-opening look at character assassination on a national, ideological level, nearly a century ago.
Another good but not great murder mystery from Chabrol featuring the second outing of his snarky detective in a tale about immoralities.
Women meet politics as they bravely fight against rampant sexual assaults and for a more progressive country in this intimate home video-style, if sometimes unfocused, documentary about the aftermath of the Cairo Revolution.
Edited entirely from restored archival footage of Stalin’s state funeral, this is a cinema of profound sadness and a towering achievement from one of the great screen chroniclers of Soviet history.
This intense and highly-satisfying three-hour chamber piece revolving around the gathering of an extended family in an apartment is a masterclass in the rigours of acting and blocking.
Not as purely cinematic as some of his greatest works, but Ray manages to invoke feelings of introspection as a movie star gets a reality check from strangers—and fans—he encounters on a train.
For better or worse, it feels like you are watching a book unfold in this beautiful if unbalanced adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s well-studied novel.
It may be at times contrived and slow-moving, but this Iranian drama about the impact of a wrongful state execution on a family accumulates enough power to work.
The second film of Meszaros’ ‘Diaries’ is an affecting semi-autobiographical tale of a young Hungarian woman with ambitions of becoming a film director, set against the tumultuous backdrop of the Soviet Bloc.
There is probably no other purgatorial cinematic experience like this—a Pasolini-meets-Tarkovsky medieval sci-fi epic that finds stark beauty in all of its carnivalesque filth and revolting excess.
Eternality Tan 