Plot Synopsis: Yor, an extremely blond prehistoric warrior, comes to question his origins, particularly with regard to a mysterious medallion he wears. When he learns of a desert goddess who supposedly wears the same medallion, Yor decides that he must find her and learn his true identity. Along the way, he encounters ape-men, dinosaurs, and a strange futuristic society.Read More »
Based on the novel of the same title by the Strugatsky brothers
“Konstantin Lopushansky was a student of classic Soviet director Andrei Tarkovsky, and master’s influence is highly visible in “The Ugly Swans” — not just as a ghost in the background, but as full-fledged foreground presence. Which is not to deny Lopushansky his originality. More than anything, it’s a sign of a certain artistic style being handed down over the generations… The film is …aesthetically outstanding and emotionally moody in a way that’s very hard to gauge… Tarkovsky would have been proud.” (Tom Birchenough, “The Moscow Times”)
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Written in 1931, H. P. Lovecraft’s iconic genre-bending tale of suspense and alien terrors is brought to life in the style of classic horror films of the early 1930s like Dracula, Frankenstein, and King Kong. Using its Mythoscope process ~ a mix of modern and vintage techniques ~ the H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society expands on Lovecraft’s original tale while still bringing you unparalleled authenticity.Read More »
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A military junta has taken power on the Philippines. Their takeover is fought by Moslem separatists, communists and rival military. In the middle of the chaos there is Hesus Mariano: academic, musician, poet and sniper. Politically tinted science-fiction action drama with an attitude.
It’s the year 2011 and the Philippines has been taken over by a military junta; the leader, a General Racellos, wields tight control over the country’s single TV station, radio station and newspaper. Racellos’ power is being challenged by Muslim secessionists, by the Communist movement and by a rival military group. In the middle of this turmoil stands Hesus Mariano (a quietly volatile Mark Anthony Fernandez) – scholar, musician, sharpshooter, poet, warrior. Jesus the Revolutionary was made on a shoestring budget (around five million pesos / 75,000 euro) and shot in roughly twenty days, but the ideas teeming in it are enough to fill a half-dozen lesser films. Except for the deserted streets and spray-painted graffiti, you won’t see any evidence of progress, of advanced technology, any sign at all that it’s almost a decade into tomorrow; if anything, things appear to have gotten worse… which is probably precisely Diaz’s point. It’s an action flick with an attitude, a political satire with a philosophical bent, a science-fiction drama with a committed political stance. The film mixes the influences of George Orwell, Jose Rizal and video games, using the future as a prismatic lens to focus on the follies of the present. (NV)Read More »
A group of scientists in search of lost Atlantis are plane wrecked on an uncharted island full of stock footage monsters fresh from One Million BC. Occasionally we get an original papier mache monster peaking out from behind an alcove, but for the most part this is typical Mexican filmmaking for the period. With Armond Silvestre and Alma Delia Fuentes.Read More »
“Metropolis is not one film, Metropolis is two films joined by the belly, but with divergent, indeed extremely antagonistic, spiritual needs. Those who consider the cinema as a discreet teller of tales, will suffer a profound disillusion with Metropolis. Whait it tells us is trivial, pretentious, pedantic, hackneyed romanticism. But if we put before the story the plastic-photogenic basis of the film, then Metropolis will come up to any standards, will overwhelm us as the most marvelous picture book imaginable.”
— Luis Buñuel: Metropolis. In: Great Film Directors. Edited by Leo Braudy, Morris Dickstein. New York 1978, p. 590Read More »
Review (taken from Turner Classic Movies)
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“This is the story of a man marked by an image of his childhood,” begins La Jetee (1962), one of the most instantly recognizable and acclaimed short films ever made. Using only still photographs, voiceover narration, sound effects and music, it tells the story of a World War III survivor whose vivid memories make him the subject of time travel experiments. In only one shot of the film–that of “the Woman” opening her eyes in the morning–does the image move. Through such deceptively simple means Chris Marker explores the paradoxes of time travel and, on a deeper philosophical level, the relationships between image and memory, and word and image.Read More »
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The bridge film between his (Sokurov’s) first decade’s essays into historicized metafilm and the subsequent, fame-making fata morganas is Days of the Eclipse(1988), a patience-testing post-apocalyptic dawdle (based on a novel by the Strugatsky brothers) that plays more like aimless third-world doc than science fiction. Concerning a young doctor stuck in the middle of a rocky wasteland (actually, Turkmenistan, though it could easily pass for any post-colonial hunk of Africa), Daysis maddeningly oblique, visually erratic, and utterly disconnective. Angels, earthquakes, talking corpses, Stalinist iconography, and visual disjunctions may figure in, but for the most part Sokurov designed the film as an elusive tissue of non-happenings and mysterious nexuses, all of it sucking the dusty air of Soviet-satellite poverty.Read More »
A spaceship lands in Arctic wastes, its only passenger a six-and-a-half-foot-tall frozen vegetable with a brain. (“An intellectual carrot — the mind boggles.”) That spells trouble for the small troupe of soldiers and scientists, plus a reporter and the token fabulous babe. Directed by Christian Nyby, The Thing has the hallmarks of movies by producer Howard Hawks: taut, snappy camaraderie and a preference for men of action over men of thought. Whereas 1951’s other big spaceman movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still, took the liberal view that a visitor from another world would be benign, superior and peace-loving, this one suggests an interplanetary Cold War, with a creature (played by James Arness, later Sheriff Matt Dillon of Gunsmoke fame) who’s angry, hungry and hard to reason with. Humankind’s only logical response to this vegetable invader: cook ‘im! (But don’t eat ‘im.) –Richard Corliss, TIme MagazineRead More »