Film Reviews

A young man and woman meet by chance in an airport while waiting for a delayed flight. When the plane is rerouted, they decide to make the best of it, and over the course of one night, realize that sometimes it takes a detour to make a connection. Written by Rebecca Green

The Invitation, a 2003 movie starring Lance Henriksen. When an author invites his friends to his home on a private island, the guests realize they've been poisoned at dinner. The only way to receive the antidote from their twisted host will be to confess to all the lies they've ever told.

In 1996, Marcello Mastroianni talks about life as an actor. It's an anecdotal and philosophical memoir, moving from topic to topic, fully conscious of a man "of a certain age" looking back. He tells stories about Fellini and De Sica's direction, of using irony in performances, of constantly working (an actor tries to find himself in characters). He's diffident about prizes, celebrates Rome and Paris, salutes Naples and its people. He answers the question, why make bad films; recalls his father and grandfather, carpenters, his mother, deaf in her old age, and his brother, a film editor; he's modest about his looks. In repose, time's swift passage holds Mastroianni inward gaze.

This exhilarating two-part film (“Soldier Ivan Brovkin” and “Ivan Brovkin on the State Farm”) presented to the country a new national hero – kind, modest, charming and… ne’er-do-well. That “ne’er-do-well-ness” proved “Kharitonov’s special key to audiences’ hearts”. Following Brovkin’s appearance on the screen, Kharitonov had become a star of the national cinema, an idol for millions of people. His incredible popularity may be compared to that of another national hero – the world’s first cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. And not surprisingly, it was Kharitonov who made a cameo appearance going up the festival stairs and followed with the adoring eyes of the heroines in V. Menshov’s Oscar-winning melodrama “Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears”.

Juno Mak’s debut feature Rigor Mortis is an eerie and chilling, contemporary action- and special effects-laden homage to the classic Chinese vampire movies of the 1980s.

A dying woman’s wish sends her son on a train journey from the steppes of Uzbekistan to the Russian hinterland in search of his father’s grave. Just as the traveler’s home city of Samarkand is situated on the border between East and West, Khamraev balances his film on the edge of two cultures, evoking the soul of Russia and the crumbling beauty of what was once the Silk Road.