Synopsis
In Putin’s Russia, former music radio producer Natasha Sindeeva dreams of becoming famous and decides to build her own TV station to focus on pop culture. Natasha’s journey begins with building the station, Dozhd, and she goes on to recruit an open-minded team of outcasts who find themselves reporting on some of the biggest and most controversial stories of the day while trying to protect independent journalism in their country.Read More »
The touching portrait of eight-year-old Sasha, who questions her gender and in doing so, evokes the sometimes disturbing reactions of a society that is still invested in a biological boy-girl system of thought.Read More »
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The Telidon System is a telephone communication process which enables the exchange of visual information.Read More »
Review Summary
After literally inventing the movie musical with The Jazz Singer, Warner Bros. purchased the motion picture rights to the evergreen Sigmund Romberg/Oscar Hammerstein II 2nd operetta The Desert Song. Although the results looked like a photographed stage play (a common failing of early-talkie songfests), the unforgettable Romberg-Hammerstein tunes ({&The Riff Song}, {&One Alone}, the title number) more than carried the day. John Boles stars as The Red Shadow, the Robin Hood-like leader of the Riffs and the bane of the existence of General Bierbieu (Edward Martindel). The good General has another cross to bear in the form of his nerdish, lily-livered son Pierre, who is likewise despised by heroine Margot (Carlotta King). Read More »
Originally a made-for-TV miniseries (that won a slew of Emmy Awards), this film follows parallel stories: those of a Jewish family in Germany from 1935 to 1945 and a German (Michael Moriarty) who rises in the Nazi ranks until he is overseeing the death camps. Genuinely haunting and truly sorrowful, this series was many people’s first introduction to the impact that Hitler’s Final Solution had on everyday Germans. Of course, it helps that director Marvin Chomsky had a cast that included Fritz Weaver, James Woods, Meryl Streep (who won an Emmy for her performance), and Ian Holm. Still, it is powerful storytelling in its own right.Read More »
Two gripping stories are interwoven in Prisoner 13; a son pays for his father’s faults, and a desperate mother tries to save her son’s life at any cost. Destiny and corruption play a trick on Carrasco when he is bribed to free a revolutionary and arrest someone in his place. Unbeknownst to him he ends up arresting his own son.
Fernando de Fuentes’ “Revolution trilogy” opens with this gripping tale of corruption and family conflict, as a powerful colonel (Alfredo del Diestro) agrees to release a revolutionary he has in custody as part of a bargain to arrest another person to take the prisoner’s place. The bribe backfires when the colonel’s own son is accidentally captured to seal the deal. Potent drama from Mexico also stars Luis G. Barreiro, Adela Sequeyro, and Antonio R. Frausto. 76 mRead More »
A teenage whiz kid (Matthew Laborteaux) puts his robot’s brain in the head of a nearly dead girl (Kristy Swanson).Read More »
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British couple Fiona and Nigel Dobson are sailing to Istanbul en route to India. They encounter a beautiful French woman, and that night Nigel meets her while dancing alone in the ship’s bar. Later he meets her crippled American husband Oscar, who tells him their story. While living in Paris for several years trying to be a writer, he becomes obsessed with a woman he met by chance on a bus. He tracks her down and they start a steamy love affair. Soon Oscar finds himself enslaved body and soul by her love, and continues to tell Nigel the details of this relationship in various stages over a number of visits to Oscar’s cabin.Read More »
“Wim Wenders was bitten by the 3D bug when he made his 2011 dance docu, “Pina,” and he expands the possibilities of the format still further with “Cathedrals of Culture.” Giving all new meaning to the expression “if these walls could talk,” this conceptual six-part omnibus invites half a dozen international helmers to imagine the personalities of various cultural institutions, lending voices to their unique designs while allowing cameras to explore the buildings’ unique architectural features in all their multidimensional glory. Such an overlong and only intermittently absorbing project wouldn’t suffer in the slightest if broken up across several nights for non-3D arts TV, where the otherwise taxing presentation will likely find its broadest audience.Read More »