Starring: Leon Niemczyk, Jolanta Umecka, Zygmunt Malanowicz
On their way to an afternoon on the lake, husband and wife Andrzej (Leon Niemczyk) and Krystyna (Jolanta Umecka) nearly run over a young hitchhiker (Zygmunt Malanowicz). Inviting the young man onto the boat with them, Andrzej begins to subtly torment him; the hitchhiker responds by making overtures toward Krystyna. When the hitchhiker is accidentally knocked overboard, the husband’s panic results in unexpected consequences. This was the first feature directed by Roman Polanski.
Starring: Zosia Mamet, Aristotle Athari, Arturo Castro, Okieriete Onaodowan, Erin Darke
Molli and Max in the Future is a sci-fi romantic comedy about a man and woman whose orbits repeatedly collide over the course of 12 years, 4 planets, 3 dimensions and one space-cult.
Co-hosted by historian and programmer Elizabeth Purchell
Up until the early 1980s, women’s bodybuilding set a standard that musculature had to stay within an undefined limit, expectations being that the body retain a “feminine” shape. Australian competitor Bev Francis arrived on the scene with bulging muscles, causing an upheaval in judging standards. Filmmaker George Butler, some years after the success of Pumping Iron, which introduced a young Arnold Schwarzenegger to the world, was there to capture the 1983 Caesar’s World Cup that found Francis up against Rachel McLish, a more traditional contestant who dominated previous competitions. The result is a fascinating portrait of a culture at a crucial turning point, with a soundtrack very of its decade.
In a small Indian village, Ranjit wakes up to find that his 13-year-old daughter has not returned from a family wedding. A few hours later, she’s found stumbling home. After being abducted into the woods, she was sexually assaulted by three men. Ranjit goes to the police, and the men are arrested. But Ranjit’s relief is short-lived, as the villagers and their leaders launch a sustained campaign to force the family to drop the charges.
A cinematic documentary, To Kill a Tiger follows Ranjit’s uphill battle to find justice for his child. In India, where a rape is reported every 20 minutes and conviction rates are less than 30 percent, Ranjit’s decision to support his daughter is virtually unheard of. With tremendous access, we witness the emotional journey of an ordinary man facing extraordinary circumstances. A father whose love for his daughter forces a social reckoning that will reverberate for years to come.
Starring: Talia Ryder, Earl Cave, Simon Rex, Jacob Elordi, Jeremy O. Harris, Ayo Edebiri
The Sweet East is a picaresque journey through the cities and woods of the Eastern seaboard of the United States undertaken by Lillian, a high school senior from South Carolina who gets her first glimpse of the wider world on a class trip to Washington, D.C. Separated from her schoolmates, she embarks on a fractured fairy tale travelogue into America, where she is granted access to a variety of the strange factions that proliferate the present-day unreality of contemporary life.
Starring: Moira Shearer, Robert Rounseville, Robert Helpmann, Ludmilla Tcherina
In this film adaptation of the Offenbach opera, a young poet named Hoffmann (Robert Rounseville) broods over his failed romances. First, his affair with the beautiful Olympia (Moira Shearer) is shattered when he realizes that she is really a mechanical woman designed by a scientist. Next, he believes that a striking prostitute loves him, only to find out she was hired to fake her affections by the dastardly Dapertutto (Robert Helpmann). Lastly, a magic spell claims the life of his final lover.
Starring: Alma Pöysti, Jussi Vatanen, Janne Hyytiäinen, Nuppu Koivu
Award-winning filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki (Le Havre, The Other Side of Hope) makes a masterful return with Fallen Leaves, a timeless, hopeful and ultimately satisfying love story about two lonely souls’ path to happiness – and the numerous hurdles they encounter along the way.
Set in contemporary Helsinki, and shot through with Kaurismäki’s typically playful, idiosyncratic style and deadpan humor, this tender romantic tragicomedy is a timely reminder of the potency of movie-going from one of cinema’s living legends. Winner of the Jury Prize at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival.
Starring: Yvette Yzon, Alvin Anson, Paul Holmes, James Gregory Paolleli, BB Johnson
An evil corporation sends a team of marines led by the sole survivor of a previous attack on a rescue mission to a remote Pacific Island following a zombie outbreak stemming from nefarious scientific experiments. It all goes bad really fast.
Plot sound familiar? It should, as this is the final film from legendary Italian horror director Bruno Mattei (Hell of the Living Dead, Zombie 3, Rats: Night of Terror) who made a career of high energy knock offs of Hollywood hits featuring his unique splatter signature.
In the final years of his career, Mattei made several shot-on-video movies for the international market, and this was one of the best of them – featuring the plot lifted from James Cameron’s Aliens, mixed with elements of his own 1980 knock off of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. What follows is a third world acid trip from hell, with Grand Guignol gore, high-caliber weapons, mutated rugrats and goopy tentacles all colliding in a Calabrian casserole of spaghetti sauce-slathered greatness.
Starring: Kinder Hunt, Maegen, Jesse Lizarraga, Jeff Burr, Scott Pierce, Judith Montgomery
They are creatures created by the evils of men!
In this sick and slimy SOV monster anthology, a man’s mistress is trapped by his gun-wielding wife, who subjects her to two tales as a twisted form of revenge. In the first, a would-be brothel owner and crew face off against a puritanical mayor with a mysterious box housing an ancient creature he uses as punishment. In the second, a woman’s nightmares about her abusive husband slowly come to life as she tries to escape the real monster growing inside him.
From prolific indie producer David S. Sterling (Camp Blood, Demonicus, Witchcraft) and directed by Jay Woelfel (Beyond Dream’s Door), Dennis Devine (Fatal Images), and Eugene James (Dead Girls), Things spares no exploitation trope or gross-out practical effect in telling it’s tawdry and oozy tales of inhumanity in all its analog glory.
Starring: Blake Cousins, Veronica Karlsson, Kevin Peterson
A rogue cop in rural Hawaii uncovers a conspiracy to kill the vice president and is forced to battle an old friend working for a group of terrorists in this SOV martial arts and gunplay extravaganza 25 years in the making!
Helmed by do-it-yourself wunderkind twin brothers The Cousins Brothers, and made hot off the heels of their gore-soaked SOV tour de force Slaughter Day, Loose Cannon ups the ante on the action and insanity their fans have come to adore – with severed limbs, homemade rocket launchers, reckless stunts, hand to hand combat and more punch than a volcano full of nuclear weapons.
