Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Ratings (out of five): **** 1/2

In one of the opening shots of Mikhail Kalatozov’s Letter Never Sent, four Soviet explorers struggle wordlessly through a throng of birch trees in the middle of a Siberian hinterland. The hand-held camera lurches along with the adventurers as they push on, hip-deep in water and dragging their gear behind them on rafts. There’s something about this scene – the close-up, shaky images of desperate characters fighting against a cold, indifferent nemesis – that instantly recalls George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. In fact, much of Letter Never Sent’s man-vs.-nature conflict plays like a horror film. Here the relentless boogeyman doesn’t wield an axe but fire and ice.

The bare-bones plot involves a geological expedition into Russia’s unforgiving taiga. A team of four surveyors has been sent on a third and final mission to find diamonds, in the hopes that the gems will spur an “industrial revolution” and revitalize the stagnating economy.

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Rating (out of five): ****

Francesco Rosi’s The Moment of Truth is a blood-soaked poem observing (if not totally celebrating) the gory pageantry of the bullfighting circuit.

The film begins with an extended, dialogue-less trek through a religious festival in a Spanish city. Onlookers line the street while Catholic acolytes in Klan-like capirotes lumber through clouds of incense, holding grotesque statues of Jesus and the Virgin. The eerie, slow-paced ritual is suddenly interrupted by a group of manic bulls pushing and bucking their way through the crowd. The solemnity is shattered; people are trampled and tossed and one of the bulls is vanquished for the camera. This is the first of many unsimulated animal deaths in the film. The squeamish are hereby advised.

Reviewer: Philip Tatler IV
Rating (out of five): Elephant Boy - ** 1/2
The Drum - *** 1/2
The Jungle Book - ***
SET - ***

Nowadays, it’s feasible that an eleven-year-old elephant keeper could become a global superstar, provided he was aligned with the right reality TV show or viral video. In 1937, however, Sabu (nee Shelar Shaik) found fame via a more traditional route: by starring in several international box office hits. Sabu was an Urdu-speaking mahout (elephant driver) before he was pulled from obscurity by a location scout working for producer Alexander Korda. The Criterion Collection’s latest Eclipse series pays tribute to three of Sabu’s best-known entertainments.

Reviewer: Jeffrey M. Anderson
Rating (out of five): *** 

It was quite a surprise to learn that, between Park Chan-wook's extraordinarily lithe, punchy Lady Vengeance (2005) -- the final entry in his equally extraordinary "vengeance" trilogy -- and the bizarre, acid vampire movie Thirst (2009), Park made this very broad, very odd comedy.

It looks as if I'm a Cyborg, But That's OK never saw an American theatrical release, or if it did, it was so small and localized that no critics knew of its existence. It apparently did middling box office in its native Korea as well. It's somewhat similar to Sion Sono's Love Exposure, from Japan, which was released in San Francisco this past summer. It features singularly love-struck characters with peculiar fates. It focuses on three or four specific, off-kilter jokes and runs with these jokes over and over until they connect and make some kind of sense.