Izo is one of the most difficult works of art to be made in recent times. Viewers complain that it’s overlong and incoherent—and, in their defense, it often feels designed that way. In scene after scene for more than two hours, a samurai finds himself in a strange new landscape, encounters some odd person or people, and then kills them with his sword. The film is pure theme and variation, deliberately lacking consistent rhythm or sense of progression that would allow you to enjoy it casually. Still, nearly every sequence boasts some fascinating juxtaposition—between character and decor, between dialogue and action, in the way images are ordered—that makes it consistently striking to watch, if something of a slog to keep up with. Even admirers say it seems to last for days.

In the early period of the Soviet Union breathtaking experiments have taken place. Crossbreeding between man and ape; blood refreshment by transfer; fixing conditional reflexes to the genes; artificially inseminating women by sperms of genius men, everything seemed to be possible in this short time period, ending 1936 with mass murdering of so called opponents. The film will lighten this period by archive footage, authentic places and with the words of specialists.

Francesco Rosi utilizes the breathtakingly beautiful Italian landscape in an unspecified Italian city to hatch this mystery film involving murder and corruption in high places. As the film begins, a well-known prosecutor is killed. The murder turns out to be the first in a series of murders - and all the victims are judges. With Italy lapsing into chaos because of the crimes, the craggy and careworn Inspector Rogas (Lino Ventura) is brought in to solve the murders.

An astronaut is on a routine mission in space when he sees the beginning and the end of WW III. Eventually he must return to Earth, and when he does, he finds it populated by ruthless barbarians.

No one can escape from Alcatraz, right? Try telling that to lifer Frank Morris. This Donald Siegel-directed nailbiter is a reenactment of Frank Morris' 1962 attempt to bust himself and two other cons out of The Rock. Eastwood, as Morris, tilts with nasty warden Patrick McGoohan for a while, befriends several fellow prisoners, and picks the guys with whom he'll make his escape. Among his break-out buddies are the Anglin Brothers, with whom he'd served in other lockups, and several others who've got their own special reasons to despise the sadistic McGoohan. Filmed on location at the newly renovated Alcatraz, Escape From Alcatraz was another box-office winner for the Eastwood/Siegel combo.

In "The Celebration," Danish director Thomas Vinterberg explores the explosions that occur when family tensions reach critical mass. The film, which played at the New York Film Festival and won a special jury prize at Cannes, explores the ties (and nooses) that bind when a Danish family reunites at a country retreat to commemorate the family patriarch's 60th birthday. Close on the heels of one sister's suicide, the patriarch's three surviving children bear their own baggage as they buckle under the weight of a loss born of dark deeds. What begins as a birthday party evolves into a bloodletting when Christian, the eldest son, decides he can no longer keep silent about his father's past transgressions.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (La passion de Jeanne d'Arc) is widely regarded as Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's finest achievement and one of the greatest films of all time. Dreyer recreates the trial and execution of St. Joan with near-documentary authenticity, as if one were present at the actual 15th century event and both defendant and accusers were the genuine article. The director's use of huge, probing close-ups -- detailing every pockmark and even the saliva at the sides of the mouths - adds a shocking immediacy which makes it hard to believe that this film is nearly 84 years old.

Anthology series features 65 adaptations of the works of famous S.F. author Ray Bradbury, including such stories as "Marionettes, Inc.", "The Veidt", "A Sound of Thunder", "Mars is Heaven," "Usher "", "The Jar", "The Long Rain", and many more. Featured actors included William Shatner, Drew Barrymore, Elliot Gould, Jeff Goldblum, Peter O'Toole, Shelley Duval, and many others.

Macbeth is reimagined as a samurai in feudal Japan in director Akira Kurosawa's classic adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. Familiar with Orson Welles's more faithful adaptation, Kurosawa chose to place a more personal stamp on his version by translating the events and characters to historical Japan. The equivalent of the tragic Scottish lord is Taketoki Washizu, a valiant warrior whose life is transformed by an encounter with a ghostly female spirit. The spirit offers several predictions, finally stating that Washizu will rise to power over the current warlord. When these predictions begin coming true, he and his ambitious wife decide to ensure his ascendancy to power by murdering the current ruler.

With the Castro de Baroña as the central element of the story, we describe the unique culture of the “castros,” which originated in what today is the autonomous region of Galicia, in northwestern Spain. We go back in history to the Stone Age and compare the Galician settlements with those of England, Ireland, and Scotland, with particular attention to Stonehenge. Dolmens, burial mounds, and stelae reveal to us the evolution of the first inhabitants of Galicia. The Celtic heritage was decisive in the culture of the castros.

The feature-film debut of famed director Louis Malle is an interesting, modern film noir with the classic theme of lovers plotting to kill the husband and make it look like suicide (reminiscent of The Postman Always Rings Twice). Jeanne Moreau, as Florence Carala, gives an astonishing performance, perverse but naive as she leads her young lover down a path that can only lead to doom for both of them. Malle and his cinematographer Henri Decae make extensive use of Paris at night, giving the film the feel of claustrophobia and desperation reminiscent of the classic noir films. The excellent score by Miles Davis adds to the entire effect of this mystery thriller.

A major documentary which tells the remarkable story of the people of South East Asia who fought three wars over three decades to gain their freedom using entirely original colour archive footage.

Le Voyou, also known as The Crook, is a highly stylized French action movie which follows Simon the Swiss during his largest heist. Directed by Claude Lelouch in 1970, and starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, the movie makes use of several cinematic techniques to convey the elusive nature of the title character, among them are: a circular narrative, dialogue littered with conflicting statements, flashbacks, musical montage, multiple styles of film editing, misaligned sound editing, and a movie within the movie.

Hundreds of years ago faraway in Iceland the Vikings began to write down dozens of stories- called sagas. These sagas are great works of art; sweeping narratives based on real people and real events. But as Oxford University's Janina Ramirez discovers these sagas are not just great works of art. They're also priceless historical documents which bring to life the Viking world. Dr Ramirez travels across glaciers and through the lava fields of Iceland to the far north-west of the country to find out about one of the most compelling of these stories - the Laxdaela Saga.

Brilliant study of marital breakdown, artistic compromise, and the cinematic process. Jean-Luc Godard’s subversive foray into commercial filmmaking is a star-studded Cinemascope epic. Contempt (Le Mépris) stars Michel Piccoli as a screenwriter torn between the demands of a proud European director (played by legendary director Fritz Lang), a crude and arrogant American producer (Jack Palance), and his disillusioned wife, Camille (Brigitte Bardot), as he attempts to doctor the script for a new film version of The Odyssey.