Rendez-Vous ’26: The Money Maker

One of Czeslaw Jan Bojarski’s forged 1,000 Franc notes sold at auction for 7,000 Euros in 2015. That means it held its value better than the currency Bojarski was counterfeiting. The press dubbed him the “Cezanne of counterfeit money,” but he remained relatively unknown, both inside and outside France, until the domestic release of Jean-Paul Salome’s The Money Maker (a.k.a. the Bojarski Affair), which screens again during the 2026 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Bojarski didn’t exactly chose to live in France. The Polish Home Army veteran eventually landed there after the Nazis and Communists divided up his homeland. To survive, he forged identity papers. Yet, ironically, he remained “undocumented” for the first ten years after the war. Consequently, he was unable to find employment as an engineer. However, his old black-market boss had a job for him.

Frankly, Bojarski never really liked him, so he doesn’t really mind when Commissioner Andre Mattei’s bust turns him into a freelance counterfeiter. Instead of bloody shootouts to hijack paper enroute to the mint (as seen in the prologue), Bojarski devises a way to make his own, repurposing cigarette papers. However, hiding his real business from his French wife Suzanne will be the tricky part—especially when his conspicuous deception puts stress on their marriage.

The Money Maker might be screening at film festivals, but it is also a movie, in that it serves up an accessible and suspenseful crime story. It has the hubris of high tragedy and the bullet spray of gangster movies. Reportedly, Jean-Pierre Melville was an influence on Salome’s approach, which definitely computes. Yet, what most drives the film is the terrific chemistry shared by Reda Kateb (whom jazz fans will recognize for portraying Django Reinhardt) and Sara Giraudeau, as the Bojarskis. It is a rather appealing romance—that he endangers through his compulsive risk-taking.

Whoever Steals This Book (NYICFF '26), in Cinema Daily US

WHOEVER STEALS THIS BOOK (screening at NYICFF'26) promotes literacy in a roundabout, counterintuitive way. However, it also has manuy of the staples anime fans love (including shapeshifting, magical libraries, and a plucky young heroine) in an endearing, bittersweet genre-hopping fantasy. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold, on Cartoon Network

Batman has many nicknames: the Caped Crusader, Dark Knight, and World’s Greatest Detective. Mystery Incorporated also has a few: the Scooby Gang and those “meddling kids.” Frankly, Batman kind of likes the last one. They get along fairly well—maybe because this isn’t their first meeting. The characters had crossover team-ups in “The Dynamic Scooby-Doo Affair” and “The Caped Crusader Caper,” two installments of The New Scooby-Doo Movies, which was really just another Scooby TV series, even though it pretended its episodes were movies. Their most recent on-screen collaboration really is a movie—that even had a theatrical premiere before releasing direct-to-DVD. Having laid the groundwork for the Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries comic book that launched in 2021 (and still regularly revives with special issues), Jake Castorna’s Scooby-Doo! & Batman: The Brave and the Bold airs this coming Saturday on the Cartoon Network.

Mystery Incorporated’s unmasking successes finally convinced Batman to recruit them for the Mystery Analysts of Gotham City. They simply had to pass a test he arranged with the help of Martian Manhunter and Detective Chimp. Honestly, the real mystery is why Warner Animation hasn’t used Detective Chimp more often. (His guest appearance in Wonder Woman #16 was a delight.) Then, they gang also must sleuth their way to the meeting, where they also meet the Question, Plastic Man, and Black Canary. As it happens, Fred Jones is totally gob smacked by her, which should put to rest a lot of rumors. For the record, the ascot does not help his cause.

Naturally, they want to help solve Batman’s only unsolved case, which coincidentally might be related to Gotham’s latest break-in. It seems the spectral Crimson Cloak’s theft of radioactive isotopes might be related to the unstable teleportation device from Batman’s notoriously open case. It turns out he saved the wrong lab assistant. The innocent one remains missing in the ether, but the other has been remanded to Arkham Asylum, under the name The Riddler. So off to Arkham they go, even though bad things always happen there.

Obviously, there are a lot of jokes in Scooby: The Brave and the Bold. It is a Scooby-Doo movie. However, it features the voices of Diedrich Bader and horror legend Jeffrey Combs as Batman and the Question, neither of whom get the credit they deserve for their DC animated work. Indeed, Bader’s Batman hits the right sardonic notes, indicating he is in on the jokes, at least to the extent he is constitutionally capable of acknowledging humor.

Arguably, the one character who suffers from Paul Giacoppo’s screenplay treatment is Aquaman, who comes off looking and sounding like a clumsy, obtuse meathead. Plastic Man is the same Plastic Man from the 1979 Plastic Man Comedy/Adventure Show. On the other hand, Black Canary and the Question should have seen their fandom stock rise from their appearances in this film.

Doc Fortnight ’26: The Vanishing Point

It didn't start in 2026. It didn’t start with the women life freedom movement. It didn’t even start with the Green protests of 2009. It certainly wasn’t anything Trump created. For decades, Iranians have resisted their oppressive Islamist regime. A painful case in point would be filmmaker Bani Khoshnoudi’s dissident cousin, who was arrested and eventually executed, leaving behind only a small bag of effects. For years, her family grieved her in silence. However, like so many bereaved parents, Khoshnoudi finally speaks out, paying tribute to her cousin and condemning the regime’s human rights abuses in The Vanishing Point, which screens again today as part of the 2026 Documentary Fortnight at MoMA.

In 1988, Khoshnoudi and her husband tried to covertly return to Iran, but she was betrayed by her in-laws. The rest of her life was spent in Evin prison, with no contact with the outside world. When her family retrieved her possessions, they were warned to stay quiet, which they did.

Khoshnoudi, who immigrated to the U.S. with her parents after the 1979 revolution, was banned from returning to Iran in 2009, after directing a film addressing the Green protests. She was probably safer that way, judging from her mother’s anecdote, explaining how she once outsmarted Basij morality police, a story that is both absurdly funny and chillingly frightening.

This film does not focus on Khoshnoudi’s cousin, but she is the inspiration and the catalyst. The grief her family had to hide also helps her relate to the anguished mothers seen in the protest footage she incorporates throughout the film.

Frankly, The Vanishing Point is a little of this and a little of that. There is visceral video of the Iranian police and Basij militia beating and even shooting protesters at point blank range. There are also family interviews and even meditative interludes filmed in the abandoned homes left behind by dissenting Iranians made to disappear.

My Grandfather is a Nihonjin (NYICFF '26), in Cinema Daily US

MY GRANDFATHER IS A NIHONJIN illuminates the Japnese-Brazilian immigrant experience through its charming hand-drawn animation and vibrant tropical colors. It incorporates very real history in an easily relatable family story. CINEMA DAILY US NYICFF '26 review up here.

Rendez-Vous ’26: The Stranger

Albert Camus never revealed his first name, but the character known simply as Meursault introduced generations of high school students to the concept of existentialism. If you haven’t read The Stranger, then you shame your school district. By its nature, Camus’s novel has bedeviled attempted film adaptations, but Francois Ozon finally embraces its philosophical and psychological essence (at least until he suddenly doesn’t) in The Stranger, which was the opening night film of the 2026 Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Meursault’s mother recently died, but it hardly seems to phase him. The French-Algerian settler’s lack of apparent grief is most definitely noticed by the residents of her retirement home—and they will remember it later. Returning to Algiers as if nothing had happened, Meursault spends a day at the beach, where h rekindles a relationship with Marie Cardona, a former co-worker. She clearly considers him a potential future husband, but for Meursault, it is clearly just sex to break up his boredom.

Similarly, Meursault “befriends,” or rather passes the time with his thuggish neighbor Raymond Sintes, because his abusive behavior towards his Arab Algerian lover means nothing to the younger man. However, the vendetta launched by the battered woman’s brother will eventually precipitate a moment of feverish violence that forever changes Meursault’s fate.

So, yes, this is The Stranger. Plus, Ozon incorporates the narrative of Camus’s The Misunderstanding, which Meursault reads in an old newspaper and philosophically expounds upon when Cardona visits him in prison. Yet, whether Camus would approve of Meursault’s interpretation is highly debatable.

Indeed, Ozon suddenly loses the plot during the third act, while Meursault awaits a ruling on his appeal. Meursault is supposed to exist outside conventional emotions and social niceties. (Indeed, the novel’s title has sometimes been translated as The Outsider.) He truly lacks the ability to forge human connections and feels no inclination to fake it. There is something unknowable about Meursault. He is simply different (and perversely, perhaps more honest) than the rest of us.

At least that is Camus’s Meursault. In a radical departure from the novel, Ozon suggests late in the eleventh hour that Meursault’s extreme existential aloofness was largely a function of early life trauma. Just like that, the unknowable becomes easy to grasp—arguable even trite and cliched. The “Stranger” is back in the human fold, which irreparable softens the film’s impact, making it all safely digestible.

It is a shame, because Ozon’s The Stranger could have potentially ranked as the greatest Camus film produced to date. The bracing early discipline, from both Ozon and lead actor Bejamin Voisin, is boldly true to Camus’s vision. Manuel Dacosse’s stark black-and-white cinematography also perfectly suits the story, like a sunny film noir. Truly, every shot was painstakingly composed by Ozon—so much so, true cineastes will find themselves marveling at the film’s austere beauty.

Voisin is also perfectly cast as Meursault. Despite his high-profile work in Apple TV+’s Careme, he is largely an unknown quantity in the United States and therefore carries no baggage into the film (unlike Marcello Mastroianni in Visconti’s 1967 adaptation). Again, “discipline” is a word that aptly applies to his performance, as well as “brooding intensity.”

Pendragon Cycle: The Last True Bard

When Merlin talks about the “Summer Kingdom” his tone and imagery are not so different than Ronald Reagan’s vision of a “shining city on a hill.” However, to realize such lofty ambitions, the men of Britain must fight—and many will likely fall in battle. However, if they submit to the Saxons now, all their dreams of independent dignity will surely die. They are not quite ready, but the battle must be joined anyway in “The Last True Bard,” the first season finale of creator Jeremy Boreing’s Pendragon Cycle: The Rise of Merlin (based on Stephen R. Lawhead’s novels) which premieres today on Daily Wire+.

Even though Merlin returns from the North with King Custennin’s reinforcements, King Aureliius’s army is still badly outnumbered. However, desperate times call for desperate battle strategies. Uther and Custennin devise a high-risk plan that could work, but the battle chief would feel more confident if Merlin led their armies—even though a resulting victory would likely elevate him to the throne of Britain’s new High King, rather than his brother, Aurelius. However, this is exactly the kind of temptation Merlin has struggled to resist.

There will be no avoiding the bloodshed in “The Last True Bard,” so fittingly, the final episode is helmed by action movie specialist Jesse V. Johnson. Things will truly get Medieval.  Yet, the highlight might be Merlin’s inspirational song, which is too haunting to compare to a pre-game pep talk. It is hard to describe, but it might be the best staged scene of the first season.

The finale also drops a small but significant revelation that completely changes viewers’ understanding of many previous scenes—yet it makes perfect sense in the context of the show. The season closer also faithfully reflects the spiritual dimensions of Lawhead’s novels by emphasizing not all conflicts are physical in nature. Tantalizingly, it also leaves viewers wanting more with a massively Arthurian tease for the next anticipated season.

The Hunt, on Apple TV+

Sure, Franck and his cronies are French, but they own guns, hunt, and drink heavily, all at the same time. They are not the only ones. During a Sunday hunting excursion, a rough, somewhat legally questionable hunting party opens fire on Franck’s friends, so they shoot back, killing one of them. It was self-defense, but it ignites a feud worthy of hill country in writer-director Cedric Anger’s six-part The Hunt, which (finally) premieres today on Apple TV+.

The Hunt was delayed several months due to legal issues when the rights holders of Douglas Fairbairn’s novel Shoot and the 1976 film adaptation (starring Cliff Robertson and Ernest Borgnine) objected to similarities. Yes, they share common elements, but if they were truly actionable, hundreds of films should have paid clearance fees to Richard Connell’s estate for The Most Dangerous Game, before it fell out of copyright in 2020.

Regardless, Franck, Xavier, Simon, and Gilles all find themselves in a fire-fight that fateful day. The gang shot first, giving a Xavier a profusely bleeding trump-like bullet wound to the ear, but apparently Franck’s group are more accurate shots. Fearing the consequences of their actions, the ambushed hunters hope to return to their lives and pretend it never happened. However, the outlaws soon start stalking and threatening Franck and friends.

Clearly, Franck is the alpha male of their pack, so the well-heeled hardware store owner takes the lead sleuthing out their rivals. In contrast, Xavier, Simon, and Gilles are all quite sad and rather passive. Leo is easily the next most formidable member of their circle. He did not accompany them on that particular trip, but he immediately rallies behind them. As a medical doctor, he can also treat Xavier’s wounds off the books.

Logically, Franck also has the most to lose, starting with his more sophisticated wife Krystel, Leo’s medical partner. They also have a young son with discipline problems and a teen daughter who just started dating a suspiciously older boyfriend. However, Franck’s greatest vulnerability might be the mistress he has kept out of sight.

Anger’s non-adaptation is a presentable thriller, but a tighter, shorter presentation would have thrilled even more. Frankly, this could and probably should have been a feature, because Anger gives us more than enough scenes of Franck driving on endless errands and tripping around the thugs’ roadhouse. However, the subplot following Krystel’s efforts to find a missing runaway teen pay-off better than expected.

NCIS Sydney: South of Nowhere

Considering how many hostile foreign powers are currently targeting the U.S. and our allies, would the Navy’s resources truly be best spent on Antarctic climate research? This episode of CBS’s mega-procedural franchise makes a good case for the negative (probably unintentionally). Regardless, when a wave of violent madness sweeps through the scientific station, NCIS Agent Michelle Mackey’s lucky team happens to be the closest, so they must respond in “South of Nowhere,” the mid-season premiere of creator-showrunner Morgan McNeill’s NCIS Sydney, which premieres tonight on CBS.

According to the initial report, one scientist suddenly went nuts, killing another, but was quickly subdued. However, when Mackey and her team arrive (minus the high-strung Blue Gleeson, who has dog-sitting duties), they find a bloodbath. They immediately suspect an airborne “zombie virus,” until they find a survivor.

Nevertheless, the Agents must make contingencies in case some of their comrades turn into rabid killers. Much to the credit of McNeill and co-writer Josh Sambono, this episode directly references the classic The Thing Another World. However, given the context, they probably really mean to name-drop John Carpenter’s 1982 re-conception, The Thing, which is also a great film.

Either way, the Antarctic setting is relatively ambitious for a weekly procedural series—even without extensive outdoor location shots. This episode also builds urgency with a countdown to the six months of solstice night due to engulf the polar region in less than four days. As a bonus, it also acknowledges the duplicitous nature of one of Putin’s closest allies.

The Hole: 309 Days Before the Tragedy

Suppose Linton never existed in Wuthering Heights, so Earnshaw arranged a marriage between Catherine and Heathcliff. Then imagine their story turns into a horror movie that culminates in a notorious national trauma. That is the sinister and complicated fate in store for Sugeng and Arum in director-screenwriter Hanung Bramantyo’s The Hole: 309 Days Before the Tragedy, which EST N8 is repping internationally, following its Rotterdam festival premiere.

Lubang Buaya is a village in East Jakarta, not far from an Air Force base, where the Indonesian Communist Party murdered seven Army officers and unleashed chaos during their failed coup attempt. Frankly, the CIA had its doubts regarding the official story, but Sukarno, who had been flirting with the Communists with his anti-imperialist rhetoric, used the incident to decidedly turn against them. Frankly, even when Bramantyo finally reveals all, it is rather hard to see how the Sugeng and Arum’s story ultimately leads into that historical controversy—but somehow it does.

Arguably, even Sugeng’s marriage to Arum seems a little iffy, since Sukarya raised them both as his children. However, since Sugeng, the former street urchin, is not a blood relation, the local Imam gives his blessing. Unfortunately, the celebration will be short-lived. Since he knows the region, the national police assign Sugeng the investigation into the gruesome ritual murders of several prominent local citizens. Tellingly, each victim was denounced by the local Communist newspaper as part of their shameful gang of seven.

That would certainly constitute motive, but it does not explain the spectral woman who starts terrorizing Arum. As the bodies pile up, the Imam suggests it might be the work of curses cast from a Moorish Andalusian book of black magic. There also might be reason to suspect the local Imam could be somewhat complicit in the village’s sins.

Frankly, horror fans should make a point of watching The Hole whenever the opportunity arises, because it is frighteningly easy to imagine campaigns to censor it, for both religious and political reasons. Bramantyo takes some big, fearless swings and tackles some highly protected sacred cows. Its gutsy filmmaking, to the point of even thrilling with its defiant iconoclasm.

However, Bramantyo still takes care of genre business, building suspense out of an atmosphere of corruption and foreboding. There is definitely bad karma at work, to the point that viewers’ sympathies start to flip, or at least become considerably more complicated.

NYICFF ’26: The Scarecrows’ Wedding (short)

Who needs a brain, if you’ve already found the one? Harry O’Hay and Betty O’Barley are perfect for each other, but he could lose her, because he is a little slow—in more ways than one. Hopefully the titular ceremony still happens in Samantha Cutler & Jeroen Jaspaert’s animated short, The Scarecrows’ Wedding, the latest BBC & Magic Light Pictures adaptation of a Julia Donaldson children’s book, which screens as part of the Shorts for Tots block at the 2026 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

It used to just be O’Barley in the field, but it attracted more crows than she could shoo, so the farmer added O’Hay. They immediately make a good team. Soon, they also discovered they make a good couple. Despite his shyness, O’Hay proposes and she accepts. Of course, even in a field, a wedding requires a lot of preparation, but unfortunately, O’Hay mistakenly accepts help from some of the lowest animals in the local ecosystem.

His long absence starts to alarm O’Barley, especially when the farmer replaces him with Reginald Rake, a smarmy ladies’ man scarecrow. O’Barley can tell he is bad news, but he keeps hitting on her, in less and less charming ways.

Rob Brydon has been a mainstay of the Magic Light Pictures Donaldson adaptations. In this case, he sounds hilariously sleazy as Rake. He gives this short film the infusion of personality its lead voices, the blandly vanilla Jessie Buckley and Domhnall Gleason can’t supply.

Scream 7, in Cinema Daily US

SCREAM 7 finally understands you can't have a Ghostface rampage without Sidney Prescott. The franchise successfully makes ammends for past on-screen and off-screen blunders by bringing back Neve Campbell and Kevin Williamson for the best installment since the Wes Craven films. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Kimo Stamboel’s Janur Ireng: Sewu Dino the Prequel

Sabdo and Intan Kuncoro are like the poor relations of a gothic novel. After their father dies and their house burns down, their wealthy Uncle Arjo takes them into his home. The hyper-class-conscious might suspect the hardscrabble siblings will never be considered full members of Arjo’s family, but their uncle and his wife Lasmini are only too eager to accept them. Of course, there are terrifying reasons for this in Kimo Stamboel’s Janur Ireng: Sewu Dino the Prequel, which just opened in Cambodia and Vietnam (with EST N8 currently repping other territories).

Don’t worry if you haven’t seen Stamboel’s Sewu Dino. This is the prequel, so newcomers can easily follow the story, based on SimpleMan’s online story (just like Stamboel’s Dancing Village: The Curse Begins)—at least until the final scene somewhat bafflingly links it back to the prior (subsequent) film.

Regardless, orphaned Sabdo and Intan are rather intimidated by their stately new home. Indeed, despite the luxury, the Kuncoro manor absolutely drips with bad vibes. The decidedly gothic set-up soon takes a rather folk horror turn when Uncle Arjo forces Sabdo to sacrifice a goat. In fact, such ceremonies become a bizarrely regular thing.

It turns out their late father had good reasons for cutting ties with his brother’s branch of the family. These Kuncoros are scary people and Sabdo’s prospective role will be especially ominous, involving rites and literal demons. What transpires probably holds a great deal of tragic irony for those who have seen the original Sewu Dino (which currently streams on Prime). However, it probably lands with even greater force for those who haven’t.

Either way, there is an extended scene of third act lunacy that is so jaw-droppingly over-the-top, it ought to make Janur Ireng a cult classic and a perennial favorite for midnight movie screenings. You’ll know it when you see it. Yet, before that, Stamboel crafts a moody folk horror film, rich with atmosphere and foreboding.

Baki-Dou: The Invincible Samurai, in Cinema Daily US

Martial arts fans will appreciate how Netflix's BAKI-DOU: THE INVINCIBLE SAMURAI explores the techniques and philosophies of various disciplnes. It even offers some lessons in the history of the Bushido Code, but keep in mind, this action-driven series is all about the fighting. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Marshals, in The Epoch Times

CBS's MARSHALS lacks the complexity and biting wit of the original YELLOWSTONE, but it is a rugged, outdoorsy procedural, featuring sympathetic veteran characters, energetically executed action scenes, and an appreciation for the western way of life. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

Capital Irish ’26: Sanatorium

To quote Jobim’s “Waters of March:” “It’s the mud, it’s the mud.” For decades, Ukrainians visited the Kuyalnyk Sanatorium because the mud from the surrounding beaches is thought to have medical value. Traditionally, it served as a combination rehab center and luxury resort. During the Communist Era, only the well-connected could book a room, even though the hulking towers had several thousands. Today, occupancy is below 20%. Understandably, the Russian shelling greatly hurt their business, but even before that, the property had seen better days. Irish filmmaker Gar O’Rourke observes the staff as they try to hold the Kuyalnyk together for another season in the documentary Sanatorium, which screens Sunday during the Capital Irish Film Festival.

When it was constructed, all big Soviet-era buildings were supposed to look like the Kuyalnyk, but time is harsh on this kind of Brutalist architecture. The Soviet construction materials haven’t exactly aged well either. Consequently, Dmitriy, the burly general manager (who seems to hold at least a partial ownership stake), must constantly oversee repairs, which more often involve short-term patches rather than long-term fixes.

The guest rooms are spartan and the common areas look threadbare. Yet, its faded grandeur clearly appeals to some clients. Once you acclimate to the Kuyalnyk, it starts to look and feel like the sort of place where Chekhov characters would settle in for extended residences.

O’Rourke takes a scrupulously observational approach, but he breaks up his shots and seeks out colorful staff conversations. Sanatorium might be comparatively quiet, but it never qualifies as static “slow cinema.”

Although not entirely preoccupied with Putin’s dirty war, inevitably the war periodically intrudes on the Kuyalnyk and their guests. Anyone who stays for more than a day or two is bound to visit the sanatorium’s bomb shelter. Since the invasion, they have also hosted many rehabbing soldiers.

It seems like the medical director, Dr. Olena, practices legit medicine, but the mud treatments look like big messy placebos. Much of the equipment also appears retro in the wrong kind of way. However, the Kuyalnyk’s repeat customers swear by the mud.

George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Graphic Novel Adaptation

George Orwell was a socialist, who wrote the most insightful and devastating critique of socialism in the history of English literature. He was complicated. Nevertheless, reports the upcoming animated adaptation of Animal Farm will be reconceived as a satire of corporate capitalism is frankly Orwellian. It is like transmuting Margaret Atwood’s Handmaid’s Tale into an indictment of radical feminism. Happily, this graphic novel adaptation gets Animal Farm right. Socialism is hypocritical, wasteful, oppressive, and often alarmingly violent in Christina Dumalasova & Katerina Horakova’s faithful adaptation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, illustrated by Michael Purmensky, which goes on-sale this coming Tuesday.

If you do not the story of Animal Farm you truly need to read this graphic novel—or better yet, Orwell’s original novella. Regardless, it allegorically represents the Russian Revolution, when the animals of Manor Farm rise up against their abusive drunkard farmer, Mr. Jones.

Inspired by the venerable boar Old Major, the revolution initially appears to be a smashing success. However, once Old Major dies, a power struggle emerges, between two pigs, the earnest Snowball and the Machiavellian Napoleon. Frankly, Snowball might not fully realize he and Napoleon are rivals, until it is too late. Regardless, Napoleon and his sycophant pigs soon consolidate power, with the help of the attack dogs they raised from puppies.

Instead of finally enjoying some rest, the animals find themselves working even longer hours—except the pigs, of course. This seems to contradict the Revolutionary Laws painted on the barn wall, but every time the animals check, they find a mysterious new addendum to explain it away.

Honestly, Dumalasova and Horakova do both Orwell and readers full justice. Their adaptation brilliantly exposes the methods of totalitarian regimes, as well as the ruinous economic implications of socialism. Orwell always described himself as a “democratic socialist” with the emphasis on the democratic, but he constantly cautioned socialism without democratic safeguards would inevitably descend into totalitarianism. Seeing Orwell’s words so vividly illustrated can only inspire skepticism of and aversion to the crooked ideology it ruthlessly satirizes.

Indeed, socialism often gets called out throughout the graphic novel. It also fully explores the corrosive consequences of propaganda. Unlike the 1954 animated film, Purmensky’s animals are never cute. Yet, some, like tireless Boxer the horse, are invested with such dignity, the tragedy of their fates hits even harder.

How to Shoot a Ghost (short), on Criterion Channel

There are scary ghosts like The Changeling and The Haunting, funny ghosts like Topper and Blythe Spirit, and sad, regretful ghosts like Casy Affleck in A Ghost Story. These two ghosts are definitely the latter. You could almost call them depressing, but they deserve a little slack, since they are newly dead. Sadly, their lives did not work out as they hoped. Spending their afterlives in a strange city also seems like a tough break, but they find some kind of companionship with each other in Charlie Kaufman’s short film How to Shoot a Ghost, which premieres Sunday on Criterion Channel.

He is a translator and she is a photographer, but both were profoundly unhappy. (According to the closing credits, they are Anthi and Rateb, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to their monologues). It seems vaguely implied they both also self-medicated through the hedonistic Athens nightlife, which may have in some ways led to their demise. They were expats largely unfamiliar with the city, but now they are evidently stuck there. Apparently, ghosts can’t travel.

Rather logically, the ancient city has many ghosts (whose pictures Anthi constantly snaps—call it ghost photography), but you’d want to give a lot of them a wide berth. Maybe those are the one screenwriter Eva H.D.’s anti-American narration blames on “CIA torture chambers.” In contrast, she expresses no such sympathy for those assassinated by Communist paramilitaries, like journalist Nicholas Gage’s mother Eleni Gatzoyiannis (as documented in the film Eleni).

Maybe Kaufman’s short should have talked less, because Ella van der Woude’s score is quite expressive, especially the eloquent tenor, alto, and bass clarinet solos contributed by Hristo Goleminov. Jesse Buckley and Josef Akiki voiceovers for the photographer and the translator are appropriate meditative and mournful, as well. The disembodied rendering of their voices is initially distracting and distancing, but it is also admittedly quite ghostly.

Smother: The Horror of Austrian Motherhood

Michaela is a bad mother, but it runs in the family. Her mother was the notorious crazy lady who killed herself. Maybe being the drunk driver who nearly accidentally killed herself and her daughter isn’t so bad in comparison. It still isn’t great—as her husband constantly reminds her. Regardless, when Michaela finally returns home, she will either face her ghosts or succumb to them in Achmed Abdel-Salam’s Smother, which releases Friday on IndiePix Unlimited.

Hanna still hasn’t forgiven her mother for the accident and her father Alex isn’t exactly letting it go either. Unfortunately, Alex caters to Hanna’s neurotic behavior and psychosomatic illnesses, which dramatically escalated after the incident. However, she enjoys the countryside when the family returns to Michaela’s ancestral home for her grandfather’s funeral.

Michaela hasn’t been home for years—and it is easy to see why. The crass locals still openly gossip about her mother’s notorious suicide. Understandably, Michaela repressed many of her childhood memories of that tragic day, but they start rushing back when she starts seeing vision of her mother. Her Grudge-like mother seems to have unfinished business with her—or maybe Hanna.

Smother is the kind of so-called “elevated” horror movie that devotes all its time to elevation, shortchanging the horror. There are some creepy elements introduced, but Abdl-Salam allows them to wither on the vine. Some might euphemistically describe Smother as a “taut slow burn,” but the truth is it often drags, which is a real drawback for a horror film. Rather confusingly, the film also clearly implies Peppi, the elderly neighbor abuses his partially dementia-afflicted wife Gerti, but then completely ignores the implications.

Scout Taylor-Compton’s Bring the Law

Det. Desmond Mitchell’s new Chatsworth-area territory is so lawless, it makes him miss Oakland. Frankly, crimelord Glen Gargos considers it his territory. Most of the cops tend to agree, perhaps including a member or members of Mitchell’s new team. However, Mitchell is too hardheaded and has too little to lose, so he refuses to play ball in Scout Taylor-Compton’s Bring the Law, which releases this Friday in theaters and on-demand.

Gargos’s Red Flag gang runs the drugs and human trafficking in the area. They have also branched out into the protection racket, but they aren’t as good at it—judging from the bodega bodies they left behind. Mitchell’s team cautions against “rocking the boat,” but he prefers to enforce the law. (Even weirder, his new office happens to be in the Los Angeles MDC Federal Prison, at least judging from the exterior shots.)

It is pretty clear someone is on the take, especially when a hit squad reaches a potential witness right after Mitchell. Unfortunately, one of gunmen happens to be Laura Sanchez’s junkie brother. Mitchell is not exactly close with her, but the diner waitress is one of the few people in the neighborhood who will talk to him. So far, his best source of intel is Olaf, the homeless curmudgeon, who doesn’t expect Mitchell to live much longer.

Bring the Law is unusually gritty and cynical, even by the standards of Mickey Rourke VOD movies. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but the decidedly cheap look is a real drawback. In her directorial debut, Taylor-Compton (best-known for starring in Rob Zombie’s Halloween movies) seems to be going for throwback grunge, which isn’t a terrible strategy. Yet, despite Rourke’s creepy preening as Gargos, the themes and subject matter are too conventional to appeal as exploitation nostalgia. It is just a conspicuously low budget cop movie.