The World Before Your Feet
In 2009, Matt Green quit his engineering job and started walking. His latest trek involves hiking every street in New York City, totaling 6,000 miles. Jeremy Workman’s documentary follows him on his odd but endearing quest. Green claims to live on $15 a day. With no residence, he flops with friends and cat-sits. Disclaiming any intent to monetize his adventure, he unearths the history of New York’s hundreds of neighborhoods and posts the findings on his blog.
The Possessed
The 1965 erotic thriller The Possessed is a dark murder mystery with origins in a true crime story. Italian directors Luigi Bazzoni and Franco Rossellini made good use of their stark lakeside setting, with evocative black and white cinematography conveying a brooding, wintry sense of loss. Some of the visual compositions are unforgettable. The wide, fish-eye lenses help distort the distinction between dreams and waking, intuition and fact. The unsettling score heightens the disturbing suspense.
My Name is Julia Ross
So Dark the Night
A young woman, Julia Ross, awakens in a strange mansion overlooking the sea with a new name, a wedding ring on her finger and a husband she had never met. The intriguing 1945 production by director Joseph H. Lewis (The Big Combo) merges film noir with a metaphor of female subjugation. Despite its title, Lewis’ follow-up, So Dark the Night (1946), opens in a lighter tone before settling into a twisted psychological murder mystery.
Unknown Soldier
In the summer of 1941, the Finnish government allied itself with Nazi Germany and joined the invasion of the Soviet Union. They sought revenge for Josef Stalin’s 1939 attack on their country. Directed by Finland’s Aku Louhimies, Unknown Soldier follows an army unit on the front line. The soldiers’ attitudes range from gung-ho to subversive with much grumbling about “Hitler’s war.” Unknown Soldier is best at depicting the cold fear that is every soldier’s comrade in arms.
