With an intergalactic cast of thousands, Koji Masunari's colorfully explosive debut feature sets a new high for visual spectacle and sheer inventiveness of character design - in what has to be one of the most gleefully surreal depictions of alien life forms ever portrayed in cinema. It seems like just another lazy summer is in store for Amane and her older cousin Natsuki. Lolling about the Japanese countryside, the days are blithe and boundless. But...

When legendary Russian auteur Aleksei German died in 2013, he left behind this extraordinary final film, a phantasmagoric adaptation of the revered sci-fi novel by the Strugatsky Brothers (authors of the source novel for Tarkovsky's Stalker). Hard to be a God began percolating in German's consciousness in the mid-1960s, and would actively consume him for the last 15 years of his life. He brought the film close enough to completion for his wife and...