The 1977 Russian film The Ascent opens with some remarkable snowy weather images, provided by female director Larisa Shepitko, before advancing its war story. A while later, there is a stunning scene wherein one soldier, Rybak, crawls and pushes along in the snow another soldier, the wounded Sotnikov, until the latter begins to resemble a veritable snowman. Shepitko, who died in 1979 at age 41, was a gifted cinematic artist. With Yuri Klepikov she wrote the movie’s script and filmed it wisely and resoundingly. Through medium-long shots, she shows from behind a group of individuals plodding up a hill in cold, dry weather before they espy five hanging nooses: German soldiers intend to execute Russians.

The Ascent‘s themes include sacrifice, Christ-like, on the one hand, diminishment on the other. Indeed, Sotnikov is a Christ who is not a Christ while Rybak is a Judas who is not a Judas. Another theme is a mother’s anguish when death looms, for the mother. It is a grave achievement that really works on the emotions, one of the notable artistic movies of the Seventies.

(In Russian with English subtitles)

Italy’s The Fiances (I Fidanzanti) is not a religious film, but was made by a man with a Catholic sensibility. This is the devout Ermanno Olmi, a director who loved and was gentle with his characters, religious and otherwise. The fiances of the title must separate for 18 months after the man, Giovanni, moves to Sicily for some higher paying work. Olmi creates the impression that Giovanni becomes neglectful of Liliana, his betrothed, before discreetly mistreating her. He goes back to loving her, though, but will it make a difference?

A master of film art, Olmi died in 2018, long after releasing The Fiances in 1963. The movie is devout in its own way as well as clever and poetic.

(In Italian with English subtitles)

Born in 1902, Sarah Rector was a black woman under whose private Oklahoma land there was oil, thus paving the way for a millionaire’s status. Cyrus Nowrasteh‘s film Sarah’s Oil (2025) is loosely based on this interesting story, yielding some inaccurate detail, and it’s moving and tasteful and Christian. All the same, it has limited authenticity about rural life and racial relations in the 1910s. Newcomer Naya Desir-Johnson is fine as 11-year-old Sarah* but her likable character is too precocious to be believable. The film is unconvincing, its Christianity, in point of fact, rather remote.

*Sarah, then, started getting rich at an early age. Unfortunately, she lost most of her wealth in the Great Depression.

The Robert Davi-directed My Son Hunter (2021) proffers an engagingly true performance by Laurence Fox as Hunter Biden. It fits perfectly a ferocious satire on political malfeasance and techno-age conniving. John James is also comically strong as Joe Biden. As amusing as it is barbed—very barbed about the laptop affair—the film eventually fails because of a changing tone and moments of agitprop. It’s a necessary piece which could have been good. Incidentally, if President Trump has been unprincipled about acquiring money, a film about this too would be necessary.

Joaquin Phoenix is superlative, never making a misstep, as a small-town sheriff in Ari Aster‘s Eddington (2025), set in Covid Year 2020. The themes include the adequacy and inadequacy of legal and personal reaction to epidemics, internet deceit and folly, political fury and violence, marital thoughtlessness. It’s a pretty sturdy, and weird, tragicomedy until the last third of it serves up an unsavory, nihilistic mess. Semi-good work, then, from Aster; very palatable work from actors Deirdre O’Connell, Emma Stone and Austin Butler.