Trollhunter (2010) – A terrific mockumentary about three Norwegian college filmmakers who think they’re tracking down and documenting a poacher — a mysterious outdoorsman who parks his shabby camper in various campgrounds and drives out into the woods and night… But nope, he’s actually the Norwegian government’s one-and-only troll manager, hunting down and dispatching trolls who’ve left their normal hunting grounds before they can damage property (or expose the reality of trolls to the world).
It’s never really explained why trolls are such a hush-hush matter (a problem with many “the gummint is hiding it!” conspiracy theories), and the filmmakers sort of humor him as they ride along until they see their first three-headed troll, dragging a club and knocking over trees. (Why does the trollhunter allow them to come along if it’s a secret? Because he’s tired of doing all of this work for crap wages, that’s why.)
The illusion of modern cinema verite stands or falls on the believability of characters who aren’t supposed to be acting or speaking lines. Any weaknesses on that score are kept from me by everyone speaking subtitled Norwegian, but I’ve never let ignorance keep me from recommending a movie, and I’m not gonna start now.
Flesh and Blood: The Hammer Heritage of Horror (1994) – A comprehensive survey of Hammer Films, apparently completed originally in 1994 and then re-edited (with extra footage from later Hammer executives) around 2004. Aside from interviews not only with on-screen stars but behind-the-scenes directors and producers, the special bonus is the narration contributed by Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing themselves (very likely Cushing’s last project, as he died in 1994).
Here’s the full documentary:
Predestination (2014) – This movie belongs to that reality-bending subset of SF films known as the “mindf*ck.” Based on a time travel short story by Robert A. Heinlein, it plays with causality and identity in such a way that one can’t really even condense it to a description without spoilers.
Nevertheless, my assessment of it is a few full points lower than the current IMDb rating of 7.4 out of 10, and since one of my complaints is exceptionally spoileriffic (dealing specifically with the plot climax), I’ll render that in white text below — highlight it to read it.
The non-spoiler complaint: Structurally, the movie is ungainly, as most of the first half is an extended flashback, narrated by one character to another in a bar.
The spoiler complaint: When Ethan Hawke (“The Barkeep”) confronts the Fizzle Bomber (his own psychotic future self), the FB shows a whole bunch of clippings of how his terrorist explosions had actually prevented other, larger disasters. However, no other instance of time-traveling meddling with past events demonstrates how the time travelers are aware of any other timeline; this is not Back to the Future time-traveling. In fact, the entire movie up to that point very clearly shows the Barkeep’s history as a closed causality loop, no matter how many times he recrosses his own path. If there had maybe been clues in those events which we saw from different perspectives, small changes that show that incursions into time create small variation and change, then that ending could have made sense; but as it stands, with everything outside of the last five minutes of the movie showing that what happens will inevitably happen because it already happened (in that main character’s own causality, not by “outside” chronology), the conclusion breaks its own time-travel rules. (Notably, the Fizzle Bomber part of the story was added to Heinlein’s original storyline.)