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DoPs Gromov and Chamidchodjaev's bleak, ravishing images will probably sweep you away into existential la-la land, that is, if you manage to keep your eyes open long enough, because Dmitry Mamulia's rambling 135 minute "The Criminal Man" is truly a visual tour de force. Unfortunately that's all it is. It has none of the dynamism of "The Deer Hunter" or the haunting suspense of "Stalker". I happen to love long, meditative films but, crikey, in our party of three, two of us fell asleep! It would appear that some filmmakers are such consummate craftsmen, so carried away by the technique of constructing and shooting scenes (even pointless ones), of evoking a dreamy atmosphere (merely for its own sake), they forget that they're also supposed to be telling a story. As Tarkovsky said, any director worthy of the name, has to have an authentic, personal vision and if he or she does, this will allow them to get away with practically anything. But vision is something that can't be crafted or counterfeited and if viewers cotton on that a director is simply trying to manipulate them, i.e., to generate feelings he himself doesn't happen to feel, the end effect is just irritation, or even worse - boredom.

Negative Numbers by Uta Beria is a heart-felt, character-driven prison film focusing on a rugby program in a juvenile detention centre. It was recently shown at the Tbilisi International Film Festival and is slightly reminiscent of Tony Richardson's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner which is also about sport in a "reform school" and was also screened at the festival. For obscure political reasons a riot is being planned and the head boy Nika, who rules his fellow inmates through a combination of good looks, courage and the support of the prison authorities, has to navigate between competing loyalties. This kind of edgy, realistic, cinema verité, in which "you are there", is extremely effective at documenting exotic settings and conveying tension. The only problem is that, inevitably, prison movies have a lot of characters (in this case with foreign sounding names) and if there's a complicated story-line, viewers may have trouble keeping track of all the details. All of which means you might want to watch this thoughtful film a second time to get even more out of it.