Yara (2021): An Unfocused True Crime Narrative
The trouble with Yara (2021) is that in its attempt to tell the whole story, it struggles to tell a consistently engaging story.

An unofficial sequel to the movie "Ivan Vasilyevich Changes His Profession". The events take place on New Year's Eve 1997-1998, 24 years after the events of the movie. According to the plot, the main characters (Shurik, Bunsha, Zina and Ulyana Andreyevna) are going to celebrate New Year's Eve, and the engineer Alexander Sergeyevich Timofeev (Shurik) decides to present his recreated (and modernized) time machine to the guests. Having gone to the XVI century, they find there an aged Georges Miloslavsky, who has been sitting as regent for 25 years instead of Ivan the Terrible, who has run away; the Tsar was so inspired by the profession of Zina and Yakin that he decided to try his hand at filmmaking and went to "Mosfilm" instead of the Tsar's chambers. In an effort to correct the disruption of the course of history, the heroes re-engage the time machine and travel back to the 1970s in search of the Tsar, who dreams of becoming an actor.
The trouble with Yara (2021) is that in its attempt to tell the whole story, it struggles to tell a consistently engaging story.
Barry Jenkins' masterpiece holds up as the story of a lifetime centered on the intersection of Blackness and gay identity.
“I’m always interested in exploring female fantasy, and the sexy witch is a loaded archetype that is simultaneously about men’s fears and fantasies about women, and women’s feelings of empowerment and agency. So whereas we are used to seeing the sexy witch or the femme fatale from the outside, I wanted to explore her from the inside.” - Anna Biller, on why she made The Love Witch
‘Oppenheimer’ is a force to be reckoned with. A biopic that respects the audience’s intelligence.
During the rise of fascism in Mussolini's Italy, a wooden boy brought magically to life struggles to live up to his father's expectations.
A man invents the internet with the help of an otherworldly force. But he soon learns that not all is what it seems. A delightful sequence of images for a delightful fictional story about what lies behind.