It is a hilarious, warm, brutal melange that works because it has heart without sentimentality and authenticity without strain.

It’s pretty good fun, and could almost be described without sarcasm as a scrappy little picture, like most of Boden and Fleck’s other work.

Rather than an over-reliance on special effects, Captive State thrives on the riveting performances from specifically from John Goodman. This is a cat-and-mouse game between the authoritarian pawns of the aliens with immense technological power and the resistance hiding in plain sight. This is one of those films that will have you thinking in the end.

Catherine the Great..is a dream of a subject: ruthless, compassionate, brilliant, vulnerable, and troubled, who ruled the largest country on Earth for 30 years while maintaining a genuinely spicy private life.

Ferguson’s is a no-nonsense approach: here’s how it is, you better believe it. It’s not especially charming, but it certainly isn’t boring – it’s a a rollicking roller-coaster ride through time, so much fun it doesn’t even feel like school.

The film is about a mystery that isn’t solved, and how that inconclusiveness spotlights the insidious functions of society.