Best movies like The Periphery of the Base

A documentary about the design of cities, which looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design and features some of the world's foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers.

A Chinese emissary is sent to the Gobi desert to execute a renegade soldier. When a caravan transporting a Buddhist monk and a valuable treasure is threatened by thieves, however, the two warriors might unite to protect the travelers.

Pan Xiao, a young lawyer, goes to a rural small village settled in the western desert lands of China to handle the case of a falcon poacher who has ran over a policeman. Pan wins the case through sophisticated reasoning and forces the poacher to give him his car as a reward. Then, he just drives back home, but the return will not be an easy one.

After the death of her unfaithful husband, Gisele, a social worker of 52 years, falls madly in love with Yannick, one of her former customers and kleptomaniac addict. She tries to repress her feelings, but the attraction she has for this 19 year old boy is beyond comprehension. Her sister, her boss and two children will each turn, disrupt her secret meetings with her young lover.

An estranged family take a trip to the desert in their used RV and become stranded and isolated in the scorching terrain. They soon learn their RV holds terrible, haunting secrets, and it starts killing them off one by one.

Filmed in the Inner Mongolian portion of the Gobi Desert, this film follows a group of oil field workers as they go about their daily routine.

When an oil rig in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia proves unproductive, an aircraft crew are sent to shut the operation down and fly them out. On the flight out over the desert on the way to Beijing, Capt. Frank Towns and co-pilot A.J. are unable to keep their cargo plane, a C-119 Flying Boxcar, in the air when a violent sandstorm strikes. Crash-landing in a remote uncharted part of the desert, the two pilots and their passengers -- a crew of oil workers and a drifter -- must work together to survive by rebuilding the aircraft. Soon, low supplies and a band of merciless smugglers add even greater urgency to their task.

PUMP is a documentary that tells the story of America’s addiction to oil, from its corporate conspiracy beginnings to its current monopoly today, and explains clearly and simply how we can end it — and finally win choice at the pump. Today, oil is our only option for transportation-fuel at the pump. Our exclusive use of it has drained our wallets, increased air pollution and sent our sons and daughters to war in faraway lands. PUMP shows how, through the use of a variety of replacement fuels, we will be able to fill up our cars — cheaper, cleaner and American made — and in the process create more jobs for a stronger, healthier economy. Narrated by Jason Bateman and featuring notable experts such as John Hofmeister former President of Shell Oil, and Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors, PUMP will forever change the way you think about your car — and the fuel that powers it.

Shot in documentary style from the perspective of an almost alien observer, the film is an exploration of the ravaged oil fields of post-Gulf War Kuwait. An effective companion to his earlier film Fata Morgana, Herzog again perceives the desert as a landscape with its own voice, as he glides over seas of oil, geyser-like infernos, monstrous smoke plumes and ashen roadways. With musical accompaniment by Wagner, Prokofiev and Pärt to boot, he observes the soot-covered creatures allured by the blaze.

A polyptych of interconnected stories in different time-zones, shifting between a Yunnan village, a campus, and the Gobi Desert.

A group of US Navy weathermen taking measurements in the Gobi desert in World War II are forced to seek the help of Mongol nomads to regain their ship while under attack from the Japanese.

Johnny Eaton, trouble-shooter for an American oil company drilling in China, leaves his bride-to-be to head for the Orient and straighten out problems at the inland-concession site his company controls.

Three men gamble their lives in space to change the history of the world

A devastating heatwave hits the Los Angeles area and a young expecting couple try to evade it by escaping to a mountain resort town.

The plot centers around the Johnson family (consisting of Chris (Rob Hartz) and Ellen (Kathleen Cameron) Johnson, and their son Casey (Hy Rillero)) of Los Angeles, California, one of a small number of families to survive a global pandemic that, according to the opening of the film, occurs "sometime in the future..." The disease began as a particularly virulent flu strain in Southeast Asia. Efforts made to contain the virus in that portion of the world are ineffective as global transportation networks carry infected individuals all around the world. Hospitals become overloaded, and the public works infrastructure begins to shut down. Eventually, the main characters leave L.A., encountering many hardships along the way. They make it to a friendly small town, where life begins again.

When twenty-four-year-old Jae is released from prison for killing her mother, she returns to her childhood home in small-town Ridgecrest. The desire to go anywhere but there prompts her to agree to join her brother on a road trip out to Death Valley - which results in getting them hopelessly lost in the most stunning, but unforgiving topographical terrain on the planet.

America is the world's largest jailer and our over-burdened corrections system treats individuals as numbers. I COME FROM focuses on incarcerated poets and playwrights who use the power of creativity to change the direction of their lives. Their poems and plays reflect hard lives lived, tough environments negotiated, past mistakes made. This film focuses on six incarcerated artists whose work declares a wish, a will to survive, to grow as human beings and embrace an architecture of change. Recorded at Northpoint, Kentucky Department of Corrections, USA.

When a sudden, unexplained rise in local temperatures threatens to turn Los Angeles County into a parched, lifeless desert, one scientist must put her theories to the test in a desperate effort to prevent the catastrophe.

In the 22nd century, seven explorers set out on a mission to earth's nearest sister planet, AURORA. Their mission - to survey and explore for future colonization. When their ship suddenly malfunctions, the crew is forced to crash land on the planet's surface, where crippling heat, poisonous water, and fierce storms threaten their lives at every turn. With a handful of supplies and little hope of rescue, their only option is a grueling four hundred mile trek to their ship's lost supply bunkers. To survive, the men will have to push their endurance to the limit and entrust their lives to a leader who will risk everything to succeed, no matter what the consequences.

Fur-trapping partners stumble across a cache of gold, but their discovery quickly attracts every greedy villain in the territory.

A Gobi Desert ostrich farmer indebted to the local mob agrees to take care of a kidnapped boy until the father provides the ransom.

Ida and her friend Rebecca return to Ida's house after a harrowing day in the desert where their film-crew friends vanish. Through some quirk in technology it appears they went back in time where Ida's then 20-year-old father kills a crew member during a fight. Ida takes Rebecca to her father's workshop where they look at an old 16mm black-and-white film that captures the fragments of events from that day... a 35 years ago.

Earth from Space takes you on an epic quest to discover the invisible forces and processes that sustain life on our planet and, for the first time, see them in action in their natural environment in vivid detail. These truly unique images will explore the deepest mysteries of its existence, raising profound questions and challenging the old assumptions of how Earth's system works.

David Attenborough sets out on a journey across the seven continents in search of the most impressive and inspiring natural wonders of our planet.

The Pit of Death is what some scientists are calling it, others "Dinosaur Pompeii". Envision dinosaur corpses stacked one on top of each other, piled four and five high. But not just any old dinosaurs, new, well-preserved skeletons - many that have never been seen before. A bizarre T. rex ancestor, a triceratops ancestor, an ancient crocodilian and nearly 40 different species dating back 160 million years, a time in dinosaur history of which little is known. The graves of these new species are uncovered deep in the dry and desolate Junggar Basin of western China and a team of palaeontologists unearth answers to this virtual black hole in dinosaur evolution. Watch as the bones are examined, reconstructed and brought back to life, using high resolution CGI, and slowly probe the mystery of who these dinosaurs were, how they died and what they can tell us about the Lost Age of the Dinosaurs.

Eddie Izzard pushes her body and sense of humour to the limit for Sport Relief as she takes on an immense challenge - travelling to South Africa to run 27 marathons in 27 days to mark the 27 years that their hero Nelson Mandela spent in prison. It is a gruelling, uplifting and hilarious journey through baking heat, high roads and hospitals - but can Eddie make it to the final finish line?

Liz Bonnin is setting out on a global mission to reveal the full scale of the world’s plastic problem – and explore ways in which this looming environmental disaster might be averted. As she chases plastic around the world, Liz is going to show us that this is a crisis far greater than we’d ever imagined…

Andy and his new girlfriend Sasha go to Matt and Kim’s house for Matt’s birthday. When the guys begin to reminisce about all the one night stands they had in college, Sasha states that one night stand sex is the hottest on the “sexual heat” scale. Grace arrives and joins the conversation about which types of relationships have the best sex, with everyone sharing erotic tales about people they know to illustrate their points. As the debate heats up, it slowly becomes apparent that Grace and Andy used to date, which leads to lots of cattiness between Sasha and Grace, forcing Andy to make a decision.

Self condemned to the immense and boundless prison of the Mojave desert, Phoenix leads a life of forced isolation, living by himself in a house as far away as possible from the rest of the world. Phoenix does one thing and one thing only: he digs holes. Every month he digs a hole in the middle of nowhere and buries something. The last stronghold of society stands with the man that frequently delivers his mail. When one day the delivery doesn't happen by the hand of his trustworthy mailman, but by that of the beautiful and quizzical Ariel, Phoenix's life derails in an escalation that leads him to dangerous consequences which will be impossible to escape.

Ring Around the Moon was based on the once-popular novel by Vera Hobart. The story endeavors to invite comparisons between the high-toned romantic adventures of wealthy Gloria Endicott and more earthy amours of low-born Kay Duncan. Caught between both ladies is confused hero Ross Graham.

“A Darkness Swallowed opens on a pair of faded photographs showing an old dented car, one with a child standing beside it and the other without. Speaking in voice-over, Bromberg references a past event, one that will forever haunt her although it occurred before her birth. The film then sinks downward, dipping below the surface of the rational world to mine the seemingly infinite layers of the past stored within the fleshy entrails, chalky bones, sinewy spider webs and gnarled ligaments of both the body and the Earth. Noises – of clanging metal, bells, heartbeats and jazz music, to name only a few – combine to create a dense sound environment, a seemingly immense, three-dimensional space for contemplation." – Holly Willis, L.A . Weekly

Two men are chained together and left to die in the unforgiving, scorching desert sun. With revenge on their minds, they are forced to overcome the elements so that they can kill the sadistic scoundrel that left them to die.

An American Writer's family ties relate back to a late 1950's experiment resulting in a high level haunting of a old wooded house they move into on the banks of a lazy bayou. A government conspiracy is connected to the disappearance of key individuals who have a special connection to the afterlife.

A geological prospector died of thirst in the desert, his wife sets up an inn there to help all prospectors. A young man comes and helps the lady to dig a well. They fall in love but he is actually a escaped prisoner.