Foreign

Director Emerald Fennell’s (“Saltburn”) fecundity lies in her darkest, imaginative, iconoclastic psyche; within minutes Emily Bronte’s  (1818-1848) novel slips into obscurity, overshadowed by Fennell’s castration of  one of literature’s most turbulent, obsessive love stories written when Emily was twenty-seven; imbued with a bleak, wet landscape reminiscent of her home in the Yorkshire Moors of Northern England; dying of tuberculosis at …

Of the well over 200 “Dracula” films this “Dracula” by director Luc Besson touches the romantic core of the doomed Count, destined to live for eternity ferreting the reincarnation of his slain wife “Elisabeta”; like this year’s “Frankenstein”, “Dracula” is gorgeously, Gothically gory, seductively sensual, religiously rebellious and a total triumph. Starring Caleb Landry Jones (lacking the charisma of Frank …

Director Rebecca Zlotowski pairs with actors Jodi Foster and Daniel Auteuil in a slightly fuzzy, somewhat compelling film with superb, saucy acting and a vacillating premise, which eventually proves worthy of watching. Foster’s fluency in French blends with life in Paris as psychiatrist “Dr. Lilian Steiner”, investigating the death of one of her patient’s, “Paula”(Virginie Efira)  from a supposed suicide. …

Approaching Academy Award season, cinephiles challenge themselves to see all the nominees, many no longer in theatres, fortunately able to catch up in the comfort of couch and home. Now in the age of Netflix, Amazon Prime, and a plethora of streaming choices, no longer excluded from the mainstream, here are a few Academy Award contenders readily available to satisfy …

Sabbaticals are refreshing, rejuvenating, a time to canvass the unnurtured, unexplored; a time to dive into the abyss of tasted, but underdeveloped curiosities: authors, like iconic genius Stefan Zweig, loved, but volumes yet to become “friends”, yearning to be guzzled; directors whose nascent films, unwatched: John Carpenter, maven of horror, finally, horrifically requited; vistas of the world, tempting, luring, begging …

Never have I fully understood the horror genre and its universal appeal: exhilarating, titillating, blood-pumping depravity erasing the mundanity of one’s everyday life?  Maybe the exploration of “man’s inhumanity to man”, when does cruelty, bullying expand into egregious, litigious behavior; when does moral turpitude usurp morality, leaving souls reveling in the demonization of mankind; chastity, decency, civility, undermined by pure …

Those weaned, gleaned on the poetic property of Jane Austen (1775-1817) will swoon over the enchanting, inappropriately titled “Jane Austen Wrecked My Life”; directed by Laura Piani it marvelously explores protagonist “Agathe Robinson” (insightfully wondrous Camille Rutherford)  a lonely, frustrated bookseller and romance novelist, through a contemporary lens, suffused with the late 18th, initial 19th century aesthetics: love, marriage, satirizing …

On a recent sojourn in the city of bemouth culture I experienced a film, never seen, ever heard of, with wonderment and enchantment, a love story, without salacious, physical intimacy, just poignant, heart encompassing devotion. A story of love at first glimpse, palpating with bona fide longing, yearning for requitement. Directed by Max Ophuls (1902-1957), based on a novella written …

I liked “Anora” (review here) but never to the extent of its victories at this year’s Academy Awards; there is an undiagnosed, mystifying meme that seems to infect, percolate between the voters; this year it reflects the mission to elevate the sex-worker to the same level as “Oppenheimer”, “12 Years a Slave” etc. I have no objection to the theme …

Another banner year in movie-making history; in so many ways it was glorifying, shockingly innovative and uproarious, titillating fun. Countless times I exited smiling, smirking, thinking “I got it”, I wasn’t fooled, but enriched by the ambiguity; directors have unleashed their colossal control, allowing viewers to fill in the blanks. Recently a woman told me that she felt from the …