Foreign

“HIT & RUN”  (ENGLISH/HEBREW) NETFLIX A scintillating collaboration between Israel and Netflix starring inimitable, aggressively masculine, swashbuckling Lior Raz (“Fauda”) as “Segev Azulai”, a benign tour guide in Tel Aviv, his lithesome wife, “Danielle”(Kaelen Ohm) a dancer, whose death, initially assumed accidental, proves anything but; bouncing from New York and Israel, the scenario quivers with layers of duplicity, no one, …

Wearying of Marvel mania, I skipped the theatre, paying the hefty fee to view on Disney+; it has its redeeming moments but in the end, yawning, I could of passed on this familial saga; parents, “Alexei” (always perceptive David Harbour) and “Melina” (unblemished Rachel Weisz) after a twenty year hiatus connect with their super daughters “Natasha” (pinnacle role for Scarlett …

Director Heidi Ewing serves a delightful dish of sublime poignancy; a love story peppered with a quest for personal growth; “Ivan” (Armando Espitia) enters the United States illegally, from Puebla City,  Mexico, to pursue his dream of becoming a chef, leaving his lover, “Gerardo” (Christian Vazquez) behind; both men have suffered from abuse at the hands of their homophobic fathers; …

The term “coming of age” has become tiresome, an overused cliché depicting those indecisive teens yearning for an illusory, still to be defined, purpose of being. Director Michael Caton-Jones’s “Our Ladies” takes place in a small Scottish town in the mid 1990’s, as five rambunctious choir girls hanker for boozy, sexual encounters, on a field trip to Edinburgh. Secure in the parameters of blossoming adulthood these jejune “ladies”, with levity, and at times hilarity, toil towards their mission. “Orla” (poignant, …

A sensitive, sweet, slice of life, an episode fated to be a preserved, sacred memory: a May/December relationship ignited by two disparate individuals brought together by chance: a NYT’s travel writer “Michael” (John Benjamin Hickey) sublet’s an apartment in Tel Aviv, for five days, from “Tomer” (Niv Nissim); Michael, represents the past, living as a gay man through the embryonic, …

Director John Krasinski’s second film about the hunted, haunted Abbott family is surprisingly better than the earlier “A Quiet Place”; it is tautly structured, synchronicity weaves its compelling coincidences involving humans out-maneuvering aerial aliens, keenly sensitive to sound, and presciently frightful to behold; there is magic in its meaning and profoundly acted by the previous cast, and a new member …

Documentarian Luke Holland (1948-2020) spent his life bringing to the fore man’s errors, injustices, crimes against mankind: campaigning on behalf of threatened tribal people; highlighting Ruby Kennedy’s campaign to compensate slave labourers under Hitler’s demonic regime; it is “Final Account” that will stabilize, confirm his legacy of intuitive brilliance; as a grandson of Holocaust victims; commencing in 2008 he interviewed …

“NEW ORDER” (PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED, THEATRES) SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) A highlight of the 2020 Chicago International Film Festival. Excellent FIVE STAR study of civility versus savagery; enfranchised versus disenfranchised; brutal but brilliant analysis of wealth, spurring anarchy. Still resonating after almost a year. And still… FIVE STARS!!!!! “DREAM HORSE” (THEATRES) If you viewed 2015’s “DARK HORSE” and heartily enjoyed an unlikely …

“Revenge is best served cold”; two prime protagonists, serving vigilante reparation after the death of loved ones; Mads Mikkelsen stars as “Markus” a frigid, calculating Afghani soldier, returning to Denmark to avenge the death of his wife, killed in a horrific train accident; Mikkelsen’s deliciously terrifying performance anchors this sublimely well-written (writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen) scintillating scenario; beautifully balanced, “Riders …

“Limbo” in Catholicism, is a bubble where souls of the unbaptized, hibernate until permission is granted to enter the celestial realm; in this scenario, it is a young Syrian refugee longing for permanent asylum on a sparsely populated Scottish island, where he, amongst other exiled, is waiting for the metaphorical gates to open. Director Ben Sharrock with irony and humor …