Foreign

There was a strange spirituality, almost a reckoning, comparable to exiting a bomb shelter and checking the remains, revealing the hereafter; a ghostly specter of another era permeated the evening; a staged, glitzy Gotham, populated by ideal mannequins, a purified zone of equality and perfection.  Gone were the “hosts” with their self-deprecating, stale schtick, guffaws and unintended slights; winners, given …

With a plethora of options I have become cavalier when investing time in front of my mini movie screen; if it doesn’t look good or kidnap my attention within the first ten minutes, I make a speedy exit, with no regrets. Here are a few that kept me binging well into the wee hours: “Shtisel” (Hebrew: English Subtitles) (Netflix). The …

During the Pandemic Plague filmic buffs have had to improvise in their investment and outlook as to viewing options: gone is the sanctity of the silenced, darkened, behemoth movie house, programed timing between features, bathroom and refueling stations; most missed, is the intimacy of the experience: “date nights”, secretive squeezes, muffled comments, irritated shushes; welcome laceration, cauterization, from monotonous minutiae of daily regimens, in other words the prestige, eminence, partnership with the theatre is erased. No longer lusting, anticipating Friday …

Unless it’s a classic, movies made before 2000, rarely tweak my interest, or a revisit; “The Ice House” directed by Tim Fywell, starring a youthful, heavily-accented Daniel Craig, was a worthy exception; Craig, as “Detective McLoughlin”, cynically sour, cagily perceptive, tries to solve a marvelous mystery of a withered corpse (found in a dilapidated, long disregarded ice house) a missing, …

There are characters that harbor, rent free in fatty corners of one’s brain; they are friends, making their presence known serendipitously, surprisingly when least expected. Over the years I have embraced numerous subjects for a myriad of inscrutable reasons: “House” (a Doctor of cantankerous genius), “Foyle” (WWII British detective), “Morse” (Renaissance man, solving crimes), “Nikki Alexander”, forensic pathologist (“Silent Witness”) …

Jasenovac: the Auschwitz of the Balkans, as seen through the eyes of Serbian, ten-year-old “Dara”; director Predrag Antonijevic concentrates on the entrepreneurial system of slaughter perpetrated on the Serbs by Ustasas (Croation Revolutionary Movement) mimicking Nazi’s “Final Solution”; ingrained xenophobia practiced without impunity on men, women and their progeny; games of execution visited upon inmates and children, witnessed by Dara, …

Awash in bucolic dignity “A Dig” directed by Simon Stone, is a film that is sublimely comfortable, comparable to a well-worn sweater, an unassuming evening with a forever friend, cloaked with time’s cherished reminiscences; an untarnished English landscape; practicing RAF pilots, the only hint of upcoming transitions; it is 1939 and wealthy widow, Edith Pretty (a noble, gifted performance by …

For almost a year, connectedness, education, entertainment have been accomplished in a Zoom milieu; enhancing enforced isolation, allowing the unseen to be seen, the learned expanding intellectual horizons; a remarkable tool, liberating the masses from mandatory house arrest. Recently, in a mini review I touted the enticements of viewing “A French Village”; seven seasons, seventy-two episodes, (2009-2017) seemed daunting, but …

“SPIRAL” (2005-2021) (Amazon Prime) Thumping at the pinnacle of my “Must Watch” list is this gritty, compulsively addictive, detective series; a Paris, rarely seen by tourists: dirty dens of iniquity, gory, egregiously stunning scenarios, no topic is sacrosanct, unbiased demographically, whether victim or perpetrator your proclivities are splayed, vivisected, informed by reality; justice meted in tandem with the crime. Brilliantly …

Two ambitious films excavating the lives of women, justifiably, “on the verge of a nervous breakdown”. “HERSELF” directed by Phyllida Lloyd, starring writer and actor Clare Dunn, focuses on abused wife/mother “Sandra”; she is destitute, living on state benefits, residing in a hotel with her two young daughters (enchanting depictions by Molly McCann and Ruby Rose O’Hara), eking out a …