Foreign

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 …

Two fascinating series based on serial killers; “13 COMMANDMENTS” focuses on a fictional avenger, vigilante “Moses” who justifies his acts by eliminating the Sodom Gomorrah milieu where the commandments are egregiously ignored, violated by those who transgress at the mortal sin measure. The avenger “Moses” tries the patience of police detectives “Peter Devriendt” (Dirk Van Dijic) and “Vicky Degraeve” (Marie …