Foreign

Korean filmmakers are “kings of creep” and the horror genre topples the titillation scale with their imaginative creativity; a genre that seems to have exponentially grown with the pandemic; things can degenerate and viewing these films confirms the worst case scenario.  Director Yeon Sang-ho scores with an allegorical tale of zombies versus humans, on a train to “Busan”; a “virus” …

Periodically one experiences a film, a television series so remarkably outstanding, that words to describe its potency have yet to be conjured; director Lee Eung-bok’s “Mr. Sunshine” is one of a few to populate this category; it seizes the celestial in every domain: commencing in 1871 a nine-year-old boy “Eugene Choi” flees Joseon after his parents are slain, they are …

2020, destined to be immortalized as the era of Covid-19; traumatic, terrorizing, a year of cauterization, of vulnerability, unlike anything visited upon mankind since 1918, when fifty million people worldwide perished as the influenza pandemic spread its toxic tentacles. Searching for an antibiotic, a tonic to relieve the frustrations, the monotony of confinement in a structured, known environment; television is …

Jerzy Kosinski’s 1965 novel of the same name, translates into a horrific, bestial, brilliant visual experience; not for the squeamish or feint sensitivities; there are scenes seared permanently in my memory; moral turpitude on an unimaginable scale; cruelty practiced by a religious populace. Crimes perpetrated upon a young boy seeking safety, sanity in Eastern Europe, during WWII. He is Jewish, …

Most of us have had it with homeland incarceration; abiding by authoritative regulations, our relationship with the outside world, revolve around our television/computer. Here are a few to view or shun: “GRANDCHESTER”: a British detective series  (PBS, AMAZON PRIME) in its fifth season, surviving the loss of magnetic James Norton (does an about face, from saint to sinner in “Happy …

Unerringly poignant, sublimely sensitive, an exquisite story within a story directed by Hirokazu Koreeda (“The Shoplifters”); actors Catherine Deneuve and Juliette Binoche, imposingly comfortable in their craft are commanding as a mother/daughter team, with unresolved issues; Deneuve, “Fabienne” at the nadir of her career as a scion of the film industry, struggling with memory deficiency, has written a fabricated autobiography; Binoche, is her daughter, “Lumir”, …

This fine Australian film, won prizes at many 2019 film festivals; without sensationalism it splays to the core a family’s horrifying pain of watching their teenage daughter’s loosing battle with intransigent cancer. Director Shannon Murphy (screenplay: Rita Kalnejais) in tandem with an extraordinary cast emotionally sear viewers with a revelatory, insightful vision of coping with the unimaginable. Eliza Scanlen’s, “Milla” …

It is baffling that I missed this profusely profound historical film based on a man, possessing Olympian attributes and daunting, divine courage; Hemingway defines courage as grace under pressure; Jan Baalsrud’s (1917-1988) paranormal, formidable fortitude led to his escape from the Nazi’s in the spring of 1943, Norway; a magnificent testament, celebration of man’s will to transcend normalcy, inhabit the …

Panned by critics when released in 2019; audiences ignored the “panners” and relished its scandalous scenario; an Italian thriller with enough twists to hook one’s attention for the entirety of its eight episodes; coated with an aura of scintillating sleaze, inimitable of Italian and French filmmakers, delicious to ingest and imbibe; superb acting transcends any plot shortcomings: Vittoria Puccini, as …

Benjamin Ree’s idiosyncratic portrait of two disparate individuals whose karmic, destined paths collided and blended into an unlikely love story; a documentary revolving around the theft of two paintings by Czech artist Barbora Kysilkova, cautiously removed from a gallery wall in Oslo, and one of the captured thieves, drug addicted Karl-Bertil Norland; as a painter Barbora looks beyond the surface; non-judgmental, …