Foreign

A lugubrious film of bleakness and ennui, based on the 2002 autobiographical novel by renown Israeli writer Amos Oz (aka Klausner, 1939). Natalie Portman directs, adapts and stars as Oz’s clinically depressed mother Fania (1913-1951), and her march towards extinction. The location is Jerusalem, 1947. Told through the wizened eyes of an elderly Oz (understand why it took him a …

Reinhard Heydrich (1904-1942), aka the “Butcher of Prague”, architect of Hitler’s Final Solution was assassinated by Czech resistance fighters on June 4th, 1942. Director Sean Ellis personifies the seven courageous parachutists who willingly sacrificed their lives to fulfill their ambitious, bleak mission. Focusing on Jozef Gabcik (intensely, efficaciously portrayed by Cillian Murphy: “Breakfast on Pluto”, “Wind that Shakes the Barley”) …

Notwithstanding, Meryl Streep’s iconic acting acuity and director Stephen Frears good intentions the film is lackluster and sparkless compared to France’s  “Marguerite” (with the incomparable Catherine Frot); Florence Foster Jenkins (1868-1944) was a music patron, completely tone deaf,  delusional in fancying  herself an opera diva; because of her wealth, generosity and protective partner, many suffered through her screeching interpretations of …

Here is the perfect parcel for lovers of “heist” films ( “The Italian Job”, “Oceans 11”, etc. “The Bank Job”); director Daniel Calparsoro serves  a Spanish/Argentine thriller that guarantees total satisfaction; I did not want it to end! Commencing on a tsunami- drenched day in Valencia, Spain, a frazzled,  frustrated bank manager (stunning Patricia Vico) realizes her position is in …

December, 1945 Poland. The brutal, blanched landscape has no intention of thawing, continuing to camouflage an isolated convent where atrocities have been initiated; piety butchered by unadulterated, unaccountable Russian soldiers. Director Anne Fontaine’s formidable “The Innocents”, based on an actual event,  challenges viewers to tread where sanctity has been annihilated, dehumanized by man. The second world war is over and …

Based on John le Carre’s (1931) 22nd book, directed by Susanna White, would have fared better as a television mini-series; even then it could not match the recent BBC production of “The Night Manager” staring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie. The tepid title lends little legitimacy to what the masses surmise as traitors: Mata Hari, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Aldrich …

“When a great genius appears in the world you can know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him.” Jonathan Swift Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) railed against his detractors until he was championed by Max Perkins (1884-1947), editor of Charles Schreiber’s Publishing. Max, a man whose prescience recognized and lionized writers Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott …

Penelope Cruz gives a dazzling performance as a vibrant schoolteacher, mother coping with the ugliness of breast cancer;  she soars as “Magda”, never shunning, hiding from the inevitability of her prognoses; she loves her soccer-playing son “Dani” (poignant portrayal by Teo Planell) with pure, uncensored, palpable devotion. Magda’s contagious, uninhibited  joy infects all who enter her sphere;  grieving “Arturo” (beautiful, …

There are minimal films where an actor is so remarkable that their performance transcends sentimentality: 2014’s “The Fault in Our Stars”, starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, whose profound characterizations pulverized the tear ducts of the most frigid cynics, and now “Me Before You’’ (based on the novel by JoJo Moyes) director Thea Sharrock’s weepy, wonderful story of a beautiful, …

Oh, for the era when barbs were delivered deftly, charmingly, the victim unaware of being vivisected until exsanguination affirms that the arrow, skillfully aimed,  has hit its mark.  (Films starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy). Director Whit Stillman has masterfully interpreted Jane Austen’s novella “Lady Susan” and Kate Beckinsale splendidly gifts the lambent, conniving, shrewd widow with inimitable control over …