Foreign

It is inconceivable that the profession you have yearned for, trained for, is in a moment, catastrophically revealed to be anathema to your origins.  Director Pawel Pawlikowski’s profoundly poignant and grippingly realistic portrait of two women, bound by blood, but living diametrically opposite, disparate existences; testifies to the monumental atrocities, residual effects perpetrated upon the blameless by the Nazi regime. …

Recently there have been a plethora of films based on real- life, unknown characters, with the absence of fiction even mediocre movies generate positive responses: “The Railway Man” (Erik Lomax); “Walking With the Enemy” (Pincas Tibor Rosenbaum) and “Belle”, directed by Amma Asante, the remarkable story of “Dido Elizabeth Belle”  an aristocratic woman of mixed race; raised by her great …

Tom Hardy as “Ivan Locke” gives one the most remarkable,  profound performances I have ever seen; breathtakingly poignant, his mellifluous, honey-infused Welsh accent, carries the film through travesties and pain; never suffering a loss of control; his universe crumbles as he refuses to be deterred from his mission. Written and directed by Steven Knight (“Eastern Promises”), this brilliant, poetic tale …

Based on the autobiography (“The Railway Man”) by Erik Lomax, an Englishman, engineer, captured and tortured by the Japanese after their conquest of Singapore in 1942. It is a tale worth telling and watching. Colin Firth, as “Lomax” gives a sensitive, at times melodramatic, depiction of a man suffering from the devastating effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; a centuries old …

This enchanting film was the darling of the 49th Chicago International Film Festival.  Lindsay Duncan and Jim Broadbent give luminous performances as a British couple venturing to Paris to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary; on the surface, this seemingly well-matched pair banter, flirt as only those who have lived, studied each other’s foibles, idiosyncrasies, insecurities; a lifetime vocation in adjusting, …

The Battle of Stalingrad is a metaphor for colossal perseverance; the Herculean strength of the dedicated; outnumbered, starving, obstinately denying the German forces a victory . The battle lasted from August 23rd,1942, until February 2nd,1943. The annihilation of the German army (led by doomed Field Marshall Paulus) heralded Germany’s deserved demise. The loss of life, over a million souls, has …

Prolifically ponderous, what could have been a scintillating, titillating  love story, never leaves the “shadow”, foggy plodding scenario of a genius gone awry, a young woman bereft of options, encouraged by her mother to fall from grace, into the arms of a married man, twenty-seven years her senior. The man was Charles Dickens (1812-1870); the woman, Ellen “Nelly” Ternan (1839-1914). …

Periodically there’s a film that resonates long after viewing; marinating in one’s memory for days, oftentimes forever. Iranian writer/director Asghar Farhadi’s (“A Separation”) “The Past” is such a movie; simplicity balloons to complex; ambiguities, seemingly clarified, become murky; empathy, fickly flows from one character to another as “the past’ is sporadically revealed. Bernice Bejo as “Marie” is astounding as a …

“Jep Gambardella” (Toni Servillo) is a voyeur, flaneur gliding through life, observing, perpetually longing for “the great beauty” to accost him; a muse of inspiration capable of igniting the creative transformation he yearns for. Director Paolo Sorrentino’s homage to glorious Rome, its hedonistic lifestyle, commences with “Jep’s” sixty-fifth birthday party; freakishly beautiful members of Rome’s elite, sinuously writhing, frenetically dancing …

Judi Dench ignites the screen with her performance as “Philomena Lee”; the true story a young, Catholic, Irish girl, who has a son out of wedlock in 1952;  orphaned herself, she is housed in the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roscrea, Ireland; where her son, at age three, is torn from her,  adopted by an American family. For forty-seven …