Foreign

Three years ago I saw “And Europe Will Be Stunned” at the Venice Biennale; it is a remarkable installation by Israeli artist, Yael Bartana; three utopian, idealistic videos, the most potent segment features a young leader in a vacant Warsaw stadium,  pleading, urging three million Jews to return to Poland, a metaphor for the horrific outcome of WWII;   even more …

Sadly, cannot even flirt with the intelligent, succinct 2010 “The Trip” starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, as themselves; their refreshing, hilarious, dramatic flair for impersonations; keenly exhibiting a sensational “gift of gab” and formidable, stylized improvisational acuity. It ranked as one of the smartest films of the 2010-11 season. Here we have stale leftovers, served in the scintillating, sublimely …

On September 16th, Lauren Bacall would have been ninety years old; almost a century of viability, lusting and loving life, protected, enhanced by her inimitable intelligence and wit she was unequivocally the captain of her soul; archetypical woman of substance who did it her way; thrust into the lionizing limelight at nineteen (“To Have and Have Not”) she perpetually reiterated …

“The brighter the light the darker the shadow”. No one defines this prescient observation more than Robin Williams; he lit up film and television with his raucous, insightful humor, impeccable timing, fluent, gifted improvisation; lurking behind this amicable, ingratiating facade was always the omnipresent albatross of depression; a disease as insidious as the most crippling cancer; voraciously devouring one’s spirit …

Over two thousand years ago Jesus Christ was crucified on Mount Calvary/Golgotha; more than two billion people believe he is God. He died between two thieves; crucifixion was the traditional means of capital punishment at the time. Brendan Glesson as “Father James” is miraculous; the map of mankind’s woes is etched on his weary, pained countenance; he has seen and …

Frequently writers rely on “Webster or Oxford” to crush the roadblocks stymieing mental acuity, a cowardly crutch; but as I watched “Chinese Puzzle” laughing uproariously, surrounded by a modestly mute audience, surreptitiously looking at me, questioning my tenuous grip on reality; it struck me with tsunami velocity that “humor” is profoundly subjective.  So,  like a multitude before me, I checked …

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 …