Foreign

There is something pungently powerful about the actor Mads Mikkelsen’s countenance; silent or loquacious he kidnaps viewers’ attention, releasing its hold only after he has maneuvered his intent, frightening and satisfying simultaneously. Commencing in 1755 Denmark, Captain Ludvig Kahlen (Mikkelsen) receives grudgingly, permission to cultivate the sterile landscape of Jutland heath, in hopes of founding a settlement and a titled …

Periodically you meet a film that from its onset is perfectly proportioned, a flawless scenario intelligently scripted and sublimely performed, pushing all the right buttons, earning magnificent respect and awesome admiration from the viewer.  “The Teachers Lounge” co-written and directed by IIker Catak garnishes the deserved medal for excellence. “Carla” (exceptional Leonie Benesch) an idealistic middle school teacher, has an …

A dreary, “drenching”, gem of a tiny film with gargantuan gleaning from director Mahalia Belo based on the book by Megan Hunter; Jodi Comer (“Killing Eve”) paradigmatic performance as “Woman” foraging a deluged milieu (London) howls with innovative discernment and penetration; she has a child while a watery world is encompassing her, swallowing her home, separating her from her husband …

Director Jonathan Glazer has accomplished the remarkable in his adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel of the same title (which bears little resemblance to Amis’s script).  The film resonates, pierces the psyche, transcends the scenario, adept performances, it sears redolently with the SOUND of the unimaginable; eyes shut, the soundtrack bleats with symphonic chords of horror, annihilation, ethnic elimination; Mica Levi’s …

Grief. Loss. Isolation. Unfathomable pain. Director Andrew Haigh and actor Andrew Scott with masterful precision scalp layer after layer of emotional, psychological trauma hidden in the depths of a damaged soul; a wound, festering for a lifetime, that must be excised, cleansed, allowed to scar. “Adam”, (Scott) a screenwriter, insulated in an empty high rise in London, spots another dweller …

Tantalizingly, titillatingly twisted; Emerald Fennell accomplishes the hat trick as writer, producer, director with a film guaranteed to hibernate for eons in one’s memory; there are scenes shockingly deplorable but fittingly apropos of the major protagonist “Oliver Quick”, Barry Keoghan’s (“Banshees of Inisherin”) staggering performance, guaranteed to rival Cillian Murphy’s (“Oppenheimer”  and Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro”) at this year’s Academy Awards; …

“THE HOLDOVERS”            IN THEATRES Poignantly predictable, two contradictory characters (“Professor Paul Hunham”, Paul Giamatti, and student “Angus”, Dominick Sessa), lock horns over a Christmas holiday at a boy’s boarding school; it is 1970 and director Alexander Payne remains true to the era; Giamatti’s curmudgeonly, warm and wonderful performance as a brilliant, flawed ancient civilizations teacher, …

Watching, this more than watchable film, percolating throughout, director Justine Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari’s (Triet’s husband) premise is the disparity in a relationship, a marriage, a partnership that over a period, success favors one party over the other; “A Star is Born” with a myriad of redundant remakes, echoes the demise of the male protagonist disintegrating with his partner’s …

Director Jonathan Glazer has accomplished the remarkable in his adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel of the same title (which bears little resemblance to Amis’s script).  The film resonates, pierces the psyche, transcends the scenario, adept performances, it sears redolently with the SOUND of the unimaginable; eyes shut, the soundtrack bleats with symphonic chords of horror, annihilation, ethnic elimination; Mica Levi’s …

Director Sonia Herman Dolz with painstaking research, hands on acuity, blesses viewers with an extravagant, monumental tour de force; it is a love story of achievement, devotion, bordering on adulation, of the “world’s first publicly accessible art storage facility”; a glimmering, gorgeous space where the impossible, inconceivable is majestically realized. It is a wonder masterfully created by visionary architect, Winy …