Latest Reviews
Home » Foreign (page 2)

Category Archives: Foreign

Feed Subscription

ALL OF US STRANGERS (in theatres)

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 ... Read More »

SALTBURN (in theatres)

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; ... Read More »

MORSELS FROM THE SCREEN & TV

“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, ... Read More »

ANATOMY OF A FALL (French, English subtitles) in theatres

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 ... Read More »

ZONE OF INTEREST (GERMAN: ENGLISH SUBTITLES) CHICAGO INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL

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 ... Read More »

DEPOT- REFLECTING BOIJMANS (DUTCH: ENGLISH SUBTITLES)

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 ... Read More »

TO SEE OR STREAM: THE ROYAL HOTEL (IN THEATRES)

Director Kitty Green gifts viewers one of the most innovative, surprising films of the year. Two young Canadians “Hannah” (Julia Garner) and “Liv” (Jessica Henwick) find themselves running out of funds while experiencing the sights, seductiveness of the only country in the world that covers an entire continent, Australia; the daunting vastness minimizes its inhabitants especially in the parched outback ... Read More »

FILMS/SERIES WORTH THE INVESTMENT

“THE ORIGIN OF EVIL”  FRENCH: ENGLISH SUBTITLES   (IN THEATRES & SOON NETFLIX) There is nothing as satisfying as a supreme whodunit, and the French excel at titillation and obfuscation. Actor Laure Calamy, “Stephanie”, in a transformative performance seeks to reunite with her estranged, wealthy father “Serge” (virtuoso role by Jacques Weber); from the onset surprises await at every turn; director ... Read More »

THE LESSON (IN THEATRES)

Here’s a film that achieves a level of titillation, a dissection of authorship, scholarship, and an analysis of intelligence gone awry, to a satisfying, surprisingly astounding conclusion, enhanced by applaudable performances. Director Alice Troughton and writer Alex MacKeith dare viewers to define their perceptions of a writer’s acuity: “average writers attempt originality, they fail. Good writers borrow from their betters. ... Read More »

PAST LIVES (Korean and English) in theatres

Experiencing this elegiacally exquisite film knowing that no one could have written it without having lived it; religiosity reverberates throughout; “Past Lives” is a hymn, a devoted prayer to bygone loves; remembered souls whose sincerity episodically, flowed in and out of one’s life; the “if only’s” “what if’s” are ubiquitously echoed throughout “Past Lives”, stirring memories, mostly ignored, but awakened ... Read More »

Scroll To Top