With its long, static shots of domestic life, “Family Time” resembles the “Paranormal Activity” of deranged vacation movies: There’s a sense of spying on people who don’t realize they’re under a microscope. Of course, Tia Kovu’s debut feature film was professionally written, directed and acted. But her style is so simple, you can sometimes forget … Read more
A film director burns his lamination for warmth. A teacher works to feed his students. A stand-up comedian arrives at the party to find the place bombed. In From Ground Zero, Palestine’s entry for the Academy Awards’ Feature Film category, 22 directors present cinematic memoirs from Gaza, shot between (and sometimes during) Israeli army raids … Read more
In Bangladesh, sports Polly horses – or the game of wrestling – is a methodical and precise affair, a tone that Iqbal Chaudhry reinvented in his first film, “The Wrestler.” Stretching the line between observational and indirect, the film seems designed to dazzle and frustrate in equal measure, gesturing toward masculine boundaries in an often … Read more
One of the darkest chapters in South Korean history is chronicled in “12.12: Today,” a dramatic account of the 1979 coup that followed the assassination of authoritarian President Park Chung-hee on October 26. Meticulously written and extremely well performed by a first-rate cast including Hwang Jung-min (“Deliver Us from Evil”), director and co-writer Kim Sung-soo’s … Read more