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
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
In Rusudan Glogidze’s winter sophomore film “Vintage,” the title could refer to any number of withered relics: the beautiful, richly antique pieces of furniture that Georgian émigré Medea (Salome Demoria) illegally imports from her home country to Russia to sell; The once large but disintegrating apartment in St. Petersburg that she bought at a discount … Read more
At the beginning of Turkish director Zeki Demirkuboz’s long-awaited and frustratingly misjudged Life — the director’s first film in seven years, and now serving as a Turkish international feature film being submitted for the Oscars — a young woman named Hekran escapes the claws of an impending scheme. Marriage disappears. We learn a lot, not … Read more