You could call Train to Busan (South Korea, 2016) “Zombies on a Train”—it certainly makes a catchy logline and it frames the premise accurately and succinctly—but it reduces this fleet, fierce, unexpectedly human thriller to a mere gimmick. Apart from the slyly eerie prologue, the film opens without any hint of the viral rampage to […]
The Wailing (South Korea, 2016) is a thriller that takes a dark turn into supernatural horror. Kwak Do-won is Jong-goo, a somewhat dim underachiever cop who is way over his head investigating a double homicide in his little town. Jong-goo isn’t too bright but he’s a doting father to his smart little girl and there’s […]
The ghost story The Mimic (South Korea, 2017) draws its premise a Korean myth of a tiger that mimics human voices to lure its victims into the forest, but it goes its own way from there. Hee-yun (Yum Jung-ah), still grieving over the unsolved disappearance of her son, moves from the city to her rural […]
Ji-woon Kim has proven himself one of the most interesting and versatile filmmakers to come out of South Korea in the past two decades with such films as The Quiet Family (1998), The Good the Bad the Weird (2008), and I Saw the Devil (2010). With the haunting A Tale of Two Sisters (South Korea, […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Courtroom drama meets political theater in “The Trial of the Chicago 7” (2020, not rated), Aaron Sorkin’s dramatization of the real-life trial of the protest leaders at the 1968 Democratic National Convention charged […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The hit of the 2020 Sundance Film Festival, “Palm Springs” (2020, TV-MA) is a romantic comedy with a “Groundhog Day” twist: a cynical wedding guest (Andy Samberg) and a reluctant maid of honor […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Taron Egerton plays Elton John in “Rocketman” (2019, R), a biographical drama that takes on the rock legend’s rise, his collaboration with lyricist Bernie Taupin (Jamie Bell), and his drug addiction with energetic […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … Robbie Amell plays a young programmer who ends up in a virtual afterlife after a freak accident and Andy Allo is his personal “angel” guiding his journey in “Upload” (2020, TV-MA), a sci-fi […]
Here’s what’s new and ready to stream now on Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, HBO Now, video-on-demand, and other streaming services … The weekly column is featured in The Seattle Times, The Spokesman-Review, and other newspapers. Anthony Hopkins is Pope Benedict XVI and Jonathan Pryce plays Jorge Bergoglio, the Cardinal from South America who became his […]
