V.A. Musetto is a film critic. His specialty is indie and foreign movies, with an emphasis on Asian. He is a member of the New York Film Critics Circle and frequents film festivals from Tokyo to Rotterdam to Transylvania.
The Filipino horror fest “The Road” has a minimal plot — and even that isn’t especially original — but its director/co-writer/cinematographer, Yam Laranas, still delivers a maximum of suspense and horror, working...
May 11, 2012 12:00 AMPeruvian director Cristián Jiménez’s charm-filled romance “Bonsai” is just a few minutes old when you discover, during a voice-over, that a key character will die at the end. But this spoiler should have little effect...
May 11, 2012 12:00 AMAmos Kollek achieved a degree of success as the director of such films as “Goodbye, New York” (1985), with Julie Hagerty, and “Forever, Lulu” (1987), with the great Fassbinder actress Hanna Schygulla. But he’s been...
May 04, 2012 12:00 AM‘My Way” is not, as the title might suggest, a Frank Sinatra biopic. No, it’s an eye-popping, empty-headed World War II epic made in South Korea.The slight story revolves around two long-distance-marathon rivals, one...
April 20, 2012 12:00 AMFor a 15-year-old who lives at home with her mother, Camille has a mature love life — but then, she’s French. In “Goodbye First Love,” talented director Mia Hansen-Love, now 31, follows nearly a decade in the life of...
April 20, 2012 12:00 AMPablo Larraín and Alfredo Castro — the director and star, respectively, of the acclaimed Chilean black comedy “Tony Manero” (2008) — reunite in the chilling “Post Mortem.”In the earlier movie, Castro played a killer...
April 13, 2012 12:00 AM‘Woman Thou Art Loosed’’ is a contrived and preachy melodrama produced by big-time televangelist T.D. Jakes. It concerns a well-off black couple — professor David Ames (Blair Underwood) and his real-estate-agent wife,...
April 13, 2012 12:00 AM
Call it the ultimate panic attack. The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church elect a new pope, but he chickens out and flees the Vatican, crying out, “Mommy, help!’’ That’s the intriguing premise of “We Have a Pope,’’...
April 06, 2012 12:00 AMDespite the title, there is no nudity in the Chinese rom-com “Love in the Buff,’’ although there is a lot of risqué language. This is a follow-up to “Love in a Puff,’’ a hit in China, in which two Hong Kong chain...
March 30, 2012 12:00 AMYou are unlikely to see a movie about incest made as sensitively and tastefully as “Womb.’’ And although the characters speak English, the film is firmly anchored in European sensibilities, thanks to its Hungarian...
March 30, 2012 12:00 AM
There’s trouble in paradise. The Maldives — 1,200 tiny, low-lying islands in the Indian Ocean, 200 of them inhabited — is a favorite tourist retreat. But scientists warn that if ocean levels keep rising because of man...
March 29, 2012 12:00 AM
If the end of the world was just hours away, would New Yorkers still be able to get takeout? Yes, if Abel Ferrara’s mind-bending “4:44 Last Day on Earth’’ is any indication. In the film, the lead characters — writer...
March 23, 2012 12:00 AMThe 2001 romantic comedy “Amélie’’ made French actress Audrey Tautou an international star. It also typecast her. She’s broken out of the mold several times, most notably with the 2006 thriller “The Da Vinci Code.’’ But...
March 14, 2012 12:00 AMDirector-writer Corinna Belz’s “Gerhard Richter Painting’’ is a rarity: a documentary without talking heads. Instead of trotting out people — friend and foe — to comment on the renowned German abstract painter, Belz...
March 14, 2012 12:00 AMAre you willing to drop nearly $400 for a sushi dinner served at the counter of a tiny restaurant hidden away in a drab subway station in Tokyo’s Ginza district? Lots of people are, according to the mouthwatering...
March 09, 2012 12:00 AM‘Black Butterflies’’ is a conventional account of the life of an unconventional woman, 1960s South African poet Ingrid Jonker, a tormented soul sometimes likened to American writer Sylvia Plath (“The Bell Jar’’) — each...
March 02, 2012 12:00 AM
‘Let the Bullets Fly’’ — China’s highest-grossing film of all time — stars action hero Chow Yun-fat and the movie’s director-writer, Jiang Wen, as competing crooks in Goose Town, a dusty pit stop in lawless 1920s rural...
March 02, 2012 12:00 AM
Welcome to 21st-century Albania, where an ancient code of justice persists alongside the latest technological gadgets. In “The Forgiveness of Blood,’’ teenager Nik (Tristan Halilaj) finds himself a marked man after his...
February 24, 2012 12:00 AMForget “The Artist.’’ The homage to silent cinema to see is “The Fairy,’’ directed by and featuring three Belgian comic masters, Dominique Abel, Fiona Gordon and Bruno Romy.Abel is Dom, who works the night shift at a...
February 24, 2012 12:00 AM
Are you ready for a bright and breezy musical comedy from Russia? Then check out “Hipsters,’’ which is set in dreary 1955 Moscow and involves a cold war between “hipsters’’ — young fans of American jazz culture — and...
February 24, 2012 12:00 AMThe documentary “Putin’s Kiss’’ charts the political awakening of Masha Drokova, the cute Moscow-born teenager who caused a stir when she planted a kiss on Vladimir Putin’s cheek while he was giving her a medal. She...
February 17, 2012 12:00 AM
A family getting evicted from its home is no laughing matter, except if you’re watching “Cirkus Columbia,’’ a satiric comedy from, of all places, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Set in 1991, after the fall of communism in the...
February 17, 2012 12:00 AMAustrian Markus Schleinzer makes an impressive directorial debut with “Michael,” the disturbing story of the title character, a 35-year-old pedophile who keeps a 10-year-old boy, Wolfgang, prisoner in the basement of...
February 15, 2012 12:00 AMBela Tarr, the Hungarian master of minimalist cinema, is only 56, but he’s announced that “The Turin Horse’’ is his final film. He could change his mind, but for now we have to take him at his word. In any event, “The...
February 10, 2012 12:00 AMMuhammad Yunus won the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work fighting poverty in his homeland, Bangladesh, where he lends money to poor women to start businesses. The concept has been enormously successful, and...
February 10, 2012 12:00 AMBill Morrison, a New Yorker renowned for experi-mental documentaries woven together from decaying found footage, brings a new show to Film Forum. The fascinating, four-part collection is anchored by the title selection,...
February 09, 2012 12:00 AMSurf’s up in the troubled nation of Papua New Guinea. According to Adam Pesce’s documentary “Splinters,” the sport got its start there when an Australian pilot left a surfboard behind in the 1980s. Today, surfing is an...
February 03, 2012 12:00 AM
‘After Fall, Winter” is a mixed-up movie about mixed-up people. The nuttiest of the bunch is Michael, played by the film’s director-writer, Eric Schaeffer (“My Life’s in Turnaround”). Michael is a self-loathing,...
January 27, 2012 12:00 AM‘The Front Line,’’ South Korea’s entry in the race for the foreign-language Oscar, is a potent anti-war movie with breathtaking battle sequences. Set during the closing weeks of the war between the two Koreas, it...
January 20, 2012 12:00 AM‘Watching TV With the Red Chinese’’ was originally to have opened here in December, but its debut was pushed back to today. If the producers of this mess were smart, they would have delayed it indefinitely.Set in 1980,...
January 20, 2012 12:00 AM
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