BRIAN VINER: Silent Night marks the debut of director Camille Griffin, whose real-life son Roman Griffin Davis (Jojo Rabbit) plays Art, a potty-mouthed child alarmed by a poison-cloud apocalypse.
Greece may be the sun-kissed cradle of Western culture and a perennial magnet for tourism, but in recent decades it has seldom had a high profile in the film world. During the “golden age” of the 1950s and ‘60s things were somewhat different, as talents like stars Melina Mercouri and Irene Papas, plus directors Michael Cacoyannis and Costa-Gavras, achieved major international recognition. After that, however, a variety of factors contributed to a shrinking of exported features, the most prominent exceptions being later films by late slow-cinema master Theo Angelopoulos and the idiosyncratic, absurdism-inclined Yorgo Lanthimos (though his projects are mostly shot abroad in English these days).
âHopeâ Review: In Sickness and in Health
In this raw Norwegian drama, a cancer diagnosis forces a longstanding couple to face the fissures in their relationship.
Andrea Braein Hovig and Stellan Skarsgard in âHope.âCredit.Manuel Claro/KimStim
Hope
Drama, Romance
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For audiences seeking escapism, this may not be the best time to tout a movie about terminal illness. Yet it might help to know that âHope,â a largely autobiographical drama from the Norwegian writer and director Maria Sodahl, is neither miserabilist nor sappily sentimental. Instead, itâs an almost brutally honest observation of a calcified relationship forced to adjust to a terrifying new reality.