Otto (Tom Hanks) is grumpy, a stickler for rules and lonely after the death of his wife. His attempts to end his own life—with every detail planned meticulously—are derailed by his new neighbour, the pregnant Marisol (Mariana Treviño). As he grudgingly gets drawn into their everyday life—her husband is clumsy; can’t park a U-Haul or fix a window—and the community, he shelves his suicide plans. An adaptation of Fredrik Backman’s A Man Called Ove, Hanks brings the book’s Ove to life. (Netflix)
A short delight from Abbas Kiarostami. Made at the very start of the Iranian director’s career for the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Youth, this charming educational film from 1976 seems to introduce young children to colours by way of examples. Illustrating yellow, for instance, is a banana, a lemon, three fluffy chicks, a trumpet, a doll, boots and shoes, a t-shirt, a helmet, an earth mover, a van, dried flowers in a vase, a pair of screwdrivers, a building wall, a bench and a traffic light, each image registering for a fraction of a second. The bouncy electronic score is not what you’d expect from Kiarostami, but the film is enchanting. (MUBI)
Clare Pierce (Kathryn Hahn; young Clare played by Sarah Pidgeon) works in a retirement home and is barely managing to hold her life together—her marriage is falling apart, and her teenage daughter won’t talk to her. As she takes over as Dear Sugar, an advice columnist, on the suggestion of a friend, she confronts her own troubled past. The mini-series, based on an essay collection by Cheryl Strayed, can get schmaltzy at times. (Disney+ Hotstar)
Those who remember her from Lee Chang-dong’s Secret Sunshine – for which she was awarded Best Actress at Cannes – may be surprised to see Jeon Do-yeon headline an action movie. She plays gil Boksoon, a single mother who’s secretly a top assassin. Writer-director Byun Sung-hyun cJombines whiplash action scenes with plenty of melodrama as mother and daughter work out their differences. (Netflix)
