Love isn’t always easy, but sometimes the wisdom you need to navigate matters of the heart can be found in the movies. Cinema actually contains the answers to most of life’s questions provided you ask the right ones, know where to look and don’t have terrible taste in films. This is well-established fact. Alice (Alice Taglioni) is a believer in this theory I just made up, but she subscribes to a very specific application of it. Put simply, she loves Woody Allen and his films to the point that she has conversations with the life-size poster of him in her bedroom. She asks for advice, and he replies with dialogue from his movies. The results haven’t exactly been spectacular, but she’s convinced that he knows what he’s talking about. She meets and falls for a young man, but her sister swoops him up and makes him her own. Ten years later and Alice is still single and pining for her sister’s now husband, but things start looking up when she meets a new beau (Yannick Soulier). Except she also meets Victor (Patrick Bruel)… Paris Manhattan is less of a love letter to Allen than it is a mash note as it tries to say a lot in a limited space to varying effect. It finds both romance and comedy in its story, and while they work well enough the 77 minute run-time ensures neither really takes hold.

The value of a really good story hook can never be overstated, but it’s become fairly uncommon these days to find a film that has one. The odds decrease even more when it comes to movies with a fantastic premise and a successful execution of that idea. Ron Morales‘ second feature, Graceland, manages to do both. Marlon Villar (Arnold Reyes) is low level driver for a sordid congressman, and while he hates what the elected official does with his free time, he needs the paycheck to help raise his own daughter Elvie. He drives the congressman’s daughter to school every day and makes a habit of bringing Elvie along for the ride, but when a routine traffic stop turns into a botched kidnapping, his life is thrown into immediate turmoil. The captors have mistaken Elvie for the politician’s daughter and are now demanding a hefty ransom. The immoral congressman won’t pay if he thinks his own little girl is safe, so… what’s an honorable and desperate man to do?

Two men sit in a darkened living room watching an 8mm home movie play on a screen before them. It shows a young girl, terrified and sitting on a bed, while a man in a mask sits beside her and begins to unbutton his shirt. The two men head out into the sunshine of the day, driving aimlessly, until they see a young girl on a bike turn down an off-road path into the woods. They follow. It’s July 8th, 1986, and eleven year old Pia is raped and murdered by Peer (Ulrich Thomsen) while the second man, Timo (Wotan Wilke Möhring), watches with equal parts disgust and arousal. The two dispose of the body and return home, but before Peer’s car has been washed of any evidence Timo has packed and boarded a bus out of town. 23 years later, to the very day, another young girl goes missing with only her bike and bag left behind at the very spot where Pia was abducted so many years ago. Writer/director Baran bo Odar‘s film, The Silence, follows the families, the police and the two men behind the original unsolved case in a story that pairs grief and guilt, obsession and duty. A suspenseful journey through other people’s pain, the film nevertheless finds beauty too through its cinematography, score and performances.

Korean cinema has developed certain genre expectations over the years, and those external pressures seem to dictate a lot of what gets made and distributed internationally. Violent revenge and romantic comedy seem to be the two areas that encompass much of people’s perception of Korean films thanks to break-out hits like Old Boy and My Sassy Girl having spawned dozens of hopeful imitators. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as numerous quality films have released under these generic genre banners, but it’s still nice to see Korean filmmakers moving outside those comfort zones. Ryoo Seung-wan‘s The Berlin File doesn’t necessarily break new ground within the action/spy genre (thanks to predecessors like JSA and Shiri), but for one of the first times the action and drama takes place entirely outside of Korea. The film follows a North Korean spy stationed in modern-day Berlin who is framed by his own agency when a deal turns deadly. He and his estranged wife, who’s also been implicated, are forced on the run with agents from both sides of the Korean peninsula chasing after them. The plot grows ever complicated, too much so unfortunately, but the action set-pieces including gunfights and hand-to-hand combat are impeccably done and exciting as hell.

Im Sang-soo‘s The Housemaid is a devastating look at class distinctions in South Korea couched in a film that manages to be sexy, blackly comic and stunningly photographed. Its heady mix of beauty and wit makes it a film that stuns and engages on multiple levels. Im’s latest film, The Taste of Money, takes aim at a similar target, but while nearly every frame is pleasing to the eye it misses the mark in some key areas. Yoon (Baek Yun-shik) is the CEO of a large Korean corporation looking to expand into the Americas, but while he runs the company his wife Geum-ok (Yoon Yeo-jung) rules everything else with a watchful eye and an iron fist. Her secretary Young-jak (Kim Kang-woo) is ambitious and looking to climb the ladder of wealth and status, but the behaviors he witnesses are slowly breaking his resolve. The couple’s grown daughter, Na-mi (Kim Hyo-jin), is torn between the lifestyle and pangs of kindness and sympathy with those around them. Memories of a certain housemaid who perished before her eyes aren’t helping matters any either. Yoon beats them both to the conscientious punch though when he falls in love with the maid (Maui Taylor) he’s been diddling on the side and decides to walk away and choose happiness over wealth. His actions don’t sit well with Geum-ok, especially as they coincide with legal issues brought on by their son’s (On Ju-wan) illicit behavior, and soon events take an even darker turn.

A beach-set comedic drama isn’t often what comes to mind when you think of South Korean cinema, but writer/director Hong Sang-soo has never been fond of convention. That’s especially apparent when it comes to his preference for nontraditional narrative structures. His films are often broken into sections or chapters with actors and themes recurring throughout to tell a singular or collective tale. His new film, In Another Country, follows this trend but adds a foreign face into the mix in the form of Isabelle Huppert. Hanging out in a tiny seaside town on the west coast of Korea is no teenager’s idea of a good time, and when family strife pushes her indoors one young woman turns to the page to pass the time. She’s an aspiring writer who decides to craft three tales set in the very same village using the people around her as inspiration.

Yoshihiro Nakamura isn’t as high a profile Japanese director as folks like Takashi Miike or Kiyoshi Kurosawa, but he truly deserves to be. His early career focused on horror, but the last few years have seen him deliver powerfully affecting entertainment in the form of films that explore friendships and relationships through fresh, thrilling and often fascinating  stories. Fish Story, Golden Slumber and A Boy and His Samurai are fantastic movies, each charming and supremely entertaining in their own ways., and any one of those films would mark Nakamura as a director to watch. But all three on his resume means anything he directs deserves at least a cursory glance. Thanks to Third Window Films those of us who don’t speak Japanese finally have the opportunity to view one that preceded the three above but retains some of the same themes and much of the quality.

Love is a complicated thing, and whether you believe in soul mates or that it’s all a crap-shoot of the heart you’d be hard-pressed to deny that’s it’s an elusive, fragile and all together dangerous emotion. It’s especially complicated when the two people involved aren’t anywhere near the same page. And when you add socio-political commentary into the mix? Hallmark doesn’t have a card for this one. It’s post-WWI Spain, and Tristana’s (Catherine Deneuve) mother has died. Before she passed the woman entrusted a “friend” named Don Lope (Fernando Rey) to take on the role of guardian to the teenage girl and protect her into womanhood. He takes Tristana on as his ward, but what starts in innocence quickly leads to more physical desires triggered by a casual glimpse at her breasts beneath a nightgown. A see-saw relationships develops between the lusty old man and the sweetly optimistic teen, but as time passes emotions and loyalties shift in dramatic fashion until the couple they are and the couple they were bear little resemblance.

When you think about the best romantic comedies and their countries of origin there a few clear names at the top of the list. Hollywood, of course, has seen its fair share of gems (including High Fidelity and When Harry Met Sally) even if their level of quality has been replaced in the last decade by a morass of Katherine Heigl and Kate Hudson-led stinkers. The UK has several great ones but earns a spot based on the near perfection of Love Actually alone. Similarly, France would make the list based solely on Amelie although they too have many more fantastic examples as well. Even South Korea, traditionally viewed as home only to movies about revenge, has produced more than a few solid entries in the genre including Finding Mr. Destiny, Spellbound and My Sassy Girl. But what about Germany? It’s okay if you laughed at the absurdity… I did too, but then I watched Matthias Schweighöfer‘s What a Man and discovered that not even the German language could detract from a smart, funny, sweet and well-acted romantic comedy.

Editors’ Note: The Coroner’s Report and Foreign Objects are distinct columns covering horror and foreign films respectively, but a mash-up of the two feels more appropriate on the rare occasion when we cover a foreign language horror film. You wouldn’t know it from Italy’s film output these days, but there was a time when the country was home to filmmakers keeping the horror genre alive and well for the rest of us. That time was a roughly three decade span from the 60s through the 80s when filmmakers like Mario Bava, Dario Argento, Lucio Fulci and Lamberto Bava delivered movies that paired violence and sexuality with style and atmosphere. The result was a list of movies that continue to excite fans to this day including A Bay of Blood, Suspiria, The Beyond, Demons and more. Giorgio Ferroni and his 1972 film, La Notte dei Diavoli (aka The Night of the Devils) aren’t nearly as well known, but both he and the movie truly deserve to be. It’s bloody, sexy and atmospheric horror that manages to be both graphic and frightening on its way towards a surprisingly strong finale.

Quentin Tarantino has never shied away from the debt he owes to foreign cinema when it comes to his own films, and whether they’re called homages or ripoffs the bottom line remains that certain movies from overseas inspired some of his most well known features. Reservoir Dogs is a blatant lift of Ringo Lam’s City on Fire, Inglourious Basterds found inspiration from Enzo Castellari’s The Inglorious Bastards and Tarantino’s two-part, female led revenge thriller Kill Bill? You need look no further than Toshiya Fujita‘s 1973 classic, Lady Snowblood. Japan, 1874, and the cries of a newborn baby can be heard echoing in the cells of a women’s prison. Deemed a “child of the netherworld” upon her birth we next see Yuki Kashima (Meiko Kaji) twenty years later as an adult walking a secluded and snowy road. A group of men approach carting their gang boss leader in a rickshaw, and when they attempt to forcibly move Kashima she slices and dices her way through them like blood filled bags of butter, painting the snow red as she goes. As the gang leader falls beneath her blade he asks who sent her, and he dies knowing only that it was revenge.

An elaborate theft involving high flying acrobatics, gadgetry and a con job opens writer/director Choi Dong-hoon‘s latest action/comedy, The Thieves, and it sets a perfect tone for the next hour. Close calls and comedic scrapes trade time with insult-filled bickering amidst the group of thieves always looking out for their next score, but when the tight-knit Korean gang joins forces with a Chinese team for an enormous theft the banter takes on a far more dangerous edge. Macau Park (Kim Yun-seok) is the connective tissue bringing the two groups together with the goal of liberating a $30 million diamond called the Tear of the Sun away from its current owner. Each side, and each individual thief, brings a necessary element to the job, but they also bring an unavoidable uncertainty as to their loyalties. The predicament is reminiscent of the tale of the frog and the scorpion trying to cross a river… except in the world of thieves everyone is a scorpion.

Dave is a comedy about an everyday guy (Kevin Kline) whose resemblance to the US president finds him tasked with playing the role of the leader of the free world while the real man recovers from an illness. He’s meant to be nothing more than a placeholder, but his discovery of class distinctions both tragic and comical instead leads him to use the position and power to do good deeds for the country and for the real president’s estranged wife. It’s a wonderful film (and Ivan Reitman’s last great one too) that itself, like many other movies, owes a debt of sorts to Mark Twain’s classic The Prince and the Pauper. Twain’s literary influence extends well beyond North America’s borders to include direct adaptations like the 1968 Bollywood film Raja Aur Runk and thematic ones like this year’s South Korean box-office hit, Masquerade. It’s 1616, and King Gwanghae (Lee Byung-hun) is facing internal threats during his 8th year of reign. Fearing for his life he orders his men to find him a double to be his public face. They find one in Ha-seon (also Lee Byung-hun), a comical performer, and it’s just in time too as Gwanghae quickly falls ill under suspicious circumstances. Ha-seon discovers the life of a king is a ridiculous one filled with executions, official decrees and royal bum-wipers, and he decides that maybe he can do more with his new role than simply act it out…

The Nikkatsu Corporation is Japan’s oldest major film studio, but even though they closed up shop in 1993 their legacy lives on with the careers of the directors and actors they shepherded towards success. They’re like Roger Corman in that way having provided opportunities to talents that have gone on towards bigger and better success. They shared one other trait with the king of the B-movies… a recognition that T&A sells tickets. Starting in the early 70s, Nikkatsu began producing romantic pornography, aka Roman Pornos, and the profits soon followed. The films are a mix of sex, nudity, violence and nuttiness, and while they ranged from dramas to comedies the focus never veered very far from the obscene. Sadly, the sexy times only lasted until 1988, but now Impulse Pictures has taken on the enviable task of re-releasing these classics to DVD so new generations can enjoy the fornicating, fingering, showering (of all kinds) and pig porking fun.

The difference between friends and lovers is usually penetration, but even that isn’t a hard line distinction. Intimacy goes beyond sex, especially when it comes to the closest of friends, but no matter how open people are with each other there are always truths they keep hidden. Truths, and lies. Ludo (Jean Dujardin) makes his rounds through a packed bar, drinking, snorting and leering along the way, before heading outside at the first hint of dawn. He hops onto his scooter and heads home through the quiet streets of Paris. And is promptly slammed into by a large truck. Max (Francois Cluzet) and his wife Veronique (Valerie Bonneton), Vincent (Benoit Magimel) and his wife Isabelle (Pascale Arbillot), Antoine (Laurent Lafitte), Marie (Marion Cotillard) and Eric (Gilles Lellouche) all had vacation plans that included Ludo, but they decide it would be best if they went on without him instead of hanging around his hospital bed. The group of friends head to Max’s beach-side villa in the South of France for good times and fun in the sun, but soon the lies they’ve been telling themselves and each other come pouring out as freely as the wine.

The Brazilian city of Racife is like any other urban locale. It’s a big, bustling mix of upper and lower class residents, there’s a sense that anything could happen here and the place is never truly quiet. Plagued by a series of petty crimes the residents of a particular block decide to take a street security team up on their offer to protect the area at night. Each business and household chips in a monthly fee, and they sleep easy knowing their valuable are safe. At least, that’s the plan. But as the new security guards patrol the block at night tensions begin to increase. As the residents go about their days working, playing and screwing an unease begins to settle over the area. Mistrust between employers and their lower class employees builds. And the noises, constantly, fill the air.

Francis (André Dussollier) is a French mystery writer looking for a place to work on his new novel. He sets his sights on a small island off the coast of Venice, but when he falls for Judith (Carole Bouquet) the real estate agent he tells her he’ll only take the house if she agrees to move in with him. Many months later the two are married, and while she boats back and forth to Venice each day for work he spends the solitary afternoons struggling with writer’s block. Things take a darker turn when his adult daughter, Alice (Mélanie Thierry), arrives with her own daughter for a visit then promptly disappears. Worried, he hires a retired private eye and ex-lover of Judith’s named Anna Maria (Andriani Asti) to help find her. His actions take a toll on his relationship, and he hires Anna Maria’s ex-convict son, Jérémie (Mauro Conte), to spy on Judith and confirm his suspicions of infidelity. There’s also an aristocratic, drug-dealing teenager and a gay, dog-killing vigilante. Got all that? Good. Now go ahead and forget it all, because pretty much none of it matters to the filmmakers behind Unforgivable so it really shouldn’t matter to you.

Little Ye-eun is dying. The child has a weak heart on the edge of failure, and if she doesn’t get a transplant soon it will be too late. Her mother, Yeon-hee (Kim Yun-jin), is desperate and willing to go outside the usual channels to find her daughter a heart. An opportunity arises from a shady source, but when Yeon-hee is introduced to the still-living man whose heart she’s meant to have she decides that taking advantage of his situation is going too far. And then her daughter gets even sicker. Hwi-do (Park Hae-il) is a wannabe thug always looking for the angle that will net him a payday. He constantly harasses his estranged mother for money, but shortly after she cuts him off for good with a final payout she has a stroke and ends up in a coma on life support. Knowing the woman’s prognosis is poor, Yeon-hee offers money to Hwi-do if he’ll pull the plug so the heart can go to little Ye-eun. What should be a simple (if not morbid) transaction soon spirals out of control when Hwi-do decides he wants his mother to live and Yeon-hee decides she’s done waiting.

It’s not often that you find cinematic art in a prison shower scene. Well, let’s rephrase. Non-exploitative prison shower scenes are rarely things of beauty. (Much better.) This film’s opening is an exception though as a single man fends off multiple attackers in an absolutely brutal and bloody brawl. The violent action is captured through painful-looking fight choreography and camerawork that utilizes slow motion to great effect. Bones are broken, blood is spilled and the scene ends leaving viewers as drained as the only man left standing. That man, Eugene Wang (Nick Cheung), is released from prison after a twenty year sentence for the rape and murder of a young woman, and his first stop is to grab some ice cream and eyeball some cute women at a busy intersection. He spots a teenager named Zoe (Janice Man) at a music university who looks almost identical to the woman he was convicted of killing, and soon he’s living in a small shack near her home, watching her through a telescope and plastering his wall with her picture. When a burned, beaten and disfigured corpse is discovered nearby Inspector Lam (Simon Yam) is tasked with the case. He has his own issues including an emotionally distant daughter and a wife who reportedly killed herself a few years prior, and as he focuses in on the dead body he discovers a link to the other killing two decades earlier.

South Korean writer/director Kim Ki-duk has been a critically acclaimed filmmaker for almost as long as he’s been a controversial one. From his debut in 1996 with Crocodile to 2008′s Dream he made fifteen films of varying quality and similar themes usually populated by violent loners searching for love and acceptance in the worst ways possible. Their journeys often included both inward and outward-facing acts of brutality, and they rarely spared the fairer sex from the abuse. It’s that last bit that led to Kim being labeled on more than one occasion as an unrepentant misogynist. For a director averaging more than a film a year his subsequent three year absence from cinema following Dream left many people, both fans and detractors, wondering as to the reason. Had he quit the movies due to their poor reception in his home country? Had he finally run out of rage, emotion or ideas? Had he moved to Hollywood to pursue a gig on the next Hunger Games sequel? It turns out to be none of the above. Kim returned to theaters this year with a documentary of sorts called Arirang. (He also returned to Cannes and left with the Un Certain Regard award.) Written, directed, produced, edited, lit, shot and catered by Kim, and featuring nobody but Kim, the film acts as an explanation of his sabbatical and a look into his mind, heart and occasionally tortured soul. Exactly how much of it is the truth though may be up for debate…