In 2013 Polish filmmaker Paweł Pawlikowski released the brilliantly concise and thoroughly evocative “Ida”. It was a haunting movie filled with beauty and intrigue. Also it was the first Polish picture to win the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. It took five years but we finally have his follow-up and it’s just as mysterious and tantalizing.

“Cold War” is a much different film than Pawlikowski’s previous effort but you’ll quickly recognize some of the same artistic choices that made “Ida” so visually arresting. Once again he teams with cinematographer Lukasz Zal who shoots in gorgeous black-and-white and uses the desaturated palette to convey the mood of a postwar Poland struggling under the weight of Communism. This time even more emphasis is put on the strategic use of shadows and lighting.

The Warsaw-born Pawlikowski tells a story loosely based on the tempestuous and constantly intersecting romance of his own parents from whom the two lead characters take their names. Structurally it moves from point to point along the relationship timeline of Wiktor (Tomasz Kot) and Zula (Joanna Kulig). Their earnest yet troubled romance serves as the film’s centerpiece.

The story opens in 1949 with Wiktor and his colleague Irena (played by the excellent and underused Agata Kulesza) visiting rural villages to find undiscovered singing talent for their state-sponsored folk music project. Those chosen are brought to a school to be trained for an upcoming tour. It’s here that Wiktor is drawn to young Zula. He sees something special in her and his curiosity quickly turns to captivation.

Telling too much more would hurt the experience, but let’s just say their mutual attraction grows into a romance – passionate and sincere but troubled from the start. Pawlikowski skips across their timeline making stops in Warsaw, Paris, and Yugoslavia. Along the way we watch Wiktor and Zula separate, reunite, and then separate again all amid an ever-changing European post-war landscape (something else Pawlikowski and Zal capture with incredible clarity through their lens).

From early on you can sense that “Cold War” is a deeply personal story. It’s a love story that is both romantic and tragic. Two fine lead performances drive the central relationship which is filled with intense passion but also missed opportunities at every turn. At the same time Pawlikowski has several things to say about the time period and much of it is vividly told through his camera. That extra layer is what pushes “Cold War” into truly special territory.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

“Custody” is a searing domestic drama and the first feature from French director Xavier Legrand. The 39-year-old started as a child stage actor but is most known for his 29-minute short from 2013 “Just Before Losing Everything”. It was his first effort behind the camera, catching a lot of eyes and even earning Legrand an Oscar nomination for Best Live Action Short Film.

Interestingly, with “Custody” Legrand takes on the same subject as his award-winning short, even using the same characters and key performers. His feature-length look at a fractured family is more observant and slightly ambiguous. It allows us more time in the heads of his characters to plow their mindsets and decide for ourselves whose side we’re on. You could say we the audience are positioned to be the judge.

Miriam (Léa Drucker) and Antoine (Denis Ménochet) are in a contentious custody dispute with their 12-year-old son Julien (Thomas Gioria) caught in the middle. They have a daughter Joséphine (Mathilde Auneveux) but she is a few days away from being of age to decide things for herself.

The film opens with a mesmerizing closed-door court hearing where the judge sits across from the parents and their lawyers who each make their case for and against custody. Through affidavits the children declare their desire to be with their mother. Miriam’s lawyer poses allegations of violence and abuse. But the claims clash with Antoine’s desire to be involved in his son’s life and the glowing character references from friends and co-workers. It prompts the judge to ask them both “Which of you is the biggest liar?”

Nothing Lagrand does is without thought and purpose, from the quiet intense closeups to the absence of a score. His film is all about the characters and placing them in the most authentic, real-life situations possible. We the audience simply sit back and take it all in, watching as this layered drama unfolds into a tense and unsettling thriller.

Even the casting feels intentional – the brawny and physically imposing Ménochet; the petite and tightly wound Drucker. These deftly handled characters slowly and meticulously give us all the information we need before the lid bursts off in a final 15 minutes filled with simmering white-knuckled tension. This is where Legrand’s well-calculated restraint pays off the most.

Lagrand comes at everything from a deeply human perspective and tells his story with a hushed realism. It’s the exact opposite of how Hollywood tends to approach these subjects today. Think Dardenne Brothers but with a slightly sharper edge. And it helps to have such top-notch performances from Ménochet, Drucker, and especially young Gioria whose worried eyes and soulful gaze shatters your heart. Actually, the entire movie does.

VERDICT – 4.5 STARS

It’s February so you know what that means – a new Liam Neeson movie. Late January and February have become synonymous with these Neeson action flicks in the vein of “Taken”, “Non-Stop”, and “The Commuter”. Not sure how that’s important but consider it information nonetheless.

Right out of the gate his new film “Cold Pursuit” has all the markings of a prototypical Neeson revenge thriller. A gravelly-voiced old-timer loses someone close to him. He then unleashes ‘a particular set of skills’ to find out who is responsible and offer up his own special brand of payback.

Nels Coxman (Neeson) spends his evenings plowing a lonely track of mountain road that connects the fictional tourist town of Kehoe to the rest of civilization. He’s a reserved fellow who lives on a hill outside of town with his wife Grace (a woefully underserved Laura Dern). Outside of helping Nels with his cufflinks, she is given nothing to do but stand in the background.

The couple’s world is shattered when they get news that their son (played by Neeson’s real world son Micheal Richardson) is found dead of an apparent heroin overdose. Grace closes herself off and Nels doesn’t want to believe it. He gets news that his son’s death is linked to a posh, health food obsessed drug lord affectionately known as Viking (Tom Bateman). Nels sets out to kill the man responsible, cutting through any henchman who is dumb enough to get in his way.

“Cold Pursuit” is director Hans Petter Moland’s remake of his own 2014 Norwegian thriller “In Order of Disappearance”. From one perspective the movie offers up plenty of what Neeson’s fans enjoy. This once unexpected action star has developed a certain gravitas that fits really well with these types of movies. I’ll admit it’s fun to watch him dole out punishment on the wicked. Here the violence can be brutal but intentionally over-the-top which (in a rather perverse way) feels right for this story.

Another plus (and a genuine surprise for me) is the healthy dose of dark comedy that is spread throughout, sometimes at the weirdest and most unexpected moments. It does throw a kink in the overall tone, but I admit to really getting a kick out of it. Some of the humor feels too out of place, but when it lands it can be pretty funny. And in some cases it’s the humor alone that salvages certain scenes hampered by some real shortcomings with the story.

One of the biggest disappointments is in how little attention Moland gives to the emotions of his characters most notably Nels. The film deals in some pretty heavy subject matter yet it only offers a couple of moments for Nels and Grace to show any hint of sorrow or pain. And as he starts offing Viking’s low-level thugs, he does so in the most detached and dispassionate way. It basically throws away the emotional weight Neeson’s character desperately needs. And as I said Laura Dern is squandered in a truly thankless role. There is a real opportunity to explore grief through them but Moland doesn’t seem at all interested in that.

Moland and writer Frank Baldwin throw in other narrative pieces that aren’t given enough attention to matter. There’s a wedged in custody battle between Viking and his ex-wife (Julia Jones). We also get a Native American drug gang that the movie seems to want to do some interesting things with but who end up serving as little more than a plot device.

So where do I land on “Cold Pursuit”? On one hand it offers up more of Neeson’s early year revenge-fueled action. Plus the unexpected dark humor adds a wacky layer that I enjoyed far more often than not. On the other hand you have the emotional blandness of the lead character and pretty much everyone else we see. They all operate at the exact same temperature. Sometimes it’s a struggle to find the humanity in anyone. And that’s without getting into the ending and the head-scratching loose ends it leaves dangling. So I land in the middle, completely aware of the movie’s sense of uniqueness but also bummed at how it misses a mark it could have easily hit.

VERDICT – 2.5 STARS

“I’m a 51-year-old who likes cats better than people.” That’s how Lee Israel describes herself in Marielle Heller’s film “Can You Ever Forgive Me?” It’s a biopic with Israel as its subject and an adaptation of her 2008 memoir of the same name. It follows her experience as a struggling writer who ends up making ends meet by forging coveted letters from famous deceased authors.

Melissa McCarthy makes a welcomed dramatic turn playing Lee Israel who has fallen on hard times after her writing career stalls. She’s a depressed and cash-strapped alcoholic who can’t keep a job and owes months of back-rent on her filthy Manhattan apartment. She can’t get an advance for a new book because she has burned every bridge her agent (a wonderful Jane Curtin) has laid down for her.

You know where things go from here. A desperate Lee begins forging old letters and selling them to bookstores around the city. The true story goes that she sold over 400 documents, a remarkable crime streak that would seem impossible to pull off. The real Lee Israel was an unrepentant sham and the film definitely captures that. But Heller makes an obvious attempt to lace Israel’s story with sympathy.

McCarthy gives a good performance although it doesn’t require as much range as it may seem. She burrows down into Israel’s unlikability and isn’t asked to go much further. She still manages to give us an good character with several interesting layers. Take what is probably her deepest character flaw – the near arrogant insistence that she is a great writer and everyone needs to recognize it. At one point she states “I’m a better Dorothy Parker than Dorothy Parker”. And the film offers no grand transformation. She maintains this stance to the very end even finding a way to use it to rationalize her crimes.

Richard E. Grant is getting a lot of attention for playing Lee’s only non-feline friend Jack. Grant is effortlessly good in what is a flamboyant and pretty showy performance. Jack is a fellow boozer and much like Lee he’s far from the most likable person. McCarthy and Grant have really nice chemistry and that makes for some entertaining back-and-forths between two otherwise shady people. Unfortunately I began to sour on their banter after a while.

Even though we know how things are going to end, Heller along with screenwriters Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty give us enough to sink our teeth into. But it’s McCarthy who pulls off the impossible. She not only has us caring (to some degree) about such an unpleasant curmudgeon but also (in one way or another) she has us relating to her as well. That can’t be an easy task and it’s just enough to carry the film over the finish line.

VERDICT – 3 STARS