Joe Thomas as Leo, in UNIVERSAL. Courtesy of Subspin/Dominion 3.
Every once in a blue moon, two or more young adults can go to a cabin in the woods and not be besieged by cannibals, psychos or demons. Thank goodness! So long as threats to life and limb aren’t inevitable, city folk might still venture out into nature occasionally, thereby supporting rural economies. But such apparent safety is no guarantee of grist for an entertaining non-gory movie.
In UNIVERSAL, writer/director Stephen Portland delivers a nerd-fest of science and computer stuff, presented by a cast of three. Leo (Joe Thomas) and Naomi (Rosa Robson) are an overworked academic couple who vow to unplug COMPLETELY for a weekend to just stay focused on each other. He’s a geneticist on the verge of some big breakthrough in understanding more about DNA that could explain much of the universe and the nature of our existence. He’s also under pressure from his funding source to deliver something tangible ASAP; Naomi’s field is different, but close enough to understand his project. He’s been avoiding a persistent fanboy named Ricky, who claims to have helpful information.
Soon after arrival, their solitude is shattered when Ricky shows up. The fanboy turns out to be an attractive, determined young woman (Kelley Mack) with boundless energy and no sense of boundaries. Her social skills are severely lacking (probably somewhere on the high-functioning end of the spectrum; no mention of whether she was vaccinated), but her findings may significantly advance Leo toward his pressing goal. Naomi resents the hell out of the intrusion that decimates their promise to each other. But Ricky’s urgency draws both in, making the computer analysis of her data the centerpiece of their weekend, and our movie experience.
Maybe I’m not the best audience for this film, since the science and its implications largely flew over my head. Every scene occurs in and around the cabin, as if it could have been adapted from the stage. The dialog-heavy script, with little visual variety, makes MY DINNER WITH ANDRE seem like an action-adventure flick. The main source of suspense comes from Kelley Mack’s character. Is she really just a devoted scientist, or does she have some more sinister agenda? If they find a big breakthrough, will they agree on how to claim credit and monetize the results?
No more is possible without spoilers, other than the sad note that Mack died of cancer shortly after filming, making this her last on-screen appearance. Besides serving as a producer here, she brought an enigmatic sparkle that energized what could have been a total snooze-fest. It’s a shame we won’t be able to see more from her.
UNIVERSAL is available On Demand starting Friday, Dec. 5, 2025.
A scene from BARRON’S COVE. Courtesy of Well Go USA
The intense drama BARRON’S COVE opens with the gruesome death of a young boy, Barron, when the prank pulled by a couple of his “friends” goes horribly awry. The perps deny any knowledge of what happened. Caleb (Garrett Hedlund) is the grieving father who smells a cover up when the local authorities dismiss it as a suicide, so he starts going all Bronson on those who oppose his efforts to uncover what really happened. His ex-wife blames him for failing to pick their son up after school. He blames his uncle (Stephen Lang) who runs the construction supply business that employs Caleb as hired muscle for collections and contract ”compliance” among his clientele. That’s who demanded he perform one of his typical bullying tasks that made him late for his son.
Caleb demands the truth from one of the playmates, Ethan (Christian Convey) – a wretched brat who happens to be the adopted son of the politically ambitious scion of the region’s most powerful, influential family. Caleb goes off the rails over the lack of answers, spurred greatly by Ethan’s rather psychotic response to all questions. Desperate for answers, Caleb kidnaps Ethan to scare the truth out of him. It does not go smoothly. As the hostage hiding and sweating situation progresses, a raft of dirty secrets, side deals and betrayals unfold. Violence occurs; more is threatened.
Hedlund gives an excellent performance, showing the thuggish and sympathetic sides of Caleb’s nature convincingly throughout his emotional roller coaster of discovery. Convey starts out as thoroughly despicable before showing what may or may not be an element of vulnerability. He keeps us guessing. Lang is his usual hard-nosed evil self; he does boss-bully as well as anyone in the biz. Hamish Linklater turns in a very credible stretch from his usual nice-guy roles.
Cruelty towards children – however well-deserved it may seem in context – will be hard for many to watch. Otherwise, it’s a fast-moving, suspenseful action tale that navigates those waters capably.
BARRON’S COVE debuts on Blu-ray and DVD through Amazon from Well Go USA on Tuesday, August 5, 2025.
Josephine Park as Maja, David Dencik as Lev the bookseller, and Sofie Grabol as Leah’s mom, Chana, in ATTACHMENT. Photo credit: Soeren Kirkegaard. Courtesy of Shudder
ATTACHMENT is a strange little Danish indie drama that keeps viewers off-balance in several respects for a psychological, and possibly supernatural, suspense tale. It opens with Maja (Josephine Park) and Leah (Ellie Kendrick) having the sort of meet-cute at a Danish bookstore that usually kicks off a rom-com. Maja is a local actress whose career highs may already be behind her. Leah is a student from England who was raised in a Hassidic community. She came to Copenhagen to connect with her mother’s Danish roots. Chemistry kicks in quickly, and the two young women become lovers.
When a leg injury puts Leah on crutches, she stays there a few days longer than planned. That’s enough time for Maja to become so enamored that she accompanies her to London. The two move into Leah’s flat, which is the second floor of her mother’s building. That’s where it starts becoming obvious that this ain’t gonna be no comedy.
Leah’s mom, Chana (Sofie Grabol), is wildly over-protective, secretive and surly towards this outsider. Hassidic communities are always rather self-contained, and this blonde gentile is swimming in strange waters. Leah is mostly bed-ridden, and surprisingly tolerant of her mother’s hovering, which includes all sorts of rituals, amulets and artifacts to ward off evil spirits.
The only one who educates Maja (and the audience) about the culture, including Jewish mysticism, is Lev (David Dencik), the bookseller. Maja hears strange sounds at night, as a sense of danger lurks around the edges of the home and its occupants. Is Chana a nut case? Is Leah pathologically co-dependent? Or is there a valid reason for all the precautions against evil spirits?
That all makes ATTACHMENT a multi-pronged title, covering Maja’s romantic devotion to Leah; the tight mother-daughter bond; and whether some demonic entity is nesting within the home or its occupants. I can’t give you more without spoilers.
Writer/director Gabriel Gier Gislason does well wearing both hats. The script fills in a lot of essential Jewish education without detracting from the unfolding tale. As director, he keeps viewers in suspense and engaged within a rather claustrophobia-inducing set. Very little of the running time occurs outside the abodes of the three women, or in bright light. That accentuates the spooky side of the production. Performances from the three are excellent, which is especially admirable considering the range of moods required to flesh out their personalities and story arcs.
ATTACHMENT, in English and Danish with English subtitles, streams exclusively on Shudder starting Thursday, Feb. 9.
Zuzanna Surowy as Sara/Manya, in MY NAME IS SARA. Courtesy of Strand Releasing
How many 13-year-olds have the self-discipline to pretend to be someone else for two years, without once revealing the truth even to those closest to her? MY NAME IS SARA is a tense historical survival drama that unfolds more like a thriller, which recounts the true story of 13-year-old Sara Goralnik who concealed her Jewish identity in Nazi-occupied Ukraine for two years, even from the Ukrainian Orthodox farmers with whom she is living.
There is a particularly timely element to this true story film as it is set in western Ukraine, part of which was in Poland when World War II started and part of which was in the Soviet Union, but all of which was occupied by Germany when the story takes place. The film not only tells Sara Goralnik’s harrowing personal story but gives us insights into the plight of Ukrainian farmers during the war, farmers who were brutalized and exploited by the occupying Nazis but also subject to raids from partisans hiding in the woods. As much as they might support the partisans goals in fighting the Nazis, the farmers faced starvation by repeated raids from both sides.
MY NAME IS SARA feels more like a thriller than a historical drama or biography, although it is also those. During World War II, many Jews tried to survive by posing as Christians, and fear of discovery gives such hidden identity stories an inherent tension, but MY NAME IS SARA is exceptional. Not only is young Sara hiding from the Nazis but she has to conceal her Jewish identify from the very family she is living with. The Ukrainian Orthodox Christian farming family is not helping her to hide – or at least not knowingly. In some ways, they were as much a threat to her safety as the Nazis occupying the nearby Ukrainian town, since they not only share their neighbors’ antisemitic attitudes but they were also driven by fear, as the Nazis brutally punish anyone sheltering Jewish refugees. The risk of discovery is ever-present and Sara has no one she can trust, yet must appear calm at all times, a challenge for anyone but all the more so for someone so young.
Sara (newcomer Zuzanna Surowy) and her family lived in Korets in the Poland when the Nazis invaded. Before the war, Korets had a large Jewish population that was well-integrated with the Polish Catholic and Orthodox Christian Ukrainian ones. As the film opens, Sara and her older brother Moishe (Konrad Cichon) are hiding in the woods, after fleeing the ghetto where their parents and two younger brothers are trapped. They are attempting to cross the border into the Soviet Union, an area the Nazis also occupy, with the goal of reaching a farm owned by an old non-Jewish woman that their parents have paid to shelter them. But as soon as they arrive, Moishe realizes they can’t stay, as the nervous woman is likely to betray them. “You would do better without me,” he tells his younger sister, noting that her appearance, with light-colored eyes and hair, makes it easier for her to pass as non-Jewish than his more obviously Jewish features do. The next morning, Sara makes the tough choice to leave while her brother sleeps.
After making her way through the woods, the hungry and tired Sara emerges in a field where an Ukrainian farmer, Ivan (Pawel Królikowski), and his son Grisha (Piotr Nerlewski) are working. She tells Ivan she is looking for work, that her name is Manya Romanchuk and she has run away from a troubled home life in Korets. The farmer eyes her with suspicion, then asks if she is Jewish, which she denies. He demands she make the sign of the cross herself as proof she is Christian. Satisfied with her response, the Ukrainians take her to the farm of Ivan’s brother Pavlo (Eryk Lubos) and his younger wife Nadya (Michalina Olszanska) where Sara can work as a nanny for their two young sons. At the farm, Sara is challenged again to prove she is not Jewish and, again, passes their tests, although her new employers still remain wary.
While Sara faces constant threat of discovery, she also learns things about her Ukrainian farmer employers that can help her. They hate the Nazi occupiers too, and are not so fond of the Russians, with memories of the Soviet famine of the 1930s lingering. She also learns that the husband and wife each have secrets, and each tries to enlist her support in their troubled marriage.
Director Steven Oritt ramps up the tension in this film in a series of nail-biting scenes, and the threat is always in our minds. The true-story is aided by the fact that Oritt interviewed the real Sara Goralnik Shapiro extensively before her death in 2018, information that David Himmelstein used in writing his script. As well as concealing her identity during the war, the real Sara also kept the secret of her war-time experience from her family until late in life. Although it is just being released now into theaters, the drama was made in 2019 with the support of Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation and with the real Sara’s son, Mickey Shapiro, serving as executive producer. It has played several film festivals, including the 2020 Miami Jewish Film Festival, where it won the Audience Award for Best Narrative Film, and the 2019 Warsaw Jewish Film Festival, where it won the David Camera Grand Prix Award. Oritt has made a few documentaries but this is his dramatic feature film debut.
The film was shot on location in Poland with a Polish crew and with a Polish, German, Russian and Ukrainian cast, lending authenticity. It has lovely cinematography by Marian Prokop, who took advantage of the pretty, period Polish locations, aided by nice art direction. The acting is good, with young Zuzanna Surowy particularly impressive as Sara, particularly considering her lack of acting experience. Her still, sad face has a inherent underlying steel to it which serves the film well. Often when the character is asked a fraught question or faces a situation that threatens to expose her, Suwovy’s face remains still and unchanged for a beat, before she smiles and pretends to be pleased or cooperative, a choice that has the effect of making the viewer hold their breathe for a moment, increasing the tension more than one might expect. Director Oritt does a masterful job with keeping tension high overall, without ever wearing us out with the suspense.
As the story unfolds, what is most astonishing is Sara’s ability to pass as Ukrainian Orthodox Christian. Time and again, her employers test her, suspicious that she may be Jewish, asking her to cross herself, eat pork and even recite Christian prayers. Although we eventually learn the reason for her knowledge of Orthodox ways, we remain impressed that one so young can so coolly pull off the impersonation. Beyond the religious testing, there are other threats to expose her, including that the village she fled is not so far away, and she runs the risk she might encounter someone who knows her.
The film also periodically reminds us of the deadly price the Nazis imposed on those who did shelter Jews. When another Jewish girl turns up at the farm, Sara tries to help without giving herself away, another reminder of the constant danger she is in.
There is much to admire about this film but not all is perfect. Some of the exposition is unclear, and we are not entirely certain what is happening between Sara and Pavlo, although he is clearly attracted to her. The film also has the characters speak in English when they are presumably speaking in Ukrainian but uses subtitles for other languages, a choice that some viewers might find awkward.
All in all, MY NAME IS SARA is a worthy drama, an impressive true story of surviving the Holocaust, by a teen girl on her own, forced to conceal her identity and live by her wits, told with a thriller vibe, and shot on location with fine cinematography and acting.
MY NAME IS SARA, in English and Polish, German and Russian with English subtitles, opens Friday, Aug. 19, at Marcus Des Peres Cinema and other theaters.
A scene from the Finnish TV mini-series PIECE OF MY HEART. Courtesy of Topic
The title “Piece Of My Heart” (“Pala Sydamesta” in Finnish) looks like it belongs on the poster for a romantic tear-jerker. Regular readers of my reviews will know it couldn’t possibly be one of those, simply because I’m the one writing this review. “Piece Of My Heart” is an eight-episode Finnish TV miniseries dramatizing the work of child welfare workers in Helsinki, delivering far more suspense than sobbing.
Rita (Lotta Lehtikari), the veteran of a two-woman team, is severely traumatized and disgraced from a recent high-profile failure. A young girl under her supervision disappeared under circumstances that raise questions of Rita’s misconduct. She’d always been something of a rogue in the department, but her handling of this family may have gone tragically over the line. As the season begins, Rita is returning to duty, but finding herself replaced as head of the unit. Her new supervisor (Martin Bahne) is something of a prig with a grudge, adding another dimension of challenges to serving the beleaguered families on her turf.
Enter Laura (Niina Koponen) as Rita’s partner. Laura is a young mother, new to the agency, and soon overwhelmed by the severity and urgency of their clients’ needs. In the early episodes, we meet a swirl of children and teens with a full spectrum of personal and familial issues. We watch the women do their best to respond, despite limited resources, lack of essential police support, Rita’s actions being overly scrutinized by that new boss in the wake of her recent episode, and overriding political pressures on them all, arising from the city’s push for funding of a large new facility and expanded agency for housing and healing troubled minors.
The series covers a lot of emotional and cultural ground in just over six suspenseful hours. The individuals’ arcs overlap, with those we meet early on continuing for much of the season. Besides displaying an array of troubled families, the series explores the toll this work takes on case workers and their own families, including factors from their past that pointed them towards such a demanding and draining career choice.
We particularly see how hard it is for them to make “non-work” plans, since crises requiring immediate response pose a 24/7 cancellation threat. The residual damage to our protagonists is highlighted by barrages of flashbacks and nagging dreams – especially Rita’s. The mystery of what happened to that girl before the series opens weaves through its entirety, impacting much of how they can handle their current clientele.
The series is ideal for a binge, since several cases progress within each episode, alternating among the victims, their families, the workers and high-level political machinations concerning approval and control over the Big Project. The crushing burdens of responsibility the job forces upon the social workers and their own families is also presented compellingly, without descending into soap opera.
The first three episodes begin streaming on Topic on Feb. 17, with the rest issued weekly thereafter. Those who start immediately should not be put off by the slow pace and possibly confusing mix of flashbacks and nightmares in the early going. All the elements come together over time, and progress in a relatively realistic, emotionally engaging manner towards a believable, lifelike set of outcomes.
The problems their young clients face may be hard for some to watch, but the presentation seems about as honest (i.e. free of cinematic hyperbole) as such dramas can get. Unlike many domestic analogs, these protagonists are relatable humans, flaws and all, trying their best without martial arts skills or other extraordinary resources. Viewers are not spoon-fed tidy Hollywood endings for all parties but should be satisfied when the dust settles.
“Piece Of My Heart,” in Finnish with English subtitles, begins streaming on Topic with episodes 1-3 on Feb. 17, and additional episodes 4-8 following weekly.
