Our reviewers select and review the best independent and foreign films on amazon.com, cd universe, and netflix

The Chaser (Korea, 2008, 125 min, dir: Hong-jin Na, cast: Yun-seok Kim, Yoo-jeong Kim, Jung-woo Ha).

Along with apple pie, the US culture can take credit for police procedural and gangster films. Competition is heating up in Korea, France, Denmark, Brazil and a handful of other countries where directors have learned the art of the car chase, the interrogation, the cynical rogue cop and the clever psychopath.

In The Chaser, Joon-ho Eom ( Yun-seok Kim) is the rogue cop turned pimp who sends his girls out to the grittier districts of Seoul. When one of them sends panicked cell phone calls back to him he frantically tries to find her and save her. She’s disappeared but the killer is in plain site.

Without evidence, and scorned by the police he once worked with; Joon-ho starts a long slog to bring down the killer (Jung-woo Ha). Along the way he bursts into his former whore/employee’s apartment for evidence and meets her little daughter (Yoo-jeong Kim).

From then on the movie has to follow the inevitable march to a life or death fight with the killer while the hero takes care of, and falls for, the adorable precocious child.

It all sound like we’ve seen it before, but the strength is in the delivery. Pathos, comedy, and great fights. The Casher is writer/director Hong-jin’s first film. The Yellow Sea is his second. He’s worth a look at both films.

Spoken Word (USA 2009, 116 min, dir: Victor Nunez, cast: Kuno Becker, Ruben Blades, Persia White).

No modern film I can remember is about poetry. Not the kind you read in high school English class, but the slam poetry that is a form of rap with rhythm but no melody. Spoken Word attempts to supply the melody.

Cruz (Kuno Becker) is a west coast poet living sensually with girl friend Shea (Persia White) and teaching poetry to high school kids. He gets a phone call from New Mexico saying his father (Ruben Blades) is dying of cancer and he must come home.

The film has all the usually suspected traumas of returning home again; including alcohol and drugs. Somehow it all looks like a lot cleaner when you throw the empty bottles against adobe walls that look out over the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

What distinguishes Spoken Word is not story words, but poetry words. Cruz speaks them eloquently to articulate his journey. The words belong to the poet Joe Ray Sandoval, who collaborated on the screenplay. But the movie belongs to director Victor Nunez.

He specializes in small stories supplying much feeling but not much conflict. Ulee’s Gold, Ruby in Paradise, and Gal Young ‘Un are other good examples. It is not easy to be the go to filmmaker for offbeat, sentimental subjects and Nunez is kind of the Sundance pro.

Like many Nunez movies, you keep waiting in Spoken Word for something to happen and then realize, at the end, that it already did.The journey is the objective, the poetry is the force, and this small movie is as gold as the honey that Ulee makes it his backyard honeypot.

Holly Rollers (USA 2010, 89 min, dir: Kevin Asch, cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Justin Bartha (best friend), Ari Graynor (girl), Danny A. Abeckaser, Mark Ivanir).

Poor Jesse Eisenberg, he’ll always be the Jew. If you look through his credits he’s played guys named Eli, Daniel, Benjamin and Mark (twice). In Holy Rollers he is Sam Gold, and orthodox black hat Jew in Williamsburg, Brooklyn who forsakes davening for the drug trade.

Eisenberg is an excellent actor and director Kevin Asch makes the point in his movie (based on a real story) that if you take away the tzitzis and black coats, these guys and their girl (Ari Graynor) are no different than any other punk Ecstasy pushers.

When you look at Jesse dressed up as a Hassid, you can’t help thinking what Mark Zuckerberg might look like if Facebook went kosher. Zuck might be one of the richest men in the word but he has the sex appeal of a gnat.

One scene that also gives some deja vu thoughts in Holy Rollers is when Sam’s (Jesse Eisenberg’s) father sits him down at the dining room table and says the Rabbi told him Sam is not coming to shul anymore. Sam tries to regain his father’s confidence by telling him he is still religious and his goal is still to be among the faithful; but to no avail.

We’ve been here before. Let’s flash back to 1927 and The Jazz Singer (or 1952 or 1980 for the remakes). Al Jolson tells his father he wants to sing jazz, not kol nidre, and is disowned. Holy Rollers gives it new twist. Now it’s ‘Dad, what I really want to do is deal drugs.”