Five international movies to stream now.

“Good News”

By DEVIKA GIRISH

‘Good News’

Real life is truly stranger than fiction, as proven by this Korean dark comedy, whose harebrained premise, you’ll be amazed to know, is lifted from a true story. In 1970, members of Japan’s Red Army Faction, a militant communist group, hijacked a Japanese Airlines plane and demanded it be flown to North Korea. Together, Japanese and Korean officials hatched a plan to direct the plane to Gimpo Airport in Seoul, South Korea, which they disguised as the airport in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

It’s a tale made for a movie (the set-dressing of the airport is a particularly cinematic touch), and director Byun Sung-hyun runs with it in “Good News.” He crafts a five-part, time-hopping, nail-biting satire that makes hay out of the hypocrisy of all of its characters: the doddering Japanese and Korean politicians, concerned more with one-upmanship than the lives onboard the plane; the U.S. military officials, dumb, domineering and self-interested; the young, baby-faced Red Army militants, whose touted inspiration for the mission is a manga series called “Ashita no Joe.” The humor runs the range from mordant to slapstick, and the performances nimbly balance physical comedy and a subtler satirical realism — particularly those of Sul Kyung-gu, who plays a political fixer named Nobody, and Hong Kyung, who plays an enterprising air traffic controller charged with leading the whole operation. (Stream it on Netflix.)

‘Eko’

On top of a foggy mountain in the South Indian state of Kerala, a dog-breeding mobster owns a large house surrounded by the jungle and patrolled by rare and dangerous purebreds from Malaysia. His wife — or rather, his favorite wife, as we soon learn — lives in the house with a helper; in the village below, friends, foes and cops lurk, kept at bay by the canines. The mobster, Kuriachan (Saurabh Sachdeva), has been missing for several years, and multiple people are on his tail. Each has his or her own sinister reasons, which are revealed slowly over the course of this atmospheric thriller, in which no character can be trusted and no twist can be anticipated.

Layering different perspectives and timelines — which go back all the way to World War II — director Dinjith Ayyathan crafts a film in which the borders between human and animal, nature and soul, allies and enemies, are blurred. What unfolds is both gripping and deeply disturbing, as Ayyathan traces the networks of money, caste and misogyny that rule this place, its insidious violence only thinly masked by the beautiful scenery. (Stream it on Netflix.)

‘Wolf and Dog’

Blending an almost verité-seeming naturalism with hints of magical realism, filmmaker Cláudia Varejão’s film is a luminous and surprising tale of queer coming-of-age. The teenage Ana (Ana Cabral) lives on the island of São Miguel, on the Portuguese archipelago of the Azores. Hers is a small, insular and conservative town, where religion and the patriarchy reign supreme. Ana and her friend Luis (Ruben Pimenta) both defy the traditional dictates of gender and sexuality, straining against the island’s confines and dreaming of a life elsewhere.

What’s refreshing about “Wolf and Dog” is that the film acknowledges the bigotry faced by the island’s queer community but doesn’t belabor it; instead Varejão stages exuberant drag-queen performances in queer bars, neon-streaked dance parties on the beach and religious processions that Luis and his friends join with sparkly, gender-fluid outfits and glittery makeup on their faces. This is a film of overwhelming beauty, be it the landscape, the actors or the colors, and it pushes us to imagine a different world — one of defiant queer joy and endless possibilities — even as we inhabit this one. (Stream it on Tubi.)

“Wolf and Dog’”

‘Her Body’

Directed by Natalie Cisarovska, “Her Body” is a biopic of a remarkable figure: Andrea Absolonova, a star athlete on the high dive who became a porn phenomenon after an injury wrecked her sports career. Cisarovska’s film begins in the 1990s, in the lead up to Absolonova’s accident while training for the Olympics. Across unshowy, intimately observed scenes of her life, we see how the sport consumes Absolonova, played here by Natalia Germani; how it commandeers her day-to-day routines, her understanding of her self, and her ambitions, which are egged on by her father. She’s known little else of life when the injury cuts off her career. Adjusting to a regular existence, working a job as a supermarket cashier, all feel unbearable. Then a lover suggests she model nude for him and a new world opens up, giving her a chance to pursue excellence in yet another field that employs her physicality.

Delicately, without judgment, pity or forced commentary, Cisarovska shows us the perils of a life reduced to the body, and the various, often unnoticed ways in which women’s autonomy is constricted even outside of work like pornography. When, at the end, Absolonova’s body betrays her once and for all, it comes almost as a reprieve, freeing our heroine’s heart and mind to soar beyond her corporeal confines. (Stream it on Tubi.)

‘The Heirloom’

For anyone who lived with a partner through the COVID lockdowns, this Canadian indie comedy may hit a little too close to home, making you either smile or flinch in recognition. Playing versions of themselves, director Ben Petrie and actress Grace Glowicki star as a couple living together during the pandemic. Eric (Petrie) is trying, and failing, to make progress on his screenplay, and Allie (Glowicki), feeling stuck in her own ways, gets fixated on adopting a rescue dog. They fight, negotiate, canoodle and dream, and finally get a whippet named Milly from the Dominican Republic. Then they fight, negotiate, canoodle and dream with even more intensity. Their arguments about Milly — what to feed her, how to train her — become proxy conversations about their relationship.

Eric, inspired, decides halfway through to make a movie about their life with the dog, adding a wry, metafictional framework that makes the ensuing scenes feel slippery: Are they — meaning Eric and Allie, but also Petrie and Glowicki — acting? Are they talking about their own lives or performing fictional dialogue? Eventually, we realize that it doesn’t really matter. Performances and metaphors are often refuges for the truth, means by which to say out loud the things we may otherwise be unable to articulate. (Stream it on Ovid.)