Much has been made of the extreme and unrelenting violence that penetrates almost every scene of Václav Marhoul’s 169-minute “The Painted Bird,” in the grand tradition of “Come and See,” “The Tin Drum ...

“The Painted Bird” has been controversial ever since Jerzy Kosinski first published his novel in 1965. The grim story, about a young boy trying to survive in Eastern Europe during WWII, features acts ...

The Painted Bird is theatre of cruelty at its most literal. Brutally faithful to Polish author Jerzy Kosinski’s controversial 1965 novel of the same name (once considered unfilmable), its hellish ...

In recent years, I’ve noticed the emergence of a new strain of films centered around the Holocaust. It began in 2015 with Hungarian director László Nemes’ disorienting Son of Saul, which played around ...

If you think the black-and-white Czech film “The Painted Bird” will fulfill your monthly boring-art quota, just wait until the scene in which a nympho gets it on with a goat! Oh, the movie is ...

Prague-born writer-director Vaclav Marhoul tosses his hat into the ring with the likes of Bergman, Tarkovsky and Fellini with the Czech Republic Academy Award selection “The Painted Bird,” a ...

Young actor Petr Kotlar and director Vaclav Marhoul at the 76 Venice International Film Festival 2019. (photo credit: Marco Piraccini/Archivio Marco Piraccini/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images) ...

I have a friend who loves to walk out of movies. He’ll give almost anything a try, but he knows his taste and can tell when he’s seen enough. It’s almost a matter of pride for him to cut bait at a ...

An extraordinary piece of filmmaking I hope never to see again, Václav Marhoul’s “The Painted Bird” is a pulverizing movie experience from which one cannot look away. Adapted from Jerzy Kosiński’s ...

Celebrity tends to destroy the artist -- just look at Orson Welles, Truman Capote or Marlon Brando, who spent their last years prattling away on the couches of Talk Show Nation. Or Jerzy Kosinski, ...