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On the JoBlo Movies YouTube channel, we will be posting one full movie every other day throughout the week, giving viewers the chance to watch them entirely free of charge. The Free Movie of the Day we have for you today is the thriller Jack Strong, starring Patrick Wilson. You can watch it over on the YouTube channel linked above, or you can just watch it in the embed at the top of this article.

Written and directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski, Jack Strong has the following synopsis: In the midst of the Cold War, Ryszard Kuklinski, a colonel in the Polish army, challenges the Soviets when the communist regime was still powerful. The colonel discovers that Poland was the target of the US plans for a nuclear counterattack.

Wilson is joined in the cast by Marcin Dorocinski, Maja Ostaszewska, Dimitri Bilov, Dagmara Dominczyk, Oleg Maslennikov, Ireneusz Czop, Miroslaw Baka, Zbigniew Zamachowski,...

"What now? Shall we shoot each other?" Shout Studios has released an official Us trailer for a Polish WWII action thriller titled The Resistance Fighter, commemorating the anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, the largest resistance operation in WWII Europe. The original Polish title is Kurier, which translates to The Messenger, but it has a whole new name for the Us release. Based on a true story, the film is about the Polish resistance fighter / war hero Jan Nowak-Jeziorański. He works as the courier between the Poland's resistance movement and the Polish government in exile in London, and is pursued ceaselessly by the Nazis. "The stakes could not be higher in this riveting wartime thriller that will keep you on the edge of your seat!" Philippe Tlokinski stars, with Julie Engelbrecht, Bradley James, Martin Butzke, Nico Rogner, Patricia Volny, Jan Frycz, Tomasz Schuchardt, Grzegorz Malecki, & Miroslaw Baka. Take a look. Here's...

The Polish film industry is having a moment.

Back home, the box office for local-language movies is booming. Polish audiences are packing cinemas for action thrillers like Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s Pitbull: Last Dog ($14 million local gross) or Patryk Vega’s Botoks ($13.3 million) and rom-coms with titles like Pretend Fiance ($6.3 million) and Taxing Love ($6 million).

On the art house side, Polish cinema is arguably stronger than it’s been in a generation, thanks to the likes of Pawel Pawlikowski, who directed the 2015 Oscar foreign-language winner Ida and followed up this year with awards-season favorite Cold War, which earned him ...

The Polish film industry is having a moment.

Back home, the box office for local-language movies is booming. Polish audiences are packing cinemas for action thrillers like Wladyslaw Pasikowski’s Pitbull: Last Dog ($14 million local gross) or Patryk Vega’s Botoks ($13.3 million) and rom-coms with titles like Pretend Fiance ($6.3 million) and Taxing Love ($6 million).

On the art house side, Polish cinema is arguably stronger than it’s been in a generation, thanks to the likes of Pawel Pawlikowski, who directed the 2015 Oscar foreign-language winner Ida and followed up this year with awards-season favorite Cold War, which earned him ...

Stars: Marcin Dorocinski, Maja Ostaszewska, Patrick Wilson, Dimitri Bilov, Dagmara Dominczyk, Oleg Maslennikov | Written and Directed by Wladyslaw Pasikowski

The IMDb synopsis for Jack Strong describes the film as a “gripping spy thriller” that “tells the true story of a man who dares to challenge the Soviet empire.” While it’s true that the story involves spies, soviets and men, there’s not a great that’s daring, gripping or thrilling in this meandering yet overwrought snoozefest.

The Cold War is a rich seam for stories that has quite possibly been excavated of all its jewels at this point (mainly by John le Carré and Stanley Kubrick), so a plot involving state secrets being passed from Russia-controlled Poland to the slickly-suited USA has me stifling a yawn from the opening credits on. “Jack Strong” is the codename given to the Polish colonel disenfranchised by his Communist overlords and embarks upon...

Lukasz Palkowski’s Gods was the big winner at this year’s annual showcase of Polish cinema at the Gdynia Film Festival which ended with a gala awards ceremony at the weekend.

Gods (Bogowie), based on the life of Zbigniew Religa who performed the first successful heart transplant in Poland in the 1980s, received the Grand Prix Golden Lions for best film as well as individual awards in the categories of screenplay, make-up, production design and actor in a leading role for Tomasz Kot.

In addition, Gods received the award of the Polish Film Festivals and Reviews Abroad as well as the Journalists’ Award, Elle magazine’s Star of the Stars award for lead actor Kot and Radio Gdansk’s Golden Claquer Award for the longest applauded film at a screening in the Musical Theatre for the Main Competition.

Palkowski made his feature directorial debut in 2007 with Reserve, which won three prize at the festival in Gdynia...

The 18th Puchon International Fantastic Film Festival (PiFan) announced its line-up today with Maximilian Erlenwein’s German thriller Stereo [pictured] as the opening film.

Stereo received its world premiere in the Berlinale Panorama section in February but will recieve its Asian premiere at PiFan.

The festival’s closing film will be the world premiere of Korean director Kwon Lee’s sophomore feature My Ordinary Love Story, featuring popular stars Song Sae-byeok and Kang Ye-won.

“My Ordinary Love Story starts off as a humorous romantic comedy and later transforms into a horror mystery,” said chief programmer Jangwan Pyeon, describing it and the opening film as representative of the PiFan’s focus on more “complex genre films” this year.

The festival will screen 210 films from 47 countries with 43 world premieres and 20 international premieres. It will run July 17-27 with the closing ceremony on July 25 and encore screenings on the last two days.

Competition titles

The Puchon Choice: Feature competition section of 12 titles...

From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.- Winston Churchill  Wladyslaw Pasikowski's Jack Strong tells the gripping true story of colonel Ryszard Kuklinski (Marcin Dorocinski), one of the most controversial figures in Polish Post-World War II history. Hailed as a global hero, Kuklinski single-handedly declared and waged a secret war against Communist oppression, risking his and his family's life for the sake of national security. Pressured by his own conscience and by an increasing threat of a nuclear holocaust, he realized that the only way to save what's left of his exhausted country is to go undercover. From a soldier blindly carrying out orders he turned into a spy working for the Us government. Communist called...

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Wladyslaw Pasikowski (Psy, Psy 2, screenwriter for Katyn) is undoubtedly one of the most interesting Polish directors working today. This year he shocked the world with a downright controversial Poklosie, which was meant to unveil the atrocious part of Poland's turbulent past. His latest venture into the country's history will be a thriller based on a true story of Colonel Ryszard Kuklinski (played by Marcin Dorocinski), who tried to do the impossible and stop the Soviets all by himself during the Cold War. This riveting tale of heroism is hailed by many as one of the most fascinating spy stories of the modern world. Here's the synopsis:a spy thriller telling a historically based story of a man who alone dares to challenge Soviets being in the middle...

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When Józef (Maciej Stuhr) returns to Poland after disappearing to the United States 20 years prior, he quickly discovers that his brother Franek (Ireneusz Czop) has become the black sheep of the quaint Polish village where they were born and raised. As it turns out, Franek has taken it upon himself to unearth hundreds of Jewish gravestones, thus dredging up a local history that the townspeople would rather keep buried. Rather than convincing his brother to stop antagonizing his neighbors, Józef becomes intrigued by the mystery and joins his brother's cause. Józef and Franek seem to be fatefully drawn to this quest, as if a higher power has chosen them to reveal the deepest, darkest secrets of their village's past. It is definitely best for me to not divulge what they discover, but their findings do forever alter the history of their nation. There are a lot of Polish people who...

Aftermath (Poklosie) Movie Review Menemsha Films Reviewed for Shockya by Harvey Karten. Data-based on RottenTomatoes.com Grade: B+ Director: Wladyslaw Pasikowski Screenwriter: Wladyslaw Pasikowski Cast: Marcej Stuhr, Ireneusz Czop, Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Zuzana Fialová, Andrzej Mastalerz, Zbigniew Zamachowski Screened at: Critics’ screener, NYC, 11/3/13 Opens: November 1, 2013 One mystery that has remains resolved by historians, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists and thinking people everywhere is this: why is it that on the whole, some nations acts morally and some do not? World War II provides an excellent example. As the Nazis conquered one state after another, the people under German occupation resisted and collaborated to different degrees. The Danes acted well: when word [ Read More ]

The post Aftermath Movie Review appeared first on Shockya.com.

Devastating: that’s the only adjective I can think of to describe my response to this Polish import. Its impact was all the greater because I knew virtually nothing about it ahead of time. While it’s tempting to encourage you to read J. Hoberman’s thorough and thoughtful article in last Sunday’s New York Times, I would recommend waiting until you’ve seen the picture. Writer-director Wladyslaw Pasikowski has structured it like a mystery that reveals itself one layer at a time, and that’s the best way to experience it. (Hoberman astutely compares it to Bad Day at Black Rock and High Plains Drifter.) The time is 2001, and a man who left Poland for America twenty years ago returns to...

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A Polish village is forced to acknowledge it has whitewashed Holocaust history in Aftermath, Wladyslaw Pasikowski's powerful but not bombastic fiction inspired by actual events. Reportedly using the story of a mass killing in Jedwabne (detailed in the Jan Gross book "Neighbors") as a jumping-off point, Pasikowski imagines a community whose Catholic population was far more complicit in Nazi crimes than they admitted to their children, leaving half-buried secrets for later generations to uncover. The film has stirred controversy in Poland since its first screenings at the Warsaw Film Festival a year ago; it will draw less attention

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"We won't make the world a better place, but at least we won't make it worse," says Franciszek Kalina (Ireneusz Czop) to his younger brother, Józef (Maciej Stuhr), near the climax of Wladyslaw Pasikowski's Aftermath. That stark cynicism permeates Pasikowski's unsettling historical drama. The story is simple — two siblings in a Polish village gradually learn of their kin and neighbors' barbaric Jew-baiting during the Holocaust — but what gives Aftermath its peculiar strain of portent is Pasikowski's consistent suggestion of the futility of bold, desperate attempts to undo a wrong.

Not only are there not heroes in Aftermath, there's not even a cut-and-dry protagonist. The director has lifted the material from both Jan T. Gross's 2000 boo...

Watch the trailer and see images from Aftermath directed and written by Wladyslaw Pasikowski, starring Maciej Stuhr, Ireneusz Czop, Zuzana Fialova, Andrzej Mastalerz, Zbigniew Zamachowski and Danuta Szaflarska. From Meneshma Films, the release hits theaters in New York on November 1st followed by a Los Angeles release date on November 15th, 2013. Franek and Jozek Kalina, sons of a poor farmer, are brothers from a small village in central Poland. Franek immigrated to the United States in the 80’s, and cut all ties with his family. Only when Jozek’s wife arrives in the Us, without explanation, does Franek finally return to his homeland.