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Alan Kim is one of the biggest breakouts of Oscar season thanks to his role in Lee Isaac Chung’s “Minari,” and now his post-“Minari” career is taking shape. As reported by TV Line, the rising child actor has landed a pivotal role on the second season of Comedy Central’s “Awkwafina Is Nora from Queens.” The publication adds: “In flashbacks, Kim will guest star as the young version of Nora’s dad Wally (played in the present day by cast member Bd Wong).”

Kim has received critical acclaim for his performance in “Minari,” in which he stars opposite Steven Yeun, Han Ye-ri, Noel Kate Cho, Youn Yuh-jung, and Will Patton. Together with his cast members, Kim is nominated for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Cast in a Motion Picture. Kim won the Critics Choice Award for Best Young Performer, and he’ll compete at the BAFTA...

Told with the rugged tenderness of a Flannery O’Connor novel but aptly named for a resilient Korean herb that can grow wherever it’s planted, Lee Isaac Chung’s semi-autobiographical ; it’s the story of a family assimilating into a country, but also the story of a man assimilating into his family.

Jacob Yi (Steven Yeun) and his wife Monica (“Sea Fog” star Yeri Han) emigrated from Korea together in the early ’70s, but — after nearly a decade of scraping by as chicken sexers in California — they arrive at the Arkansas trailer home he bought for their family in separate cars. Monica drives the kids: A stoic pre-teen girl named Anne (the natural and grounded Noel Cho), and a precocious seven-year-old boy named David. Jacob drives the truck, which is full of its own precious cargo.

As he pulls up to the five-acre plot of disheveled Ozark farmland, stridently unaware...

Stars: Nien-Jen Wu, Issei Ogata, Kelly Lee, Jonathan Chang, Su-Yun Ko, Adrian Lin | Written and Directed by Edward Yang

Taiwanese writer-director Edward Yang’s final film starts with an ironically schmaltzy piano score playing over a scene of a slightly dismal wedding. It immediately sets the arch, bittersweet tone of the film to come.

A couple of hours into this intimate three-hour picture you might think you’re becoming used to Yang’s beautifully precise compositions and bold use of colour, but then he’ll pull something new and evocative out of the hat – a desperate midnight telephone call shot entirely in silhouette, for example – and you’ll remember you’re watching the twilight work of a master.

For all its stillness and its characters’ lack of impetus, it’s a fast-moving film. Its dry humour might lack punchlines, but the scenes themselves are punchy. It’s a family drama employing a very loose narrative,...

Every week, IndieWire asks a select handful of film critics two questions and publishes the results on Monday. (The answer to the second, “What is the best film in theaters right now?”, can be found at the end of this post.)

This week’s question: In honor of “The Florida Project,” which has just started its platform release across the country, what is the greatest child performance in a film?

Jordan Hoffman (@JHoffman), The Guardian, Vanity Fair

I can agonize over this question or I can go at this Malcolm Gladwell “Blink”-style. My answer is Tatum O’Neal in “Paper Moon.” She’s just so funny and tough, which of course makes the performance all the more heartbreaking. She won the freaking Oscar at age 10 for this and I’d really love to give a more deep cut response, but why screw around? Paper Moon is a perfect film and she is the lynchpin.

This week, this site's own Shock Waves podcast is taking a week off, however, you can catch me on the Top 5 Film Podcast . There, I join Jonathan Chang and Trevor Schoenfeld to discuss the Los Angeles event, Screamfest, and some of the films I saw there. We also touch on The Thing films and the Paranormal Activity trilogy. Give the podcast a listen (this is also available on iTunes).

Chicago – Taiwan has an interesting cinematic history, as outlined in the strong interview with Asian-cinema critic Tony Rayns on the recently-released Blu-ray of Edward Yang’s “Yi Yi (A One and a Two…).” The country didn’t really have a film industry until the ’50s and then it was purely propaganda for the next several decades as China tried to win over the hearts of the residents after taking over from Japan. Consequently, the films of Taiwan have an interesting perspective on history and arguably the best film in the nation’s entire existence captures that perspective in the beloved “Yi Yi.”

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.5/5.0

Yang uses an epic running time (near three hours) to tell an intimate story, that of a family over the course of an average year. Starring the great Nianzhen Wu, one of the pioneers in the changing Taiwanese cinema in the ’70s, “Yi Yi” is a simple story,...

In the past decade, foreign films became slightly less foreign as directors moved from country to country, funding came from all over the globe, and various international artists teamed up for the benefit of a single work. American Clint Eastwood made a film in Japanese, Taiwanese Hou Hsiao-hsien made a film in French, and Chinese Wong Kar-wai made a film in English. There was even a film with a writer from Poland, a director from Germany, lead actors from Australia and USA, dialogue in Italian and funding from France. So for my list, I'm not choosing "foreign" films so much as I am films whose primary language is not English. Following is my ten best in ranked order.

1. Yi Yi (2000)

This was the seventh feature film by Taiwanese filmmaker Edward Yang, and his first to be distributed in the United States. Sadly, it was also his last film, as...