What to watch this week: ‘Strawman’, ‘Pachinko’ and more

Strawman

This film, based on true events, tells the story of a surveillance operation in Communist Poland. The target: Karol Wojtyla, the future Pope John Paul II. This morally complicated thriller is told from the point of view of the officer in charge of the operation, who starts off an ambitious young man but develops doubts over the many years he keeps tabs on Wojtyla. Directed by Robert Gliński. (Netflix)

My First Film

An inventive metafictional indie by Zia Anger that questions why we create art. A young filmmaker, Vita, is making her first film with a skeleton crew. The production hits one roadblock after another – just as Anger’s own, unreleased first film did. This revisiting becomes something profound: a way to refashion failure into something meaningful. (MUBI)

Also read: Weekend food plan: A pop-up with a cause and Oktoberfest beers

Pachinko

Episode 4 of season 2 is a whirlwind, with perhaps the best scenes and lines so far. “Sunja, the two of us, this is right no matter what anyone says,” says Hansu, the grey character played by the dashing Lee Min-ho (The Heir, Boys over Flowers) to Sunja (Min-ha Kim plays the young Sunja; and Youn Yuh-jung of Minari fame, the family matriarch). “Let’s wash the mud off you,” says Sunja’s mother to her when she returns home. The multilingual series spanning multiple generations of a Korean family in Japan, interweaves the parallel stories of Sunja and her grandson, Solomon (Jin Ha; Only Murders in the Building, season 4). (Apple TV+)

Culinary Class Wars

The Korean cooking show pits top-tier, well-established chefs, called white spoons, against black spoons, comprising not so well-known local chefs and cooks. Judging them are restaurateur and TV personality Paik Jong-won (Korean Fried Chicken Rhapsody, Street Food Fighter) and Anh Sung-jae, Korea’s only Michelin three-star chef. The scale of the sets is staggering, and the four episodes that have dropped so far are totally binge-worthy. (Netflix)

Also read: Netflix wants to shrink your favorite show’s carbon footprint