Our far-flung correspondents

• Simon Abrams in Brooklyn

For better and worse, "Stoker," South Korean director Chan-wook Park's first film with an all English-speaking cast, is very much Park's baby. Park ("Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," "Thirst") is most well-known for directing "Oldboy." In that now-famously bloody, operatic revenge drama, and most of his other films, Park takes great pains to steep viewers in his protagonists' subjective worlds. Perspective is accordingly a prison in "Stoker," a soapy Southern Gothic-style coming of age story with an Alice in Wonderland fetish.

• Anath White in Santa Barbara

Seasonal anticipation: as 2013 debuted, many were feeling it. The 28th iteration of the Santa Barbara International Film Festival, aka "SBIFF," was on the wind, with jazzed moviegoers soon to converge elbow-to-elbow in a familiar, even familial, and happy bustle on downtown's State Street.

I was among the excited, as this would be my third year covering the festival. And for me, extra sweetening would be provided by the tribute to Daniel Day-Lewis, the oft-reticent acting genius whose reanimation of Abraham Lincoln seemed certain to bring another Best Actor Academy Award -- his 3rd, making him the only actor to surpass Marlon Brando, who received 2.

• Lisa Nesselson in Paris

For those of us who missed our calling as jet setters, socialites or fashion models along comes the edifying, spritely documentary "Versailles '73: American Runway Revolution" to show us how much work it is to be spontaneously fabulous.

Nearly 40 years ago, in late November of 1973, something rather momentous happened at the Opéra Royal on the grounds of the King's old digs outside Paris. In the course of a fashion show that Women's Wear Daily dubbed "The Battle of Versailles," boldly assertive American runway models -- many of whom were what we now call African-American -- wore sporty, comfortable American designer clothes with such, well, panache that the absolute supremacy of French haute couture was dented for good.

• Omer M. Mozaffar in Chicago

Emad Burnat's "5 Broken Cameras" (2012) is the most powerful movie since "The Interrupters" (2011). In this autobiographical documentary, the director purchases a video camera to chronicle his newborn son's growth. Trying to catch those firsts (first smile, first step, first tooth), he cannot separate them from events in his rural Palestinian town, itself defined by life under occupation. In the process, he watches his camera get broken from a grenade. He replaces it with another, which gets broken. And he replaces it with another. And another. And another, so that each camera becomes an episode in his life. The film gets progressively shocking and perilous. In contrast to hopefulness underlying "The Interrupters," however, this film gets progressively more hopeless and desperate.

My friend and colleague Michael Mirasol, from the Philippines, now in Australia, is the very image of a Far-Flung Correspondent. We bonded at Ebertfest. Look at his magnificent video essay about Vincent Ward's film, which we honored at Ebertfest.

• Peter Sobczynski in Chicago

Released in the summer of 1985 to critical scorn and near-total commercial indifference, the sci-fi/horror hybrid "Lifeforce" has spent most of the following 28 years languishing in obscurity. If it was remembered at all, it was either because of its massive financial failure--which helped doom the futures of both its producing company and its director--or because of its status as one of the all-time favorite films of Mr. Skin, that beloved repository of on-screen nudity.

• Seongyong Cho in South Korea

Call it a "torture film" if you want, but the South Korean film "National Security" (2012) darkly resonates with raw disturbing power. The movie itself is a fiction, but the terrible historical fact revealed through that fiction gave me a memorably uncomfortable experience at the screening room last November. We all knew what was depicted in the movie actually happened many times during that dark era in South Korean history, and the movie deeply disturbed us with its unflinching observation of authorized force brutally and mercilessly stomping on basic human rights.

• Gerardo Valero in Mexico City

Jan de Bont's "Speed 2: Cruise Control" is one of the most maligned movies of all time, earning the wrath of critics and audiences alike. It has a Rotten Tomatoes rating of two percent and an average IMDB grade of 3.5--levels usually reserved for such monstrosities as The Village People's "Can't Stop the Music" (8/ 3.7) and the insult to all things good and decent that is Adam Sandler's "That's my Boy" (21/ 5.5). Judging from its box office performance, more people hated "Speed 2" than actually saw it. Yet I have to admit that after watching it on its opening weekend in 1997, I left the theater more than happy and was not surprised by the thumbs-ups it received from Siskel & Ebert. Then all hell broke loose. When I dis a movie a friend likes, all he has to do is bring up "Speed 2."

• Grace Wang in Toronto

Lust. Caution.
Lust, Caution.
Lust...Caution.

The English name of Ang Lee's 2007 film consists of two words. Taken separately, they stand alone as individual concepts: Lust, a primal, human urge; Caution, an evolved, societal tool. Put them side-by-side, and contrast emerges: primal versus evolved, individual versus society, incongruent. Poke a little hole in the membrane that separates the two, and dynamics shift. Lust surges in the face of Caution. Caution stares right back, coolly, unflinching.

• Seongyong Cho in South Korea

You'll probably despise the main characters in the coldly lavish new South Korean film "The Taste of Money" (2012). I was about to describe them as belonging to the top 1%, but given how shallow and hateful these people are, I think it would be more accurate to say "the bottom 0.01%." They're a plutocratic family at the very top of South Korean society. They run a big, influential conglomerate like Samsung and LG (which are also family businesses at their core). They can buy and do anything because of their wealth and the power which comes with it. In their view, they deserve to be called VVIPs, or very, very important people.