CURIE-ING FAVOR

Streaming this weekend:

Radioactive--Debuting in 2002's Die Another Day as a Bond girl, Rosamund Pike has since proven she's more than an English beauty, showing her potent acting chops in 2014's Gone Girl and other roles. But she's probably never had a showcase part quite as juicy as that of Marie Curie, the pioneering, Nobel-winning scientist who discovered radium and polonium and coined the title term.

Adapted by Jack Thorne from a 2010 graphic novel by Lauren Redniss, and directed by Marjane Satrapi of Persepolis, the movie sketches the Polish-born Marie Sklodowska's life in Paris. We see her marriage to Pierre Curie (the fine, restrained Sam Riley); her discoveries and celebrity in partnership with him; her later bereavements and unhappy affairs; her heroic introduction of X-ray technology into field medicine during WWI; her unwitting ruination of her health from long exposure to her own discoveries.

Interwoven with this are free-floating episodes depicting Hiroshima, the nuclear tests in Nevada, Chernobyl; also early efforts in radiotherapy. In general, the movie's take on Curie's legacy seems ambivalent and rather dark.

But its regard for its heroine is strong and unsentimental. Pike creates a portrait of a wary, unapologetically ambitious woman, and gets across an electric sense of brilliance mixed with a passionate nature. She also has a couple of Oscar-clip-worthy scenes of Curie in extremes so intense and emotionally naked that they're almost hard to watch. She's spectacular.

Zombie for Sale--A young zombie (Jung Ga-ram) wanders into a small South Korean town, and ends up in the custody of the nervy, squabbling family who runs the local tow service. He's fond of munching heads of cabbage, and he's on the cute side, so the young sister (Lee Soo-kyung) takes a shine to him. But when it's discovered that his bite has a rejuvenating effect on old men (initially), the family finds itself in a position to make a fortune.

Also known as The Odd Family: Zombie on Sale...

...this light-on-gore horror satire directed by Lee Min-jae is full of screwy, truly imaginative ideas, and delightfully acted by a terrific ensemble--I especially enjoyed Uhm Ji-won as the forbidding pregnant sister-in-law. It's the hip spin on classic zombie shtick that Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die wanted to be. Probably what makes the film so enjoyable is what makes many of the South Korean films that make it to the states, including The Host and Parasite, so much fun: Their hard-edged, even jaundiced, yet somehow still deeply affectionate view of family.