You do not have to have read Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” to grasp the intensity and legitimacy of her nascent premise; it is not about color, it is “about dividing society into hereditary classes”: born a slave, progeny, slaves; born a Jew, destined for discrimination; born an untouchable (Dalit) children distinguished as polluters of society; …

Periodically you meet a film that from its onset is perfectly proportioned, a flawless scenario intelligently scripted and sublimely performed, pushing all the right buttons, earning magnificent respect and awesome admiration from the viewer.  “The Teachers Lounge” co-written and directed by IIker Catak garnishes the deserved medal for excellence. “Carla” (exceptional Leonie Benesch) an idealistic middle school teacher, has an …

A dreary, “drenching”, gem of a tiny film with gargantuan gleaning from director Mahalia Belo based on the book by Megan Hunter; Jodi Comer (“Killing Eve”) paradigmatic performance as “Woman” foraging a deluged milieu (London) howls with innovative discernment and penetration; she has a child while a watery world is encompassing her, swallowing her home, separating her from her husband …

Director Jonathan Glazer has accomplished the remarkable in his adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel of the same title (which bears little resemblance to Amis’s script).  The film resonates, pierces the psyche, transcends the scenario, adept performances, it sears redolently with the SOUND of the unimaginable; eyes shut, the soundtrack bleats with symphonic chords of horror, annihilation, ethnic elimination; Mica Levi’s …

Grief. Loss. Isolation. Unfathomable pain. Director Andrew Haigh and actor Andrew Scott with masterful precision scalp layer after layer of emotional, psychological trauma hidden in the depths of a damaged soul; a wound, festering for a lifetime, that must be excised, cleansed, allowed to scar. “Adam”, (Scott) a screenwriter, insulated in an empty high rise in London, spots another dweller …

Adam Driver depicts Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) with a silent, somber steeliness as he navigates his failing automobile empire while balancing his grieving wife Laura (1900-78) played with a poignancy rarely seen in film by Penelope Cruz; (they lost a son, Dino (1932- 1956) to Duchenne muscular dystrophy) and his mistress Linda Lardi (shallow, insubstantial, insignificant performance by Shailene Woodley) and …