“Salome” and I have been friends for eons; our first encounter was in Bible Studies, she was introduced as a Jewish princess, daughter of Herodias and step-daughter of Herod Antipas; cursed with immeasurable beauty and an ungodly, iniquitous mother, demanding the head of John the Baptist, basically strip-teasing for her licentious stepfather; at sixteen she should have known better. Nonetheless, …

I liked “Anora” (review here) but never to the extent of its victories at this year’s Academy Awards; there is an undiagnosed, mystifying meme that seems to infect, percolate between the voters; this year it reflects the mission to elevate the sex-worker to the same level as “Oppenheimer”, “12 Years a Slave” etc. I have no objection to the theme …

Actually, a better choice is to revisit Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” which commences thousands of years ago where two tropes of gorillas, are fighting for dominance (reminiscent of 2024 election between the Democrats and Republicans); Kubrick’s genius in 1968 is revelatory in its vision: viable planets, unimaginable transport, and the remarkability of Artificial Intelligence (“Hal” vs “Siri”) opening …

Another banner year in movie-making history; in so many ways it was glorifying, shockingly innovative and uproarious, titillating fun. Countless times I exited smiling, smirking, thinking “I got it”, I wasn’t fooled, but enriched by the ambiguity; directors have unleashed their colossal control, allowing viewers to fill in the blanks. Recently a woman told me that she felt from the …

An intensely orchestrated and depicted feud between two Irish families in the solemn, untarnished, unforgiving landscape of the Wicklow Mountains in Ireland; Shakesperean in scale (Montagues & Capulets) the shepherding world collides catastrophically between the O’Sheas and Keelys; “Michael O’Shea” (Christopher Abbott, silently sensational), seething with a history of remorse and under the tyrannical tutelage of his father “Ray” (crucial …

The commencement of this potent, poignant, profound film is saturated in palatable love; director Walter Salles’s portrait of Rubens Paiva’s (a former Congressman opposed to the military dictatorship in 1960’s Brazil) family, seeped in saccharine, sugary, uxorious affection: Fernanda Torres is stratospherically phenomenal as Rubens wife, Eunice, mother of five and madly, ardently infatuated with her husband; theirs, a love …

Everyone, at one time or another has sensed, without seeing, the presence of an unknown entity or experienced déjà vu, or knowing the phone is about to ring. This instinct is not terrifying, often gratifying, comforting, or the supreme satisfaction that a deceased loved one is still vigilant in protecting one. Directed by Steven Soderberg’s “Presence” is wonderful, innovative and …

Director Mike Leigh has created a paradigm of an individual who makes the act of complaining into an art form; “Pansy” (inappropriately named; Shakespeare’s favorite flower; there is nothing favorable about this woman) depicted with poisonous angst by Marianne Jean-Baptiste; her pulverizing hatred for herself, spews forth from a mouth tainted with abhorrence for mankind; the world is her enemy …

Commencing immediately there is a poetic, romantic poignancy pulsating at its lyrical core; in a myriad of ways reminiscent of the golden years of the Ziegfeld Follies and the 1936 “The Great Ziegfeld”, a time of spectacle, grandeur, an age where a woman was sensationally adored for her beauty, poise and kickable acuity. Those were the days when the dreariest, …

Director/writer Brady Corbet gifts film/art/architecture/ history lovers more than one’s digestive system can masticate in almost four hours; it is an epic masterpiece worthy of intense analyzation; knowledge of the Holocaust and the detritus of its evil, shadowing, stalking survivors like Jewish emigree “Laszlo Toth” (incomparable Adrien Brody); the Bauhaus movement, a revolutionary school, founded in Germany (1919-1933) sought to …