Hollywood

Chadwick Boseman’s (1976-2020) electrifying, meteoric, candescent depiction of “Levee”, a high strung, volatile trumpet player in August Wilson’s (1945-2005) award winning “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, is pragmatically the “Virtuoso” of male performances this year; his physical diminishment, resulting in the magnification of a role, regardless of his health, written in the stars; crushingly grand is his every sentence, lithesome movements; …

Profoundly poetic. Director Francis Lee’s achingly pure love tale, starring Kate Winslet as paleontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847) and Saoirse Ronan as her lover, Charlotte Murchison is beautifully unsettling; the rawness of a landscape, accommodating to ancient fossils, unsympathetic to earthlings, intensifies the relationship between two outliers; misfits that bond over weeks spent probing for artifacts long dead, tainted only by …

Universally panned, especially James Corden for his stereotypical portrayal of a gay Broadway performer, which I did not find offensive; the major criticism heralded from the LBGT community on his interpretation (Director Ryan Murphy applauded) of “Barry”, Corden is straight. Desperately seeking positivity in this pejorative, superfluous imitation of a Broadway musical, focusing on four (including the aforementioned “Barry”) “over- …

My nascent exposure, in the mid 1980’s, to Orson Welles’ Homeric epic, “Citizen Kane” did not resonate as an iconic, monumental film destined, for archival prominence; almost forty years hence, with a matured aptitude, my sensitivities now grant it the lionization it has always deserved and for the most part received. Viewing “Mank” (previously reviewed) and knowing the war of …

Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897-1953) won an Academy Award (along with Orson Welles) in 1942 for Best Original Screenplay, “Citizen Kane” (loosely based on iconic businessman, Howard Hughes); controversy has shadowed their victory for decades and director David Fincher with punctilious attention addresses the conundrum of authorship in “Mank”; a project fathered by his dad, Jack Fincher (1930-2003), is brought to …

With skepticism, I ventured viewing “The Undoing”, thinking it was a glorified “soap” for the Covidly bored spectator; gleefully, my cynicism was vanquished at the conclusion of the first episode and kept me on tenterhooks for its entirety; primarily, because of the unprecedented performance by Hugh Grant as “Dr. Jonathan Sachs”, wallowing in the role of an accused murderer, he …

There is nothing more disheartening, when a film initially exhibits gripping potential, only to lose its fizz at the midway point; Paul Bettany, Uncle Frank, is “intoxicating” as a gay Professor in New York’s avant garde milieu in the 1970’s; shunned by the mini-mentality of his family in South Carolina, his orientation found a harbor of acceptance, with the radical …

Not to be confused with the best selling 2016 novel by Cynthia D’Aprix Sweeney, the film is a tour de force for actor Jude Law (his investment in the project exceeds expectations); time-worn tale of ambitions gone awry, misshapen goals, individuals defining themselves by their purchasing power; superficiality slaying substantiality; “Rory” (Law) and “Allison” (perceptive performance by Carrie Coon) move …

The “Crown” in its fourth season, vivisects the peccadillos, infidelities, pettiness of those ordained, despite their inadequacies, to reign in perpetuity, keeping the diadem “all in the family”; the impeccable cast: Olivia Coleman (Queen Elizabeth II), Tobias Menzies (Prince Philip), Helena Bonham Carter (Princess Margaret); Josh O’Connor, the consummate clone of the romantically doomed Prince Charles, are joined this season …

Here is a series where the refined performances transcend the subject matter: Chris Evans is spectacular as assistant district attorney “Andy Barber” fighting to clear his fourteen-year-old son “Jacob” (prodigious Jaeden Martell) of murdering his classmate; Michelle Dockery as Jacob’s mother “Laurie” is categorically impressive as she analyzes her son’s behavior from infancy to the present; Cherry Jones, as Jacob’s …