Hollywood

“Of all the Emmas’, in all the films, in all the miniseries,” here treads the feistiest.  Jane Austen’s (1775-1817) “Emma” published in 1815, England: George III was king; Lord Byron and Walter Scott were in full throttle; Napoleon was defeated at Waterloo. Women invisible, an accessory in a patriarchal society; their fortunes, gifted to their husband’s after marriage. Stifled, stymied, …

Slick, scary and reverential tribute to H.G. Wells 1897’s “The Invisible Man: A Grotesque Romance”; creepy scientist conjures, with the illusion of light, his transformative power of invisibility; Oliver Jackson-Cohen, “Adrian Griffin”, scores as a mad genius who controls his lover by exercising his mind over her matter; Elizabeth Moss, “Cecilia Kass”, dynamites her every moment of misery; a role …

Kristin Stewart has the mettle that gives this “fair to middlin” biopic of Jean Seberg (1938-1979) a backbone of anemic strength; surrounded by platitudinous performances: Jack O’Connell, Vince Vaughn, Colm Meaney; half-baked-writing, diaphanous dialogue, divulging the appalling tactics of the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover, its autocrat.  As “Saint Joan” (1957) Seberg was an instant teenage supernova; 1960’s “Breathless” sealed her …

Loosely based reality series focusing on the United States involvement in the recruitment of Nazi scientists after the second world war and their elimination by Nazi hunters, in 1977, New York; disturbingly flawed, transitionally defective, but keenly acted by a number of the protagonists: Al Pacino is dynamic as “Meyer Offerman”, a Holocaust survivor, meting vigilante justice to the profoundly …

Jack London’s (1876-1916) paradigmatic novella is more in vogue today than when it was written in 1903; anthropomorphic “Buck”, a metaphor for shedding one’s inhibitions, rising and besting life’s provocations, realizing one’s ingrained potential. “The Call of the Wild” is beautiful; luscious, undulating mountainous terrain of Yukon, British Colombia, is breath-taking, daunting in scope; digitalization in tandem with hypnotic cinematography …

Swedish director, Ruben Ostlund’s 2014 “Force Majeure”, was a darling of worldwide Film Festivals; I did not care for it: excessive teeth-brushing, massive character manipulation, superfluous, annoying minor roles; that being stated, is was colossally superior to “Downhill”, directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash’s homogenized version; actors Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell cannot rescue it from well-deserved anonymity. Redundancy, repetitiveness …

Vindication has never felt so rewarding; for years I have suffered defeat, going with my gut, shunning the odds, my head and heart in sync; faring better than I imagined, I recognized the brilliant uniqueness of “Parasite” with my first encounter, on a myriad of levels, the film soars beyond assumptions: Biblical,  Shakespearian, mythological, Darwinian; Goethe stated “Before you…there are …

                                                                                              Director Kitty Green capitalizes on the Harvey Weinstein sexual predator saga that the …

The profundity of this documentary shatters illusions, prejudices, and sears with overdue approbation for a man of stature, scholarship, integrity, worthy of his thirty, reticent years on the Supreme Court; writing more opinions/dissents than any other Justice; Clarence Thomas excels as a “man for all seasons”, champions, as a man for all peoples; defying the preordained slot, he flew in the face of expected codes of conduct, scoring as a neophyte of ingenuity, a black …

Beautiful, Blake Lively actually pulls off the implausible; not to be confused or compared with “Lisbeth Salander” or “Evelyn Salt” she is credible as a vengeful assassin seeking justice for those doomed in an airplane bombing, including her entire family; “revenge served cold” with scalding temerity. Director Reed Morano’s (trained cinematographer), pulverizing concentration on “Stephanie Patrick’s” (Lively) emotional and physical …