Hollywood

Expecting saccharine sentimentality, mawkish, cloying, syrupy manipulation; surprisingly, those maudlin expectations were dashed by Blake Lively’s (producer) stratospheric performance as “Lily Blossom Bloom” complemented by Justin Baldoni’s (director) equally high-volume depiction of neurosurgeon “Ryle Kincaid”. Both actors, majorly invested in the creation of the 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover: abusive, marital, familial relationships and their lasting effects on their progeny. …

Goodness, Gracious, Great Globs of Gobbledygook! A self-styled discourse on erasing decency, tasteless titillation, ribald, rutting humorless dialogue, gratuitous, gutting savagery; smashing the 4th wall (invisible, imaginary shield between actors and viewers) and reveling in its iconoclasm. Dreadful dirge. This was my first and final entrance into a realm that is anything but “marvelous”. A person very close to me …

This, my first excursion, into the “Twister” franchise, was a startling surprise; glued to my seat, slack-jawed, and hypnotized every frenzied second, it was a commanding and totally overwhelming filmic feat. Primarily, it made me happy. Happy to be wallowing, engrossed in visual phenomena, charismatic performances, and buzz-worthy cinematography. From the outset actor Daisy Edgar-Jones is commanding as the neophyte …

The “Horror” genre is pungently, throbbingly alive!   “Le Manoir du Diable”, (“The House of the Devil”) mid-1890”s by Georges Milies, credited as the first horror film; now, in the 21st century one cannot escape its domination of multiplex theatres; not bothersome, and has held my movie appetite for spine-tingling titillation, since first exposed long ago. Never apologizing for its attraction, I …

Western movies have never been my favored genre but have experienced and relished the best: “True Grit”, “Shane”, “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid”, “Blazing Saddles”, “Stagecoach”, “High Noon”, “The Magnificent Seven” and the 1991 Oscar winning “Dances with Wolves”, director Kevin Costner took home an Oscar for best director and the film won the best picture of the year. It was outstanding and secured Costner’s …

Living in an urban environment saturated with a legitimate economy, hospitals, all levels of education, schooling those from pre-stage through PH.D’s; thriving residences populated by tax- paying individuals, everything for every need, EXCEPT the constant, plaguing of cacophonous, traumatic, worthless motorcyclists whose sole purpose is to disturb the peace; detestable, disenfranchised, aliens “Bikeriders”; a culture totally incomprehensible (although there are …

For those metaphorical souls and those who are not “Tuesday” is a sublime crash course, a treatise on dying and death; it is not sad or morbid it is just wise, realistic and beautiful. Out of the outrageous, stellar, fecund, fantastical mind of Croatian writer/director Daina Oniunas-Pusic comes a film reverberating with the solvency and depth of poets John Donne, …

After close to a two-month hiatus from imbibing in the transformative realm of film I sat forlornly with one other individual watching a documentary of such magnitude and wonder that I wanted to scream in frustration at the lack of attendance; here is an atrocious, catastrophic, historical truth of the past that screechingly resonates today: antisemitism is vibrantly alive, pervasive, …

Peneflix will be on a six-week hiatus. Look forward to posting again on our return!

Dev Patel has accomplished the pristine blending of east and west films aka Bollywood and Hollywood, remarkable on a myriad of levels. The Bollywood genre has fast-tracked in mimicry, imitation of Hollywood’s 6 pack ab heroes, following the trope of: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Tom Cruise vs. Akshay Kumar, Hrithik Roshan, Shah Rukh Khan. Patel with keen ingenuity follows the …