Hollywood

Based on the 2016 novel by prodigious author Robert Harris, this gutsy, fictionalized peek at the secretive election of a new Pope is a rarefied and plausible take on the politics of the Catholic Church and those lobbying for its highest office. Director Edward Berger’s film resonates with political tricks and shenanigans we’ve been redolently bombarded with the past few …

“THE SEED OF THE SACRED FIG” (IRAN, FRANCE, GERMANY) DIRECTOR, MOHAMMAD RASOULOF “Never trust the obvious” resonates continuously from the supposed “guilty” to the obvious “innocent”; soaked in the restricted city, Tehran, hounded by paranoid rules, a family flounders in this positively frightening political drama, that dares to challenge viewers sensitivities until the spell-binding conclusion and the discovery of the …

“MY FAVORITE CAKE”  (IRAN, FRANCE, SWEDEN & GERMANY) DIRECTORS, MARYAM MOGHADDAM, BEHTASH SANAEEHA Time does not dictate “affairs of the heart” and you do not choose the subject of desire; it just happens and “My Favorite Cake” is a refreshing, joyous connection between a chance meeting of two individuals “forever young”. FOUR STARS!!!! “GHOST TRAIL” (FRANCE, GERMANY, BELGIUM) DIRECTOR, JONATHAN …

“THE PIANO LESSON” (US) The Washington brothers (Malcolm, director, John David, actor) give immediate license to August Wilson’s 1987 play of the same title.  And an iconic, macabre exorcism, that will satisfy those lusting for the “horror” tremors. FOUR STARS!!!! “THE ART OF JOY” (ITALY/UK)  DIRECTOR, VALERIA GOLINO) For devotees of “length” this over five-hour film should satisfy your lusty, …

We have been doused/soused with a plethora of movies dealing with the vicissitudes of alcoholic women: “Days of Wine and Roses”: “Woman Under the Influence”, “When a Man Loves a Woman”, “28 Days”, “To Leslie” but we’ve never come across “Rona” a blue-haired, twenty-nine-year-old harridan, whose demonic side is birthed in every inebriated phase; Saorise Ronan, also a producer tackles …

For decades multitudes of books, documentaries and movies have focused on the ugliness of the undreamed, unmitigated crimes perpetrated by the German architects of horror. “White Bird: A Wonder Story” by R. J. Palacio is a mystifying tale of the ordinary, rising above the monstrous, securing residency in the celestial; a wonderous movie that should be seen by all; especially …

“Folie a Deux” a colloquialism for two crazies hooking up, and there are no finer templates than “Arthur Fleck” (Joaquin Phoenix) and “Lee” (Lady Gaga); stunning, magically disturbing power couple who make “Joker” into a reminiscent musical, moveable feast: “What the World Needs Now Is Love” (Burt Bacharach), “For Once in My Life” (Ron Miller)), “If My Friends Could See …

Francis Ford Coppola (1939-) in his dotage must have had a petit mal seizure, an hallucination; creating a fable, mimicking the fall of the Roman Empire (31BC-AD 476); steroidal ambition meshes the historical with the future; doused in euphemisms bordering on the ludicrous: Adam Driver, seemed ill-equipped and jejune as “Caesar” a supreme architect prancing atop a rather hideous structure, …

Mephistopheles is cackling from his eighth level of hell, as “Elizabeth Sparkle” (magically sculpted by Demi Moore) succumbs to her Faustian fallacy; a perpetual mirrored image of her ingénue years; rather implausible since we meet her on her 50th birthday. Director Coralie Fargeat (48 years-old) pounces on the ubiquity of denial, futility of staving off the aging process and the …

An oxymoronic title is the first hint of what is to come, and it plays out deliciously in Christie/Holmes style; lavish wedding on a sanctioned estate goes awry in the wee hours of the wedding day; beautiful, dead guest “Merritt Monaco”, (luscious Meghann Fahy) surfaces on the Nantucket shore of an apparent drowning/suicide. Estate owners “Greer Garrison Winbury”, a renowned …