Hollywood

                                                                    AMAZON PRIME has three films that were running in theatres the day of the apocalypse; you may now purchase them. “THE INVISIBLE MAN”: THREE & 1/2 …

Skipping platitudes, metaphors; distractions are of extreme importance; many of you have requested suggestions of what to view, as an escape from an uninvited reality. In calmer times I have written posts on the plethora of choices gifted to viewers with streaming capabilities. Reducing redundancy, you may check the past, before investing in future enticements: “Potpourri of What to See …

Our priorities and expectations have been seriously transformed; this applies to home entertainment; what, in the past, was instantaneously dismissed, now is given more license, case in point, is director Danis Tanovic’s, “The Postcard Killings”, starring dimpled Jeffrey Dean Morgan as “Jacob Kanon” a New York detective whose daughter and son-in-law have been grotesquely slaughtered in London; the slayers send …

Throughout life, Anthony Newley’s 1961 musical, in times of stress, has profoundly resonated; now, ironically the world has been halted by Corvid-19, and universally we are on “pause”; rarely, if ever, have the continents been so in sync; mankind is in this together, in a vacuum, hibernating as a whole. It is catastrophic but also reflective; a time to survey …

An unlikely partnership, is rarely found or experienced as in writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s quirky, strangely hypnotic, story of two disparate “outliers” joining forces in the Oregon Territory, 1820’s;  “Cookie” Figowitz (John Magaro) a displaced baker, joins an outlaw “King Lu” (Orion Lee) in a money-making scheme, revolving around the milking theft of “Chief Factor’s” (Toby Jones) cow, the first and …

Poetic evaluation of a “hopeless” partnership, commencing with one dissatisfied member, the other oblivious to, what viewers recognize, the obvious: twenty-nine years of marriage, cauterized, well before we meet “Grace” (inimitable Annette Bening) and “Edward” (dour Bill Nighy); she exudes bliss, in tandem with his robotic gloom; their only child “Jamie” (sensitive, Josh O’Connor) is conscripted as referee; his keen, …

In 1911, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory, New York, caught fire, 138 female workers were incinerated; 2016, the Rana factory, Bangladesh, collapsed, killing 1,138, primarily women workers; high-end fashion and its quest for inexpensive labor, hovers at the heart of these egregious wrongs; little has changed, unprotected by labor laws, these outrageous abuses are being catalogued by pivotal documentaries, YouTube videos …

“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 …