Hollywood

MAGNIFICENT! Here is a film of such overwhelming beauty, strength, majesty nothing short of envy resonates for the mind behind the vision; director Denis Villeneuve focuses, with glorious acuity, on the science fiction novels of Frank Herbert (1920-1986), generating a reverence rarely visited upon the screen. As a neophyte and poorly schooled (by choice) in the realm of Jules Verne, …

2023 was a spectacular, banner year for films. Never have I given so many Five Star credits, or rarely have I visited movies more than once; 2023’s products were more than worthy of multiple exposures. Without listing all the choices in each category, I will gift you, faithful readers, my number one picks in the myriad of classifications: BEST PICTURE: …

2023 was a spectacular, banner year for films. Never have I given so many Five Star credits, or rarely have I visited movies more than once; 2023’s products were more than worthy of multiple exposures. Without listing all the choices in each category, I will gift you, faithful readers, my number one picks in the myriad of classifications: BEST PICTURE: …

You do not have to have read Isabel Wilkerson’s 2020 “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” to grasp the intensity and legitimacy of her nascent premise; it is not about color, it is “about dividing society into hereditary classes”: born a slave, progeny, slaves; born a Jew, destined for discrimination; born an untouchable (Dalit) children distinguished as polluters of society; …

Director Jonathan Glazer has accomplished the remarkable in his adaptation of Martin Amis’s novel of the same title (which bears little resemblance to Amis’s script).  The film resonates, pierces the psyche, transcends the scenario, adept performances, it sears redolently with the SOUND of the unimaginable; eyes shut, the soundtrack bleats with symphonic chords of horror, annihilation, ethnic elimination; Mica Levi’s …

Adam Driver depicts Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) with a silent, somber steeliness as he navigates his failing automobile empire while balancing his grieving wife Laura (1900-78) played with a poignancy rarely seen in film by Penelope Cruz; (they lost a son, Dino (1932- 1956) to Duchenne muscular dystrophy) and his mistress Linda Lardi (shallow, insubstantial, insignificant performance by Shailene Woodley) and …

Director George Clooney’s “Boys in the Boat” radiates with pure chauvinistic joy; flows like a divine fairy tale, but is redolently true; a tale of underdogs, besting the odds; a triumph set in the heart of the depression, a rags vs riches scenario igniting a long-lost pride in our bruised but immaculate country. Based on the 2013 bestseller by Daniel …

A sly, sensationally supercilious, slap at conventional, stereotypical, platitudinous attitudes perceived as “black culture”; writer/director Cord Jefferson, with brilliant aplomb focuses on author “Thelonious “Monk” (homage to composer of “The Giants of Jazz” 1917-1982) Ellison” (referencing Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) writer of the iconic “The Invisible Man”). Here is a film concentrating on an exceptionally bright family of doctors and one …

Shockingly, I have never viewed any of the Factory franchise; entering “Wonka” as a neophyte was a fantastically refreshing experience, primarily due to the performance of Timothee Chalamet as the dreamy Willy Wonka and his stratospheric recipes for the penultimate chocolate awareness. Chalamet’s pristine innocence as the naïve but embracing entrepreneur is enchanting, singing and dancing with enough zip and …

Greek director Yargos Lanthimos’s fecund imagination runs imaginative circles around his viewers, some frightening and deplorable; “The Lobster” (2015) detested by this reviewer but still resonates as an unforgettable tableau of the surreal, daunting power of “blinding” love; “The Killing of the Sacred Deer” (2017) masterfully mimics the “Myth of Iphigenia”, wronged goddess Artemis, revengefully demands King Agamemnon sacrifice his …