Hollywood

The benign title references Woody Allen’s forty-seventh film; bereft of new material, Allen is comfortable cocooned in aged memories; wallowing in the vapid company of Hollywood’s elite or New York’s gangster milieu,  predictability ensues; it’s 1936 and Allen’s doppelganger, in the guise of Jesse Eisenberg (mimics to perfection Allen’s inimitable cadence and posture), as “Bobby Dorfman”, leaves his stereotypical Jewish …

Paris. Yemen. Tunisia. Turkey. Paris. California. Brussels. Orlando. Nice.  The list is interminable of those whose mission is to indiscriminately destroy the “other”; having ignored the first two “Purge” films I “elected” to see what the hoopla was all about. The premise is egregiously repulsive: once a year, from midnight to dawn anarchy reigns, accountability is non existent; rape, murder, bombings …

Viggo Mortensen has practiced incredible discretion when selecting his filmic personages, from “Lord of the Rings”, “History of Violence”, “The Road”, iconic “Eastern Promises”; his characters are strong, strange and silent, marinated in intelligence, often inscrutable, always fascinating. As “Ben” in “Captain Fantastic” he is at his enigmatic best,  the father of six, living off the grid in a forest …

You know the expression “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”; as I was tormented watching this insipid female remake of the 1984 classic, questioning my discretion, I valiantly tried to unearth the entertainment value of director Paul Feig’s mission. Tremendous exertion led to the paltry, positive aspects of “Ghostbusters”: 1. Melissa McCarthy, with tremendous comedic acuity, saved the film …

Bryan Cranston gives a blistering performance as Robert Mazur, a U.S. customs agent, impersonating a money launderer in the 1980’s; Columbia’s drug cartel led by Pablo Escobar is the target of Mazur’s mission (based on Mazur’s book featuring the “sting”); Cranston’s titillating intensity captures the galvanizing strength demanded for the success of Mazur’s ruse; his partner Emin, played with insouciant …

This enchanting fairy tale is poignantly real, heart warming, painful and beautiful; adult viewers will be moved, not just to uproarious laughter, but also frequent tears. Based on the book by Roald Dahl, director Steven Spielberg and writer Melissa Mathison excavate the vast corridors of their imaginative souls and gift besotted audiences a gentle giant and bespectacled orphan destined to inhabit …

Matthew McConaughey is a presence, a gargantuan force in the film world; amazingly, each characterization transcends his prior role. This trait is vividly, pivotally evident in “Free State of Jones” where as “Newton Knight” a deserter from the Confederate Army, in the war between the states (Southerners contend that there was nothing “civil” about it), he leads a disparate pack …

“When a great genius appears in the world you can know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him.” Jonathan Swift Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) railed against his detractors until he was championed by Max Perkins (1884-1947), editor of Charles Schreiber’s Publishing. Max, a man whose prescience recognized and lionized writers Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott …

The creators of “The Good Wife” based their long-running television series (2009-2016) on women who stick by their politicians; husbands, caught and publically exposed, egregiously in violation of their marital vows. Anthony Weiner, a bombastic U.S. Representative (D. New York), resigned from Congress in 2011, after his midnight electronic trysts were unveiled. Directors Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegman gift “Weiner” …

You live long enough, regrets are part of the process; what in heaven’s name possessed me to buy this house, take this job,  accept this marriage proposal? Herein lies Maggie’s conundrum: she wants a child, not a husband, finds a “donor”, then surprisingly is cursed with a self-absorbed, pseudo-intellectual, totally ineffective in the “husband” department and the film mushily proceeds …