Hollywood

Director Ridley Scott and actor Matt Damon bless audiences with a film that has it all: breathtaking, mystical planet Mars; there is something positively spiritual about the otherworldly landscape; compelling, futuristic scientific strategies; actors trained (similar to Sandra Bullock in “Gravity”) to maneuver corridors of the gliding spaceship, “Hermes” (the Greek god of of the underworld,  a messenger); a script …

2008 was the year of global financial reckoning; banks imploded;  helium fizzled, at a stratospheric rate, from the real estate market; accountability has yet to be determined; those who believed their homes would always escalate in value were devastated when the reverse occurred; incapable of paying their mortgages, the banks foreclosed on their egregious loans and countless evictions ensued. The …

After a gluttonous, film- frenzied week at the Cannes Film Festival (May 2015) I posted a mini synopsis of those movies I experienced; repeating again, hoping to inspire those umbilically attached to their couches, to valiantly severe the relationship and venture forth to the darkened, silent anonymity of AMC 21 Theatres. This year’s selection is especially stunning, with over 200 …

There is an addictive fascination for the game a chess; a game demanding tremendous mental acuity, agility and as much stamina and strength as any contact sport. The subject has held the same “draw” for filmmakers and documentarians in recent years: “Queen to Play”, “Bobby Fischer Against the World”, “Searching for Bobby Fischer” and 2015’s “Pawn Sacrifice” ; directed by …

“The Intern” is not a great film, it will not take up permanence residence in your movie archive, but there was something sweet, possibly too saccharine, about the scenario; the chemistry between Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway is palpable and testament to their inimitable skills as actors. Hathaway is workaholic, “Jules Ostin” dynamic founder of an online “fashionista” company; …

Johnny Depp is captivating, mesmerizing as satanic James “Whitey” Bulger, Boston’s quintessential crime and drug sovereign in the 1970’s-80’s; warped dictator of the “Winter Hill Gang”.  Director Scott Cooper’s “Black Mass” is imbued with hefty performances from Joel Edgerton, as untoward FBI agent, John Connolly; Kevin Bacon, a righteous FBI agent, Charles McGuire; Benedict Cumberbatch, minimally used as Billy Bulger …

M. Night Shyamalan, has captured his elusive groove, and audiences can shiver, viewing his tantalizing, titillating tale of two charming, disarming, precocious teenagers going to visit their maternal grandparents; Mom’s (Kathryn Hahn) estranged parents, longing to finally meet their genetic-connection. Fifteen-year-old “Becca” (sensational, stunning Olivia DeJonge) in the embryonic phase as a documentarian, films the entire excursion from commencement to …

Documentarian, Alex Gibney’s  brazen honesty and prescience, gifts viewers the “good, bad, and ugly” dimensions of Steve Jobs; “adopted visionary”, iconoclastic, unconventional genius; a man whose passing was mourned globally (1956-2011); since his death, his aura has exceeded mythic proportions; an exceptional man whose ambition and lust for technological advancement has changed the world and how we thrive in it …

Heart-arresting, thrillingly beautiful, positively poignant documentary focusing on three men’s obsession with the ultimate peak, “shark’s fin” Meru Mountain; a spiritual, 21,000 foot behemoth in Gharwal, Himalaya, India. Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk, disparate personalities linked by their super-human skills in scaling the most inflexible, hostile of mountains; even more amazing is filming their death-defying pilgrimage; “Meru” is …

Stephen and Alex (also directed) Kendrick, writers of the surprisingly sensational, low-budget film “War Room” are comforted by audiences’ approval of a movie that bludgeons with its monumental religious message: cease judging others, accept Jesus in your heart and hearth, cast out evil; only then may you join the ranks of the righteous. The “war room” is a metaphor for …