Hollywood

1976, San Francisco; home of the burgeoning pop and drug culture, Haight-Ashbury, women’s liberation; a city where needs and whims are exacerbated, gratuitously exploited; a city that caters to the disenfranchised, disillusioned, draft dodgers; the dark underbelly of an otherwise, elitist population. Written and directed by Marielle Heller (based on the book by Phoebe Gloeckner) “The Diary of a Teenage …

Greta Gerwig co-wrote with Noah Baumbach (director) and stars in this zany “Holly Golightly”, flippantly glib, inherently intelligent tale of thirty-year-old “Brook”, mistress of countless capabilities but a master of none; Gerwig is sensational in the role; Brook is a flame, dynamic, compelling, an addictive force that cements the devotion of her potential “stepsister” “Tracy”, (Lola Kirke, devastatingly divine),  college …

Based on the book by Gillian Flynn (“Gone Girl”) and starring celestially beautiful Charlize Theron as the only witness to her family’s massacre twenty-eight years ago. “Libby Day” (Theron) has lived her life bilking the notoriety, undeservedly visited upon her;  brother “Ben” has been incarcerated all these years because of her testimony. Libby, jobless, penniless, reluctantly accepts the financial offer …

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”. William Shakespeare’s grasp of the human condition was stunning; Joel Edgerton’s  brilliantly conceived, directed, performed, “The Gift”, is a psychological masterpiece with Shakespearean  overtones. A mid-summer’s thrilling  “gift” to moviegoers. Jason Bateman cements his stardom as “Simon”, a likeable, glib,  upwardly mobile, Security Systems …

Infallible Meryl Streep as “Ricki Randazzo”, a pathetic anachronism, a “flash back” to the 80’s, is cringingly embarrassing as a waning rock- and- roll maven in her 60’s; a hairstyle and wardrobe reminiscent of a biker babe, the American flag tattooed on her back; she returns penniless to Indianapolis from a remote California town, when her daughter “Julie” (Mamie Gummer, …

Compelling, hypnotic simulated incarceration project initiated by Professor Philip Zimbardo in 1971 at Stanford University. Billy Crudup (mesmerizing as Zimbardo)  and the actual Professor were guests on “Charley Rose” recently; the interview piqued my interest, especially the manipulative, addictive powers of role-playing. Zimbardo, a philosophy professor, creates a scenario to test the psychology, mentality of prisoners and guards; after a …

Remarkably Tom Cruise’s celebrity does not transcend the plot of this tightly -wrought thriller; the action is intense,  feasible and expertly executed.  Writer/director Christopher McQuarrie eliminates the glibness, tongue-in-cheek parodies pervasive in contemporary “save mankind” films. Cruise’s portrayal of hero “Ethan Hunt” is sensationally seasoned; with equanimity he hangs from planes, stoically survives excruciating beatings; Houdini-like escapes, actualized with slippery …

On Saturday May 2, 2015, I was one of the millions of lemmings lusting to watch the “fight of the century”: Floyd Mayweather versus Manny Pacquiao; not an aficionado of the sport, but a fan of great boxing films;  grossly naive, felt this competition would have some aspects of “Rocky”, “Raging Bull”, “Cinderella Man’”; lacking gusto, barely-breathtaking, the only surprise …

Woody Allen has accomplished the irrational; no matter the protagonist, either male or female, it is Allen’s persona that is splayed upon the screen; in this, his most recent “autobiographical” scenario, he cloaks himself in the guise of Joaquin Phoenix,  playing a neurotic, psychotic philosophy teacher; Allen’s frustrations spiral into the macabre; all the awards, female conquests, even marrying his …

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) has to be kvelling in the afterlife knowing that over seventy actors have played his iconic detective “Sherlock Holmes”; Ian McKellen, the latest “Mr. Holmes” is stellar as the man in his dotage, loosing his prescient intellectual deductions, struggling against the evaporation of time, grappling to recall and right a thirty-year-old “cold” case, documented by  …