Hollywood

Australian director David Michod’s (“Animal Kingdom”) “The Rover” drills into the psyche of the damned; set in post-apocalyptic Australia. “Eric” (magnetically, fierce portrayal by Guy Pearce) whose sole mission is to retrieve his stolen car, partners with wounded “Ray” (pivotal, powerful, performance by Robert Pattinson), a stuttering, febrile, minimally- challenged psychopath, whose brother is one of the car thieves. This …

Prevalent in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was the “morality play”;  allegories, where the protagonists personified moral attributes; the themes were infused with religious gravity, one was granted the freedom of choice, hence the moral dilemma, which highway led to the celestial, or the dungeon of the doomed. “How to Train Your Dragon 2” is an animated, sophisticated, contemporary spin …

How fortunate for movie-goers that “desperate times, demand desperate measures”; destitute town of Tickle Cove,(Newfoundland) mourning an exsanguinated fishing industry; demoralized inhabitants living on welfare, needing a doctor in order to qualify for a major “petro chemical byproduct reprocessing plant”; what ensues is a warm, enchanting adult fairy tale; incredible casting lends prismatic charm to an unlikely scenario. Brendan Gleeson, …

Praying for early onslaught Alzheimer’s or minimal short-term memory loss, drastic measures to annihilate the effects of this homage to beggarly taste. “Donna” (giggling, “childish” Jenny Slate) is a stand -up comic in a run- down bar in Brooklyn; the film commences with a graphic description of her every biological function; prurient prattle about her intimacies, from boyfriend to underwear. …

“A picture is a poem without words.” Horace Juliette Binoche and Clive Owen shimmer as academics at a small prep school in Maine; “Dina Delsanto” is a renown artist debilitated by rheumatoid arthritis, enlisted to instruct gifted art students; “Jack Marcus”, a published author, teaches Honors English; living off past plaudits, a succinct wordsmith, cursed with a lethal hobby of …

Tom Cruise. For thirty years I have been a worshiper, a devout member of congregation “Cruisology”; “Risky Business” (1983) was my baptismal inauguration; here is a man with more avatars than Vishnu: lover, pilot, lawyer,  lover, football player, bartender, lover, gambler, samurai,  lover, vampire, rock star; endless characterizations.  But it is his role as super-hero that has monopolized his mega …

“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves that we are underlings.”  William Shakespeare, “Julius Caesar”. John Green’s novel, “The Fault in Our Stars”, takes issue with Caesar’s prescient statement; one’s destiny can be  blighted, crippled, uncontrolled by one’s actions, desires, gifts; fate can curse or bless at whim; our stars, be they crossed or like …

Glumly, I waddled out of director Stephanie Soechtig’s (produced and narrated by Katie Couric) prescient documentary about the perils of sugar; determined not to write about it, but after two weeks of it creepily, crawling around in my conscience, bit the bagel and sallied forth to my trusty “live writer”. Commencing with the utmost truth: I love anything sweet, as …

Periodically, expecting nothing, a film excels in dissipating ennui, gifting audiences a solid, interesting scenario; captivating one’s attention for its entirety; “Cold in July” is such a film. Superb acting inform a fascinating story of a burglary gone awry. Michael C. Hall of “Dexter” notoriety is “Richard Dane”, a laconic, ordinary guy: solid marriage, adorable son, picture framer who slays …

Angelina Jolie is marvelous as malevolent “Maleficent”; a refreshing spin on the fiendish fairy in the ageless tale of “Sleeping Beauty”; like the play “Wicked” (“Elphaba” the Wicked Witch from the “Wizard of Oz”) it forces audiences to cast aside preconceived ideas of good and evil; concentrate on the cause of their transformation from the best to the bitter. The …