Netflix and Beyond

I have an innate prejudice when it comes to dystopian, apocalyptic films; acknowledging their technological wizardry, the aftermath leaves me in a queasy, dissatisfied, jetlagged fug: “The Road”, “Total Recall”, “Mad Max”, “Oblivion”, “Children of Men” and in particular “The Lobster”, were so systemically oppressive, depressive; no matter the ills of the twenty-first century, it is a “far better world” than these futurist prognoses; …

A Covid Cure for 2020 and beyond; joy unexperienced since the world closed it doors, windows; shrinkage of entertainment venues and the intimacy of darkened halls, resurrected by  “American Utopia” a visionary reminder of what once was and will rise again; palpable hope oozes from its prognostic pores; visionary David Byrne, a stylistic revivalist, an Elmer Gantry, preaching his code …

Chadwick Boseman’s (1976-2020) electrifying, meteoric, candescent depiction of “Levee”, a high strung, volatile trumpet player in August Wilson’s (1945-2005) award winning “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, is pragmatically the “Virtuoso” of male performances this year; his physical diminishment, resulting in the magnification of a role, regardless of his health, written in the stars; crushingly grand is his every sentence, lithesome movements; …

Bollywood by “Peneflix” has been shamefully neglected since the commencement of the pandemic; if you suffer to the conclusion of this most recent selection, there are more than worthy, India productions, to sink one’s temporal lobes into. The sport of cricket has been featured in a myriad of Bollywood films, my favorites include: “Lagaan” (2001), “Iqual” (2005), “Patiala House” (2011), …

Profoundly poetic. Director Francis Lee’s achingly pure love tale, starring Kate Winslet as paleontologist Mary Anning (1799-1847) and Saoirse Ronan as her lover, Charlotte Murchison is beautifully unsettling; the rawness of a landscape, accommodating to ancient fossils, unsympathetic to earthlings, intensifies the relationship between two outliers; misfits that bond over weeks spent probing for artifacts long dead, tainted only by …

Universally panned, especially James Corden for his stereotypical portrayal of a gay Broadway performer, which I did not find offensive; the major criticism heralded from the LBGT community on his interpretation (Director Ryan Murphy applauded) of “Barry”, Corden is straight. Desperately seeking positivity in this pejorative, superfluous imitation of a Broadway musical, focusing on four (including the aforementioned “Barry”) “over- …

Herman J. Mankiewicz (1897-1953) won an Academy Award (along with Orson Welles) in 1942 for Best Original Screenplay, “Citizen Kane” (loosely based on iconic businessman, Howard Hughes); controversy has shadowed their victory for decades and director David Fincher with punctilious attention addresses the conundrum of authorship in “Mank”; a project fathered by his dad, Jack Fincher (1930-2003), is brought to …

With skepticism, I ventured viewing “The Undoing”, thinking it was a glorified “soap” for the Covidly bored spectator; gleefully, my cynicism was vanquished at the conclusion of the first episode and kept me on tenterhooks for its entirety; primarily, because of the unprecedented performance by Hugh Grant as “Dr. Jonathan Sachs”, wallowing in the role of an accused murderer, he …

There is nothing more disheartening, when a film initially exhibits gripping potential, only to lose its fizz at the midway point; Paul Bettany, Uncle Frank, is “intoxicating” as a gay Professor in New York’s avant garde milieu in the 1970’s; shunned by the mini-mentality of his family in South Carolina, his orientation found a harbor of acceptance, with the radical …

If you watch one documentary in the 2020 field of reality, where truth is key and despite the license of the filmmakers, stuns to the core, “Collective” dominates the genre. On October 30th, 2015 a catastrophic fire in the nightclub “Collectiv” in Bucharest, Romania claims the lives of twenty-seven and alters forever the one hundred and eighty who escaped; the …