Netflix and Beyond

There is not a doubt that “Marian “Midge”Maisel” (irreverently dazzling, Rachel Brosnahan) is adorably “marvelous”; I had avoided meeting her, until a week ago, and now after 18 episodes, we have irrevocably bonded, puzzling as to why? I respect the skill but have never been a devotee of “stand-up” comedians; usually left with an uncomfortable, cringing embarrassment for the performer, …

For those living in unfriendly weather environments, to those with physical challenges and the multitudes who lovingly lounge, cling on long, lazy weekends to their couches, here are some films to fill the hours: “The Kindergarten Teacher” Netflix. Maggie Gyllenhaal enthralls in a remake of 2014’s Israeli film of the same title. A frustrated, mediocre poet, discovers a poetic prodigy …

Brothers Ethan and Joel Coen once again cull from their scholarly Western aesthetic, (“No Country for Old Men”, “True Grit”) gifting movie lovers another blend of imaginative, macabre brutality with skilled dialogue, hilarity and blazingly terrific performances; six vignettes, tales of post Civil War lawlessness, commencing with songster “Buster Scruggs” Tim Blake bedazzles as an innovative, erudite slayer of the …

Never have I encountered a more compelling, fascinating, enchanting character than “Doctor Shaun Murphy”, played sensationally, inimitably by Freddie Highmore; afflicted with autism/savant syndrome, his diagnostic dexterity matches iconoclastic “House” (Hugh Laurie); Dr. Murphy is filter-less, caustically correct, not only with a patient’s illness but imperfections in his/her deductive reasoning; his brilliance is tempered by loneliness, isolation, fear of friendship …

Inapplicable is Hannah Arendt’s “banality of evil”; there’s nothing banal about Andres Behring Breivik’s (1979) sinful slaughter of seventy-seven innocents on July 22nd, 2011. Director Paul Greengrass’s realistically brutal film, shuns sugarcoating the scenario of Norway’s heinous contribution to mass annihilation; another crazed, warped individual rallying against “multiculturalism”,  Marxism and its infestation of Norway’s purified, homogenous population. Anders Behring Breivik …