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Made the agenda of 2017’s Film Festivals’ highlights; it is a creepily compelling, unnerving tale starring two phenomenal ingénue actors (Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke) as  “Lily” and “Amanda” dames of privilege in the “Daisy Buchanan” league;  Lily, lazily living with her mother and stepfather, yearning for admission to an elite college is reunited, after years of non-communication, with a …

Answering every question correctly (most of us were flayed by “Icarus”), with hundreds of entrees, for the first time in years, a winner is born;  I am ecstatic to announce that DAVID R. GUTHMANN takes home the Peneflix $250.00 prize!!! The toughest challenge is guessing the number of Academy Awards received for the Best Picture. “The Shape of Water” won …

Jennifer Lawrence is one of Hollywood’s foremost talents; since 2010’s “Winter’s Bone” (at the age of 19) she has skyrocketed to deserved fame; an Oscar winner, in “Red Sparrow” (based on the book by Jason Matthews and directed by Francis Lawrence, no relation to Ms. Lawrence) she is “Dominika Egorova”, a renown Russian ballerina, manipulated by her uncle “Ivan” (Matthias …

Emotionally pulverizing, exhilarating, astounding, director Dante Lam blazingly enters the realm of  “Greatest Battle Movies” ever to daunt the screen, joining the ranks of “The Bridge on the River Kwai”, “Apocalypse Now”, “Black Hawk Down”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “The Hurt Locker”, “American Sniper”; the dazzling intensity of “Operation Red Sea” kept an oversold audience in stunned silence for a two …

It took seconds for exsanguination to squelch Sally Potter’s desperately ambitious, shrilly delivered parody on politics, infidelity and scathing commentary on British intelligentsia; it took seventy-one minutes for the protagonists to sink to the lowest common denominator: “Janet” (Kristin Scott Thomas) is celebrating her “crowning” as  Health Minister; “Bill” (Timothy Spall) her bibulous, blubbering husband; “April” (outstanding Patricia Clarkson) a …

Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos and Anthony Sandler are contemporary heroes; they fearlessly saved 500 lives at the risk of loosing their own; they will be lionized forever in the laurels of champions. On August 21st, 2015 they thwarted an armed terrorist on a train from Amsterdam to Paris. Their bravery was rewarded with the French Legion d’Honneur. They are intrepid, …

What clings to one’s memory is the terrifying timeliness of “Black Panther”; a country that holds the tool to enhance mankind, isolationists led by a sensitive, flawed monarch, “T’Challa, Black Panther”; he heeds the advice of women; follows the rules of warfare, acts propitiously on the scholarship of respected colleagues. “Black Panther’s” wizardry lies in its transcendence of race, creed …

EL James successfully capitalized on sexual titillation that has been practiced by archival cultures for eons: India’s “Kama Sutra”, China’s Taoist texts during the Han Dynasty, even Confucius had opinions on the “joining of the essences”;  author James Clavell in novels “Shogun” and “Tai- Pan” gives a more contemporary twist in Eastern “pleasing pleasures”; these civilizations considered “coupling” as an …

Knowing nothing about the scenario I was surprised, stunned and unabashedly thrilled with the treatment of this contemporary topic. Director Sebastian Lelio and actor Daniela Vega paint a quintessential portrait of love, grief and overpowering courage. “Marina” (Daniela Vega) a waitress and part time nightclub singer is devoted to “Orlando” (Francisco Reyes), divorced and many years her senior; after a …

Commencing with an elegant pairing of a stag and doe; roaming in pure, redolent silence, caressed by nature’s virgin splendor, an Adam and Eve joined forever in a solitude so magnificent and profound, it aches. Writer/director Ildiko Enyeid then poll vaults the viewer to a slaughterhouse where bovine beauties meet their bloody fate; wrenching cries, soulful eyes plead for mercy; …