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Quietly profound slice of life; a moment in time that all who have reached the age of maturity will recognize its veracity, silently stunning emotional upheaval; normalcy interrupted, a catastrophic event severs the complacency of a twenty-five year marriage. Writer/director Mia Hansen-Love partners with inimitable Isabelle Huppert and paints a portrait of time, acceptance, change and openness to “things to …

George Orwell’s “1984” was published in 1949; eerily disturbing, futuristic portrait of a world where privacy was banned; lives were watched and controlled by “Big Brother”; rules broken led to annihilation. Director James Ponsoldt’s “The Circle” (based on Dave Eggers 2014 novel) is a more benign, palliative world but just as invasive and lethal.  Tom Hanks as “Circle” Founder, “Eamon …

The prize for territorial inquisitiveness is championed by the British, it is imbedded in their DNA: Sir Frances Drake, 1540-1597 (circumnavigated the globe); Sir Walter Raleigh, 1552-1618 (the New World, Virginia); James Cooke, 1728-1779 (New Zealand); David Livingston, 1813-1872 (Africa); Percy Harrison Fawcett, 1867-1925 (South America) and the focus of the spectacular “The Lost City of Z”. Writer/director James Gray …

Live long enough and you’re destined to encounter “Norman”; abrasive, aggressively assertive, refuses to be ignored, impossible to insult, but beneath all the “mishegoss” lies a decent heart and soul of a loveable, annoying charmer. Richard Gere sears with his astounding performance as a man desperate to “fix” sticky, tricky situations, “Norman Oppenheimer”, nattily dressed, ceaselessly on his phone, walking …

Arshile Gorky (1904-1948) was the artistic bridge between European Surrealism and American Abstract Expressionism; his most iconic work is a portrait of his mother and himself as a young boy; she died in his arms of starvation during the Turkish attempt to annihilate the Armenian population; between 1915 and 1923 over a million and a half Armenians were assassinated, starved, …

Gertrude Bell (1868-1926) was a woman among men, born into restricted British aristocracy; brilliant, Oxford scholar, bored with the limited horizons of a young Victorian woman; she escapes to Tehran, Persia in 1892, where her uncle was the British ambassador; free, her intellect soared, and for the rest of her life Orientalism and its enigmas taunted her taste buds, ignited her …

Last year, on the advice of my sage sister, I binge-watched Britain’s television detective drama, “Foyles’s War” (2002-2015); truly one of the “finest” programs, written by Antony Horowitz, I have ever indulged in; commencing in 1940 the scenario stretches through WWII and beyond; starring Michael Kitchen as detective “Christopher Foyle” and Honeysuckle Weeks as his driver “Samantha Stewart” two of …

Golf has always been, and most likely always will be an unfathomable sport, its subtleties lost on the likes of me (to the frustration of my friends); my limited knowledge garnished from reading “Nancy Drew Mysteries” in my youth and viewing the sundry films focusing on the art of the game: “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, “Tin Cup”, “Bobby Jones”, “The …

This remarkably sensitive film, with intuitive prescience, addresses the pain and profound isolation of a child genius; in the past they were freakishly moved to classrooms, universities of their intellectual peers; the loneliness of a seven-year-old, surrounded by adults, whose physical prowess overwhelmingly intimidates a pre-pubescent little person; robbed of a natural childhood, theirs is a warped world defined by their …

Shed any prejudices you might have against the Bollywood genre: “Naam Shabana” is as good as it gets in the outstandingly juicy “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” or vandalized category; in league with two of my favorites, “Kahaani” (2012) and the superlative “Ek Hasina Thi” (2004), director Shivam Nair scores sensationally with this thriller, starring overwhelming talented …