Netflix and Beyond

Bradley Cooper’s deep blue eyes and charming handsomeness cannot salvage Cameron Crowe’s  mediocre, apathetic attempt at a romantic comedy. “Brian Gilcrest” (Cooper) is a washed-up military contractor, hired by another “Hollywood”  ubiquitous, self-serving, billionaire (Bill Murray, minimally effective) as part of a US space program in Hawaii; he is chaperoned by “Captain Allison Ng” (Emma Stone), whose perky, pesky, energized …

“Mumbai Mirror’s” film critic Rahul Desai, quit after his Two & 1/2 Star rating of romcom  “Tanu Weds Manu Returns” (a sequel to an average movie)  was increased to a Three & 1/2 Star billing; egregious behavior on the part of the editors; actually, Desai’s rating was too high for this placid, dull, redundant script. “Manu” (R. Madhavan) is a …

The Cannes International Film Festival is an annual film festival held in Cannes, France, which previews new films of all genres, including documentaries, from around the world. Peneflix  

What a difference seven days creates; last week’s pathetic “Piku” is beautifully overshadowed by director Anurag Kashyap’s slick, luminous “Bombay Velvet”, set in 1969; Bombay is experiencing a burgeoning building tsunami; gritty graft, gangsters galore, sepia-toned cinematography; a homage to Hollywood gangster flicks of the 30’s and 40’s and actor James Cagney; the film commences with Cagney’s death scene in …

Visited this dystopian adventure for a single reason….Tom Hardy. He is perched solidly at the pinnacle of my contemporary screen personalities; embarrassingly, it took me ten minutes to realize he was the hood ornament on an apocalyptic war machine, iron-faced, speechless, saved by the “Imperator Furiosa” (solidly, ferociously tempered and toned Charlize Theron); uneducated in the pathos, ethics, gravitas of …

Enough. That is what spurred “Allan Karlsson’s” (archival performance by Robert Gustafsson) rebellious act on his century birthday; fleeing the nursing home as they prepare his celebratory feast; he is spry, weary of the quasi-prison he is  comfortably cloistered in, the ubiquitous monotony; he escapes, and viewers are treated to one of the most idiosyncratic odysseys in film history. It …

How could Bollywood icon, the answer to the first trivia question in the  “Slumdog Millionaire” contest;  barrier- breaker between Eastern and Western films, stoop to accepting the role of a curmudgeonly,  constipated hypochondriac? Amitabh Bachchan, left viewers squeamishly embarrassed at his portrayal of “Bhashkor Banerji”, squawking, lamenting his inherited “curse”; scatological discussions, disgustingly inform the narrative and was the focus …

Thomas Hardy’s 1874 novel is lusciously endowed with sweeping, undulating landscapes, “Turneresque” sunsets and actors, imbuing their characters with all the scintillating romance and passionate drama Hardy intended; Carey Mulligan as “Bathsheba Everdene” is as tempestuous, and as alluring as her biblical namesake (Bathsheba, married King David, after he eliminated her husband, Uriah;  impregnated her with the future King of …

There is something powerfully enigmatic, hypnotic about the deftness of Tom Hardy’s artistry; he is a chameleon, from demon to divine his every role is a revelation:  beleaguered soldier in “Band of Brothers”; evil incarnate as “Bane” in “The Dark Knight Rises”; smoldering, darkly romantic  “Heathcliff” in Wuthering Heights”; skewered savant in “The Drop”; he soared in the minutely seen …

This award-winning film focuses on the civil war in Abkhazia (Georgia, 1992-93); a war that drove most Estonians, who had settled in the area, commencing in the mid-nineteenth century, back to their roots; they had overcome language, economic, political, religious barriers; slaughtered on the altar of Chechen/Georgian inbred animosity. Two farmers elected to stay and harvest their crop of tangerines; …