Netflix and Beyond

How’s does one define the fascination of documentaries/films focusing on the fashion industry?  Hidden, silently simmering from one to the next: “Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston”, “Valentino: The Last Emperor”, “The September Issue”, “The Devil Wears Prada” , “Coco Before Chanel”, is a lustful fantasy for the extravagantly magisterial wardrobe; created for the favored few; the “Cinderella Syndrome” , a …

Russell Crowe’s baptism as a director might not be perfect but deserves applause for initiative, ambition and heart. Based on the horrific outcome of the Battle of Gallipoli (1915), where over a thousand Turkish and Allied Powers were annihilated, the result of an unsuccessful attempt by the Allies, striving to gain control of the sea route from Europe to Russia …

We live in an era where billions are spent on cosmetics and plastic surgery yearly; growing old is anathema, forbidden, shunned at any/every cost; a wrinkle, instead a badge of a well-lived life,   is  “photo-shopped”, botoxed, lasered, expunged  out of existence; “youth” an elusive aphrodisiac slips, evaporates, like sand through a sieve, no matter the roadblocks constructed to impede its …

There is something erotically compelling, hypnotic, resonating from this exquisitely -filmed tale about Artificial Intelligence; in this age where “Siri” computers, cars, a myriad of machines communicate regularly, is it unreasonable to believe that a robotic marvel could be created to respond appropriately and intelligently to human instincts, impulses, complexities, questions? “Ex Machina” wonderfully explores the gray, amorphous area between …

Writer/director Olivier Assayas, aided by gifted actors depicts and ode to “ageing”, a commentary on contemporary interpretations of past and present “characterizations”; how time changes one’s outlook;  it is a play within a play and as much as I yearned to like it found the protagonists tiring, familiar and uninteresting. “Maria” (flawless Juliette Binoche) is asked to star in a …

What could have been a magnificent story of fortitude, besting the most stringent, violent, suppression of light, spirit, evaporates, uncomfortably, into the meandering and melodramatic; loosely based on the true narrative of “Afshin Ghaffarian” (poignantly portrayed by Reece Ritchie), an Iranian dancer forced to camouflage his formation of a dance troupe, hiding from Iran’s “morality police”; it is 2009 and …

Paul Walker (1973-2013) was the prime reason I went to see “Furious 7”; my only indulgence with the “Furious Franchise; what is it about the death of the young and beautiful that haunts? The “Kennedy’s” father/son; Marilyn Monroe; Princess Diana; saved from the vestiges of age, clipped from the everyday; petrified in time; unrealized potential. Only the living can fill …

Paul Cezanne said Claude Monet was only an “eye”, but God, what an eye”; watching Wim Wenders (“Pina”) and Juliano Salgado’s documentary “The Salt of the Earth”, focusing on the forty- year career of photographer Sebastiao Salgado (Juliano’s father), I was mesmerized by the overwhelming depth of sensitivity, profound respect in which Salgado imbues his subjects; portraits of nameless, shunned, …

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), an Austrian Symbolist painter, whose genius has grown exponentially through the ages; an awe-inspiring wizard, an alchemist with a brush; gold leaf enhanced the beauty of his portraits; once exposed to his works one never forgets their metallic magic.  In 1907 he was commissioned to paint the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1881-1925) , ethereally luminous, an …

This portrait of teen bullying should be required viewing from primary school through the college level (plus their parents/guardians); brutally, achingly realistic, writer/director Amy S. Weber’s pseudo documentary is a masterpiece of blindness: parents unaware of a child’s devastation; children hiding their psychological trauma; teachers shunning their responsibilities, accepting the norm; bullies, their deadly tactics; what deep-seated, festering problems gave …