Netflix and Beyond

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 …

Recently, I turned on the “Charlie Rose” show and lo and behold there was “Danny Collins”; I had seen the film starring Al Pacino at a screening a week earlier; moderately entertaining, loosely  based on Steve Tilston, a British folk singer who received a letter from iconic John Lennon, almost forty years after it was written. Pacino had not doffed, …

What might have been an interesting scenario, spirals down tubes of improbabilities, landing on a flatbed of absurdity, resulting in melodramatic,  pandering obfuscation, highlighting the pneumatic pectorals of Sean Penn. Commencing in 2006 in the blighted detritus of the Congo, an unnamed monolithic corporation, uses assassination as a tool for controlling the natural resources; “Jim Terrier” (sour, surly Penn) is …