Netflix and Beyond

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; …

This is the tepid time of year when movie goers wallow in the limbo of “one” or “two” star films; which, depending on your mood or the weather can suffice. “Gabbar is Back” is not as bad as it is pedantic; Arshay Kumar,”Gabbar” is an avenging crusader; his mission and “he chose to accept it” is to eliminate graft, corruption, …

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 …