Netflix and Beyond

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 …

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 …