Netflix and Beyond

Watching this remarkable film by Saudi director Haifaa al-Mansour (first full- length movie filmed in Saudi Arabia) realizing we are almost fourteen years into the twenty-first century and that millions of women live in restricted, reduced environments: individuality denied, erased, censored by scripted clothing; unable to vote, drive or control their finances; divorced by simple sentences; birthing vessels, castoff when …

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It has been a long time since such profound honesty has been depicted on the screen. “Short Term 12”, written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton focuses on a care center; troubled children under the age of eighteen; castoffs, abused, shunned by family and society; struggling for autonomy, dignity within the boundaries of mainstream dictates. “Grace” and “Mason” are a …

Jennifer Hudson is superb as “Winnie Mandikizela-Mandela” (1936-) the sixth daughter of a teacher and  second wife of Nelson Mandela (1918-); her feistiness as a youngster and intellectual alacrity wins her a scholarship and enlightenment in Johannesburg; she is courted and returns the affections of revolutionary, anti-apartheid/lawyer Nelson Mandela (Terrence Howard’s  interpretation is infused with frustration and the agony of …

For Western audiences there is nothing unusual about a scenario revolving around crippled commitment; a huge percentage of couples live together without the shackles of a marriage certificate, it is recognized; a state, previously shunned, now monumentally practiced. But in India, with a tradition, going back to the Vedic period (1500-500 BC, and the iconic “Sita/Ram” fable) of “arranged marriages” …

“Amin Jaafari” (Ali Suliman) a Palestinian surgeon living and practicing in Tel Aviv, embraced by his Israeli co-workers, the first Arab to obtain an Israeli achievement award; at the ceremony he articulates his fervent desire to remain in his adoptive environment. Noticeably absent from this, the most important moment of his life, is his beautiful wife, of fifteen years, “Siham” …

Well-acted, well-written and well-directed; audiences are served a British conspiracy thrilled with enough twists, subterfuge, unseemliness to keep one’s attention riveted to the screen. London has been traumatized by Islamic terrorists, in today’s vernacular: suicide bombers: July 7, 2005; tube and bus bombings left fifty-two dead and hundred maimed, forever scarred; this disaster birthed the mightiest of surveillance contrivances in …

This wickedly, wildly funny film revolves around five Englishmen, approaching forty, renewing their vow of imbibing  or “pinting” in every pub in the small English town of their youth; there are twelve such establishments, “The World’s End” being the heralded finale. Simon Pegg (with director, Edgar Wright) wrote and stars in this strange, haunting, testosterone-infused horror story; Mr. Pegg is …

Jane Austen (1775-1817) would have been horrified at this insipid, inane, twenty-first century disambiguation of her classic 1813 novel,  “Pride and Prejudice”. Austen, like many brilliant women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, exercised her intellectual acuity through the written word; trapped in a male- manufactured bubble of hearth and home. From these confined maidens (Charlotte Bronte, George Sand, Mary …

This poignant, realistic and beautifully -acted film addresses issues facing teenagers in today’s breathlessly-paced, information–orientated milieu; unlike fifty years ago, when the gestation period between adolescence and adulthood could be measured in years, months, now it is in days, nanoseconds. “Sutter” (gifted portrayal by Miles Teller) is a senior in high school, class jokester,  perpetually inebriated in a sweet, pathetic …