Netflix and Beyond

Matthew McConaughey, son of a gas station owner,  first captured and glued my attention in the 1996 “A Time to Kill”; he has had some bad films (“Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”) but throughout his career, the forty-four- year old actor has been incredibly perspicacious in role selection. As “Mud” he excels, as a good- hearted miscreant who manipulates two fourteen …

Pablo Berger’s homage to silent, black –and -white film’s legendary history was the opening feature at the Palm Springs Film Festival in January. Referencing the Grimm Brothers historical fairy tale; flaying “Disneyesque” (1937), benign, whistling interpretation, Berger’s heroine is of stronger, tougher “stuff”; “Carmen” (“Snow White”) inherits from her father, a matador’s muleta. Seville, Spain in the 1920’s harbors the …

Riveting, thrilling “Disconnect” is paradigmatic of the twenty-first century’s addiction to cell phones, internet; obsessed with 24/7 connectivity; diners, noncommunicative spheres; emailing, texting, eating, “I tweet, therefore I am”; constant collisions on streets and sidewalks; coffee shops, airports are hotbeds of the colossal mania to Twitter, Skype; Facebook has electrified, energized relationships, correspondence; also piloting the death of introspection. Director …

In recent years there has been a monumental surge of apocalyptic films, highlighting the devastation, detritus, bruised and broken monuments and sparse inhabitants roaming in lawless, “survival of the fittest” abandonment: “The Road”, “The Book of Eli”,  “Warm Bodies”, “Walking Dead”, upcoming “After Earth” ; all of these films resonate powerfully with  young audiences, a conundrum I found mystifying until …

Many remember the days of riots and ruination; 1968, the Democratic Convention in Chicago gave birth to the “Chicago 7”, “Weatherman” “Weather Underground”, “Revolutionary Youth Movement”; sad, delusional, debilitating time when young people worldwide violently protested America’s involvement in Vietnam; a war that altered America forever; creating the division between modern and post modern society; people of promise, jailed or …

Terrific acting informs this convoluted conundrum of flashbacks revolving around the theft of a Francisco Goya (1746-1828) painting (“Witches in the Air”); which is where the audience hovers between nonfiction and the twilight zone; Danny Boyle’s slick scenario, at best, is masterful manipulation but flounders when dealing with the consequences of the therapeutic process focusing on hypnosis (“trance”) and those …

Heroes. We know them. We read about them. They come in all shapes, sizes, hues, genders, ages. Ranging from the six-year-year-old who saves a classmate from a bully;  policemen preserving civility; firemen saving victims from conflagrations; a bystander chasing a perpetrator to redeem a stolen purse. There are a myriad of ways that “heroes” are made: some born, the majority …

I do not care for animation; even as a child I found it boring and enervating. If any film could convert me to the genre it is “From Up On Poppy Hill”; it is an enchanting tale set in 1963, Yokohama, Japan. “Umi” our seventeen-year-old heroine runs a boarding house with an exquisite view of the sea, aided by her …

A romantic title that spins a trilogy of stunning believability; structurally perfect, intrinsically flawed; grossly thought-provoking; fervently strong commencement, weakens as it progresses but not enough to maim the entertainment value. Ryan Gosling, staggeringly fine in his portrayal of “Luke” a circus performer, whose virtuoso on a motorcycle matches the wizardly of the tattoo masters who have referenced every artistic …

In 1975, Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel (1946-1999) changed the tone, temperament and style of film criticism forever; they paved the way and opened the doors and windows of conversation, debate, eliminating elitism, stimulating discourse, and in the process had the time of their lives. The “Siskel/Ebert” show and their iconic “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” resonates today as ultimately …