Netflix and Beyond

Dance. Has a “dance” ever changed your life? Were you born to dance? Is it part of your DNA?  Dancing has the power to transcend every feeling: heartbreak, loss, meaningless migraines of minutia. Dance can free one of tireless shackles that dampen spirits, cloud vision, bulldoze barriers clutching, smothering youthful vibrancy. Nothing screams love, passion, unlimited joy more than a …

Dear Subscribers, It is with some trepidation but more glee and excitement that I am plunging into the ubiquitous world of Facebook. Thank your for forwarding Peneflix Movie Reviews to your friends, it is greatly appreciated. In the future keep forwarding the reviews and encourage them to become Subscribers. For all my readers with Facebook accounts please visit by clicking …

In 1991 a friend and I ,without children, went to see this Disney animated fairy tale;  twenty years later my experience and emotional reaction is even more profound. This captivating, irresistible  story seeks to elucidate beyond the epidermis; unpeel the obvious, unearth the “beauty” beneath the “beast” and the “beast’ beneath the “beauty” (“Gaston”). Walt Disney (1901-1966) was a visionary …

Ronan Polanski creates a stunning film based upon Yasmina Reza’s play “God of Carnage”. I loved the play, and even more the movie. “Carnage” conjures mental malodorous images of massive massacres: “Rambo”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “Natural Born Killers”, “Kill Bill”, “Gladiator”; headless, limbless bodies nurturing vast wastelands, landscapes, meant for crop -rotation, relaxation, now just harbingers of death. Here we …

“Brevity is the soul of wit” Polonius said it, I am attempting to practice it. TINKER, TAILOR, SOLDIER, SPY Based on the John Le Carre 1974 novel is a throw- back and excellent adaptation of this spy thriller. If you were intrigued by the novel you will relish this deliberately slow, quiet trek through the dark, murky corridors of subterfuge, …

Meryl Streep is indisputably a titan, a genius in the world of film: it is unlikely that her abilities will be mimicked or duplicated in this century. Margaret Thatcher is also a remarkable woman, who with a will of steel triumphed and altered the political arena in England and the universe; a greengrocer’s daughter whose intelligence, vision and ambition led …

This harsh and provocative title references a brilliant portrayal of a gifted seventeen-year-old student coming to terms with her sexuality. “Alike” (sensational performance by Adepero Oduye) has few doubts about her sexual proclivities; her middle-class family poses the vicissitudes, tumult; shedding pain, confusion and obfuscation on daily life. A fractured marriage, parents in denial: Audrey and Arthur (solid, fine, legitimate …

This riveting film revolving around the atrocities of the Bosnia-Herzegovina war (1992-1995) is irrefutable proof that Angelina Jolie is a powerful “woman of substance”; she tackles and fearlessly adheres to the horrific genocide (euphemistically coined “ethnic cleansing”) perpetrated against the Muslims by Serbian Nationalists. The movie commences with a man and a woman connecting and dancing in a local bar; …

Soon to be in theatres. This creepy but compelling film recalls only the supine position of the fairy tale princess. “Sleeping Beauty” a darling of the Chicago Film Festival, an enigmatic movie written and directed  by Julia Leigh delves into the deepest, deviant male sexual fantasies; a pathetic metaphor for man’s incapacity to relate to or legitimize the emptiness, inadequacies, …

It has been a year of breath- defying heights and devastating lows but constantly the movies offer a palliative hiatus from the wonders and woes of the day. I will continue to be immensely grateful and appreciate your continued readership; from all corners of the globe you represent lovers of the magical world of film and its transformative powers. Roman …