Netflix and Beyond

With a plethora of options I have become cavalier when investing time in front of my mini movie screen; if it doesn’t look good or kidnap my attention within the first ten minutes, I make a speedy exit, with no regrets. Here are a few that kept me binging well into the wee hours: “Shtisel” (Hebrew: English Subtitles) (Netflix). The …

During the Pandemic Plague filmic buffs have had to improvise in their investment and outlook as to viewing options: gone is the sanctity of the silenced, darkened, behemoth movie house, programed timing between features, bathroom and refueling stations; most missed, is the intimacy of the experience: “date nights”, secretive squeezes, muffled comments, irritated shushes; welcome laceration, cauterization, from monotonous minutiae of daily regimens, in other words the prestige, eminence, partnership with the theatre is erased. No longer lusting, anticipating Friday …

Ernest Hemmingway (1899-1961) was a man, a writer who has informed all who seek edification, beauty, comfort, solace in the written word; binging on his every published manuscript, shedding rivers of tears, shattered by the poignancy of brutality, destructiveness of emotional stability; his soul splayed upon the page, without bias, pretense, he sought from an unfathomable depth the meaning of …

Unless it’s a classic, movies made before 2000, rarely tweak my interest, or a revisit; “The Ice House” directed by Tim Fywell, starring a youthful, heavily-accented Daniel Craig, was a worthy exception; Craig, as “Detective McLoughlin”, cynically sour, cagily perceptive, tries to solve a marvelous mystery of a withered corpse (found in a dilapidated, long disregarded ice house) a missing, …

In spite of Rapunzel tresses, Michelle Pfeiffer is a remarkably gorgeous woman and credible actor; that is the single most redeeming factor in director Azazel Jacobs’s feckless film; aimlessly transparent: “Frances” (Pfeiffer) whose only attribute is that she married well and with nary a speck of fiduciary acumen, flagrantly, sans accountability, has spent every cent, regardless of widowhood; after disbursement …

Sensationalism is “King” in the latest of “scales vs. fur” epic; director Adam Wingard, relies monumentally on one’s lust for digitally amplified confrontations and destruction; these battles are rendered flawlessly; anthropomorphically acceptable, especially Kong, earns our reverence; unfortunately, the flimsy, dismal dialogue and one-dimensional villain (Demian Bichir, fizzles) are sappily depicted and the ultimate message too blatantly delivered. Saving the …

“I am Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – too?” Emily Dickinson’s pithy poem was resoundingly appropriate and applicable to “Hutch Mansel” a nine-to-five, redundantly predictable, encroaching on “Groundhog Day”, repetitiveness, average bloke, until his dark side is excavated by a home invasion; actor Bob Odenkirk’s physiognomy, demeanor, equanimity was crafted for the role; he melds, anonymously into …

Anthony Hopkins a cinematic chameleon, once again proves his divinity in his portrayal of “Anthony”, a wise man dealing with the uninvited invasion of dementia. He is blazing as he combats the unaccommodating specter of depreciation; the evaporation of control, memory and accountability. In the care of his daughter “Anne” (Olivia Colman, the English actor, “that keeps on giving”) we …

Peneflix will be on a two week hiatus. More when we return!

There are characters that harbor, rent free in fatty corners of one’s brain; they are friends, making their presence known serendipitously, surprisingly when least expected. Over the years I have embraced numerous subjects for a myriad of inscrutable reasons: “House” (a Doctor of cantankerous genius), “Foyle” (WWII British detective), “Morse” (Renaissance man, solving crimes), “Nikki Alexander”, forensic pathologist (“Silent Witness”) …