Netflix and Beyond

“NEW ORDER” (PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED, THEATRES) SPANISH (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) A highlight of the 2020 Chicago International Film Festival. Excellent FIVE STAR study of civility versus savagery; enfranchised versus disenfranchised; brutal but brilliant analysis of wealth, spurring anarchy. Still resonating after almost a year. And still… FIVE STARS!!!!! “DREAM HORSE” (THEATRES) If you viewed 2015’s “DARK HORSE” and heartily enjoyed an unlikely …

The Bollywood genre is an acquired taste for many Westerners; I have been hooked, captivated, numbed by its magical realism for over twenty years: “Lagaan”, “Dil Chahta Hai”, “Like Stars on Earth”, “3 Idiots”, “Mr. and Mrs. Iyer”, “Mangal Pandey”; dominated by the unrelated Khan’s (Salman, Aamir, Shah Rukh) I can testify that I have studied their varied performances for …

“THOSE WHO WISH ME DEAD”             HBO MAX & THEATRES Really? Angelina Jolie, with a face capable of launching a fleet of warships, Rapunzel tresses, a fire fighter? A role Frances McDormand could have pulled off; director Taylor Sheridan bombs with his choice of Jolie as his heroine; her attributes were a hinderance, detraction from, …

“Revenge is best served cold”; two prime protagonists, serving vigilante reparation after the death of loved ones; Mads Mikkelsen stars as “Markus” a frigid, calculating Afghani soldier, returning to Denmark to avenge the death of his wife, killed in a horrific train accident; Mikkelsen’s deliciously terrifying performance anchors this sublimely well-written (writer/director Anders Thomas Jensen) scintillating scenario; beautifully balanced, “Riders …

Explosively staggering, Philip Glass’s brilliant exegesis of Mahatma Gandhi’s (1869-1948) flowering as a pacifist, exponent of truth and non-violence is profoundly depicted by the Metropolitan Opera (original, premiered in 1980); Glass infuses “Satyagraha” with a blend of historical impacts on Mahatma’s (“great-souled”) youth, commencing with Russian author Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), his philosophy of “Bread Labour”, and the value of “simplicity …

“Limbo” in Catholicism, is a bubble where souls of the unbaptized, hibernate until permission is granted to enter the celestial realm; in this scenario, it is a young Syrian refugee longing for permanent asylum on a sparsely populated Scottish island, where he, amongst other exiled, is waiting for the metaphorical gates to open. Director Ben Sharrock with irony and humor …

Artists are perpetually striving to portray the innovative within their own discipline: paint, marble, bronze have been substituted, traded for contemporary mediums: digitalization, interactive technology ignites unprecedented techniques; parameters of “what is art” are swelling; “The Man Who Sold His Skin” with remarkable depth focuses on Syrian refugee “Sam Ali” (spunky Yahya Mahayni) escaping to Beirut and selling his back …

There was a strange spirituality, almost a reckoning, comparable to exiting a bomb shelter and checking the remains, revealing the hereafter; a ghostly specter of another era permeated the evening; a staged, glitzy Gotham, populated by ideal mannequins, a purified zone of equality and perfection.  Gone were the “hosts” with their self-deprecating, stale schtick, guffaws and unintended slights; winners, given …

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 …