Netflix and Beyond

Aware that a third series was on the visual horizon, I ventured to re-watch the first two seasons; an exercise that exponentially increased my admiration for the intense creativity, prodigious performances and depiction of the complexities pervasively percolating between Israelis and Palestinians. STOP NOW if you are planning to view “Fauda” (chaos); it is a FIVE STAR, thrilling series. Writer/actor …

Days have lost delineation, season’s anticipations in limbo; monotony, intimidating, threatening benign ennui, Netflix to the rescue: “TIGER KING”: surprisingly compelling, the “catfighting” saga between  “polar” forces: Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, Don Antle, all under the guise of animal protection, procreation; as an urbanite I found the intensity of the protagonists captivating; producer Rick Kirkman, fairly narrates all sides of …

“Thou shalt not kill” is the fifth of the proverbial ten commandments and Italy, the heart of the Holy See, throbs with Catholicism’s precepts; beating at the core of many Italian films and television series is a nonchalant, cavalier disregard for the “rules”; a sensual, delectable decadence pulsates redolently, enhanced by actors such as Sophia Loren, Marcello Mastroianni, Monica Bellucci, …

Eric Lawson’s newest book, “The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz”, and “The Red Lotus” a novel by Chris Bohjalian, disparate times, but astoundingly on point in today’s Dystopian reality; what London and its people withstood during traumatic WWII, in light of present realities, elicits strong comparisons; “The Red Lotus” clairvoyantly address …

Possibly living so close to the edge, their series and films soar in depicting a world the masses could not envision. At this Dystopian hiatus, here are a few enthralling, captivating slices, experienced by a nation that dauntlessly refuses to die: Watch back to back:  “SHITISEL”/ “SRUGIM”; (NETFLIX) Two versions of orthodoxy: “Shitisel” extreme Haredi Jews living in Geula, Jerusalem; …

Writer/director Eliza Hitman’s painfully insightful portrait of a teenager’s journey to terminate an unwelcome pregnancy resonates with the bleakness of director Cristian Mungiu’s 2007, “4 months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days”; “Never Rarely Sometimes Always” unveils the trauma, bullying of “Autumn” (presciently depicted by first time actor Sidney Flanigan), a pregnant small town Pennsylvania high schooler and her cousin “Skyler” …

“INSPECTOR MORSE” (1987-2000): John Shaw, (1942-2002) is impeccable as a detective solving crimes in the elite environs of Oxford, England. “Morse” is the embodiment of a quintessential Renaissance man: cultured, sublimely well-read, inebriate of Opera, savant culprit decimator; for all his indurate instincts in the world of criminality, he is hopelessly naïve when his heart “lightly turns to love”; Shaw’s …

For years Amazon Prime has serviced my rousing, perpetual interest in detective investigations, serial killers (in another life I was either a victim or perpetrator), forensic science; loving the elimination process, exclusion of the obvious, excavating the mendacious. I have suggested some of these in the past, but they are worth repeating, especially at this unsettled time: “SPIRAL” (French: English …

Vivarium: an enclosure adapted or prepared for keeping animals under seminatural conditions for observation or study; from its inception we recognize that “Gemma” (Imogen Poots) and “Tom” (Eisenberg) are stepping into a parable concocted by writer/director Lorcan Finnegan, in which they are the observed specimens; infused with bludgeoning metaphors: “Yonder”, suburbia of cloned homes, an address, number “9”, inescapability, release …

Watching these two stunning biographical tales, it was shocking the commonalities these two women shared despite being over a century apart in age. “Self Made” based on the life of Sarah Breedlove/Madame C. J. Walker (1867-1919), the first self-made, female, African-American, millionaire, depicted royally by Octavia Spencer; “Self Made” is an examination of ambition and fortitude in an ambiance fraught …