Netflix and Beyond

Expecting saccharine sentimentality, mawkish, cloying, syrupy manipulation; surprisingly, those maudlin expectations were dashed by Blake Lively’s (producer) stratospheric performance as “Lily Blossom Bloom” complemented by Justin Baldoni’s (director) equally high-volume depiction of neurosurgeon “Ryle Kincaid”. Both actors, majorly invested in the creation of the 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover: abusive, marital, familial relationships and their lasting effects on their progeny. …

Inadvertently, I visited “Kneecap” without even a whiff of its content. I do not care, another whiff, for rap! If it’s generational, I missed it by decades and did not mourn its loss. So, sitting with an audience of prepubescent attendees, I found myself laughing, with requited glee, bouncing in my seat to its iconoclastic rhythm, lyrics and high-fiving its …

Goodness, Gracious, Great Globs of Gobbledygook! A self-styled discourse on erasing decency, tasteless titillation, ribald, rutting humorless dialogue, gratuitous, gutting savagery; smashing the 4th wall (invisible, imaginary shield between actors and viewers) and reveling in its iconoclasm. Dreadful dirge. This was my first and final entrance into a realm that is anything but “marvelous”. A person very close to me …

RTA, Rehabilitation Through the Arts. It works miraculously and its redolent power surges through the backbone of this remarkable film. Incarcerated inmates, serving interminable, hopeless sentences; real men rising above their crimes, circumstances, reveling in the vicissitudes of Shakespearian fictional and non-fictional characters, historical heroes and villains; unbridled talent oozing from their core, dormant since birth but flaming in a …

This, my first excursion, into the “Twister” franchise, was a startling surprise; glued to my seat, slack-jawed, and hypnotized every frenzied second, it was a commanding and totally overwhelming filmic feat. Primarily, it made me happy. Happy to be wallowing, engrossed in visual phenomena, charismatic performances, and buzz-worthy cinematography. From the outset actor Daisy Edgar-Jones is commanding as the neophyte …

The “Horror” genre is pungently, throbbingly alive!   “Le Manoir du Diable”, (“The House of the Devil”) mid-1890”s by Georges Milies, credited as the first horror film; now, in the 21st century one cannot escape its domination of multiplex theatres; not bothersome, and has held my movie appetite for spine-tingling titillation, since first exposed long ago. Never apologizing for its attraction, I …

In my years, which are vast, of movie viewing, it is rare when I visit a film lacking an ounce of legitimacy, worthiness, or a solitary redemptive attribute. “Kill”, not only falling into a cavity of pointlessness but into a cesspool of gratuitous, savage, gore: cinematography embracing stabbed, sliced throats (women are not excluded) gorging guts, splayed up close and …

Western movies have never been my favored genre but have experienced and relished the best: “True Grit”, “Shane”, “Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid”, “Blazing Saddles”, “Stagecoach”, “High Noon”, “The Magnificent Seven” and the 1991 Oscar winning “Dances with Wolves”, director Kevin Costner took home an Oscar for best director and the film won the best picture of the year. It was outstanding and secured Costner’s …

Living in an urban environment saturated with a legitimate economy, hospitals, all levels of education, schooling those from pre-stage through PH.D’s; thriving residences populated by tax- paying individuals, everything for every need, EXCEPT the constant, plaguing of cacophonous, traumatic, worthless motorcyclists whose sole purpose is to disturb the peace; detestable, disenfranchised, aliens “Bikeriders”; a culture totally incomprehensible (although there are …

For those metaphorical souls and those who are not “Tuesday” is a sublime crash course, a treatise on dying and death; it is not sad or morbid it is just wise, realistic and beautiful. Out of the outrageous, stellar, fecund, fantastical mind of Croatian writer/director Daina Oniunas-Pusic comes a film reverberating with the solvency and depth of poets John Donne, …