Netflix and Beyond

“Cats” debuted in London,1981; based upon T. S. Eliot’s 1939  “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, with Merlin magic, stupefied audiences with his innovative, anthropomorphic felines; it was a sensation that captured the imaginations of theater goers throughout the world and continues to do so, even today, with this uneven production by Academy Award winning director …

Writer/auteur Terrence Malick, has superlatively, with fecund imagination, blessed audiences with a masterpiece simmering in sacredness; a marriage of such profundity, depth, it transcends description; an aesthete, Franz Jaggerstatter (August Diehl) marries Fani (Valerie Pachner), a woman whose every fiber is matched dreamily with her husband; peasant farmers, in the Elysian, pastoral fields of Austria; twentieth- century madness of WWII …

After seeing Showtime’s “The Loudest Voice”, starring a pneumatic Russell Crowe, as Predator Poster Boy, Roger Ailes, Founder and CEO of Fox News; “Bombshell’s” repetitive version holds minimal surprises, just subtle analysis of the same scenario; top notch performances by Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly’s clone; Nicole Kidman as the impetus (bombshell) Gretchen Carlson, signaling the demise of the bovine …

If you missed 2018’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, (reviewed 7/4/18) joyously heartfelt documentary featuring the blessed Fred Rogers (1928-2003) directed by Morgan Neville, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”  will satiate your wonderment of a man whose goodness surged from his every pore; director Marielle Heller, without compromising Mr. Rogers mystique, concentrates on his empathetic skill to disinfect more …

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was pungently resonating watching Clint Eastwoods’s biopic of the treacherous treatment of Richard Jewell, a thirty-three-year-old security guard who discovered a bomb, in 1996’s Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, Georgia; saving countless, his fate twisted, screaming that “no good deed goes unpunished”, the F.B.I. and the media target him as the prime …

A supernova, diving with lightening speed, into a sea of mediocrity; the dazzling brilliance of the first two seasons, with the exception of a few funny minutes, has been invaded, stalked by voluminous misguided, tragic, supercilious lunacy, idiocy. Why would any viewer want to see Miriam’s parents Abe and Rose Weissman slip into premature dotage by becoming involved with Trotskyites? …

Director Melina Matsoukas and writer Lena Waithe strut their inventive filmic style in “Queen and Slim”; reminiscent of “Bonnie and Clyde”, a couple on the lam after an untoward incident triggered by the inadvertent death of a police officer; there are more differences than similarities between the two films; whereas Bonnie and Clyde were deliberate outlaws, savoring and initiating their …

More than intelligent “Dark Waters” elucidates one man’s remarkable feat in besting and forcing accountability from a behemoth of corporate malfeasance, DuPont; it took years of Herculean efforts to bring the egregious, criminal dumping of toxic waste into the waters servicing the people and livestock of Parkersburg, West Virginia; Mark Ruffalo invests, corporate defense attorney, Robert Bilott, with unflinching integrity, tenacity …

Without the quilt of a quisling, or Judas Iscariot, I imbibed for three and a half hours in Martin Scorsese’s epic narrative of mob culture, in the comforting confines of my home; instead of feeling cheated of the darkened theatre, I felt a surprising intimacy with the characters; up close and personal, aided by digital age-erasure technology, the major protagonists …

“He who is not contented with what he has, would not be contented with what he would like to have.” This quote by Socrates speaks to the avaricious heirs of deceased billionaire “Harlan Thrombey” (marvelous, aplomb depiction by Christopher Plummer); mystery writer of shared legacy with Agatha Christie, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dashiell Hammett; a questionable suicide demands the attention of …