Netflix and Beyond

Rarely does a film generate benevolent happiness, sweetness, witnessing a family’s love and concern for a precious matriarch; Zaho Shuhzen is dazzling as “Nai Nai” (grandmother), unaware of her fatal stage 4 lung cancer, she devours life and living with staggering, stunning greed; she is an extraordinary tonic, a canyon of care; her granddaughter, “Billi” (Awkwafina, “Crazy Rich Asians”) an …

Do not give this film short shrift because of its Bollywood genre. Here is a movie for whoever has been electrified, inspired, challenged, encouraged by an instructor, educator; a teacher whose magnetism moves mountains, drives one to excel, explore unknown, untethered avenues, resulting in lifelong quests in fertile fields,  perpetually nourishing the brain, beyond boundaries, beyond one’s own expectations; its …

At times, achingly tragic, pervasively poignant, Marianne Ihlen (1935-2016) and Leonard Cohen’s (1934-2016) love saga is enchantingly directed by Nick Broomfield; it sears to the soul a destined pairing, even when shattered, but never severed, resonating forever in the lyrics of “So Long, Marianne”. Historically the “muse” is the dynamite, explosive, freeing the artist’s vision, blasting blocks, blinding the core …

Yearly, we watch Oscar winners waving the 8.5 pound statuette, extolling the platitudinous “follow your dreams”, “actualize your potential”, “if I can do it, so can you”, aphorisms. “Maiden” directed by Alex Holmes tips the scales as an exhilarating, galvanizing documentary; its ingenuity, Draconian ambition, heart-arresting filmmaking, stuns with the story of Tracy Edwards, who realized her dream in 1989, …

“Hamlet” is William Shakespeare’s (1564-1616) longest play and possibly, most well known; pungent with murder, madness, deceit, witchcraft and doomed romance, it has mastered time’s vanquishing test with inimitable longevity. Director Claire McCarthy and writer Semi Chellas have given the vastly ignored, drowned “Ophelia” a contemporary “Me-too” spin with a Cliff Note scenario, she is the only one of tangible …

A documentary, that even if her novels escaped your literary library, must be seen and applauded. Poignantly, and with refined grace, director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, gifts viewers a portrait of eminence, defying conventions, stereotypes, “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am” is saturated with a presence so dazzling, compelling, that if she hadn’t written a word, her personality alone would captivate your …

Beware of succumbing to the thought that director Ari Aster’s (“Hereditary”) “Midsommar” is in any way reminiscent of Shakespeare’s, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”; a plot dredged from the macabre, desolate level of Aster’s imagination; four unsuspecting victims are lured to Sweden’s Midsummer Festival, (pre-Christian, pagan solstice celebrating life and love) by the insouciant “Pelle” (Vilhelm Blumgrer), a fellow graduate student; …

“Rose-Lynn” is a spitfire, the freest spirit you’ll meet on 2019’s screen; a Scottish lassie, with an exhilarating voice, bombastic personality, quixotic, a filter-less force, a convicted felon; she is depicted with inconceivable dexterity, by Jessie Buckley; she flies from jail to her boyfriend, than arrives at her mother’s home, “Marion” (poignantly beautiful, Julie Walters) who’s been caring for her …

Expected exuberance exsanguinated precipitously in director Danny Boyle’s “Yesterday”; a fascinating, imaginative premise: how would the composers of “yesterday” and their iconic compositions be perceived if heard, for the first time, in today’s popular milieu? Mozart, Wagner, Stravinsky, Gershwin, Jackson, Franklin; according to Boyle, their recognition would be cloned, replicated at the uniform intensity of “yesteryear”. Himesh Patel (“Jack Malik”) …

“Kabir Singh”, (Shahid Kapoor), if you are willing to sit through almost three hours of waterboarding torture, focusing on the most despicable character in 2019’s filmdom, the final fifteen minutes, partially placates the pain that preceded the finale; Kabir, a third-year medical student, dictates, threatens, with bodily harm, anyone who comes near “Preethi” (stoically dull, Kiara Advani) a first-year medical …