Netflix and Beyond

Director Luc Besson gifts technology and grandeur to the latest clone of his 1990 “Le Femme Nikita”; audiences have become immune to female assassins (my preferences, “Evelyn Salt” and “Lisbeth Salander”); “Anna”, (lithesome, lovely Sasha Luss,) goes through the expected walloping’s, reaching the depths of abasement, before being recruited by KGB operative “Alex Tchenkov”, (Luke Evans); she passes KGB supervisor …

Meeting “Deb” (stupendous Sienna Miller) we recognize her, barely thirty, peaked at fifteen, still flaunting all the traits that made her High School Prom Queen: vapidly blond, curvaceous, a football player’s fantasy; she has a seventeen-year-old daughter “Bridget” (Sky Ferreira), also an unwed mother, with an infant “Jesse”; Deb is a flighty, flimsy grocery cashier having an affair with a …

Emma Thompson is astronomic as “Late Night” host “Katherine Newberry”; twenty-seven years, almost as many awards, surviving in the bemouth, chauvinistic realm of male predominance; she is caustically brilliant, shreds with a sabre tongue and wit any unwanted, even if warranted, criticism; she is losing her edge, threatened with replacement, forced to hire a female writer. “Molly Patel” (Mindy Kaling, …

Roy Halston Frowich (1932-1990) dominated the Olympian fashion world in the 1970’s and early 80’s, until he didn’t; his belief in his artistry, lacked perspective, convinced of his infallibility, living and spending without impunity. Frederic Tcheng’s (“Valentino: The Last Emperor”, “Dior and I”) gauzy, glitzy documentary paints a portrait of a megalomaniac whose willowy, waif-like physique matched his models, “Halstonettes”; …

Salman Khan, long-reigning Bollywood Beauty Boy, at fifty-three, stars as “Bharat”  (referencing a legendary King), an eight-year-old boy, separated from his father and sister in 1947 during India and Pakistan’s partition; multitudes were traumatized, tortured, bifurcated by this unholy division; what could, should have been a compelling tale, is nothing more than a monumental, pneumatic, testament to Khan’s ego; covering …

Jewish legend proposes that every generation has thirty-six righteous individuals, unaware of each other and blind to their specialness, they live life beyond the norm; impossible to define their attributes, they are called Lamed Vovnicks; 2018’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” splayed across the screen, Fred Rogers eligibility, membership in this category, now director Ron Howard, twelve years after his …

Taron Egerton gives an orbital performance as “Rocketman”, Elton John/Reginald Kenneth Dwight; throughout the film, bloated with schtick, gaudy displays of wealth, “sex, drugs, rock and roll” Egerton brilliantly, presciently maintains the aura of a wounded, pristinely fragile, insecure, unloved, little boy. Commencing  when John voluntarily enters a rehabilitation facility, and through a series of insightful flashbacks we visit and …

To be eighteen and graduating from high school in 2019; “The Year of the Pig” an astrological sign of generosity, diligence and tenacity; this astute graduating class has it all, especially “Amy” (Kaitlyn Dever) and “Molly” (Beanie Feldstein); brilliant students (Molly is Valedictorian, off to Yale College; Amy, to Botswana, enabling challenged women); both girls have shunned their fellow classmates, …

Director Raj Kumar Gupta’s history lesson lionizes unheralded, contemporary intelligence officers who captured Yasin Bhatkal (Founder of India’s Mujahideen, terrorist organization) in Pakistan on August 13, 2013. The feat claims remarkability because five men, led by Prabhat Kapoor (Arjun Kapoor, no relation) entered Pakistan, weaponless not witless, tracked, cornered, captured the culprit and escaped without harm; the intensity is not …

An enigmatic, voyeuristic, painfully plodding slice of intimacy, addiction in 1980’s London; “Julia”, (Honor Swinton Byrne) twenty-four, an entitled film student, succumbs to the slithering charms of “Anthony” (Tom Burke) whose garbled, pseudo-intellectualism, fed by his cocaine dependency, woos with vapid, arrogant, sickening poppycock;  Julia’s naivety refuses to recognize his villainy, depravity, as he plummets wantonly into moral turpitude; she …