Netflix and Beyond

I do not believe in a God of Carnage; but 10 Pakistani men over November 26-29, 2008, assassinated 164 people in the name of Allah, squelching India’s way of life, as they did in the United States, September 11, 2001; director Anthony Maras, without blinders or sensationalism, reenacts and personalizes the calamitous hours of terror endured by guests and staff …

A compelling, scintillating scenario poetically referencing a true tale; Matthias Schoenaerts depicts hardened criminal Roman Coleman, whose rehabilitation rests on the back of an unbroken mustang; both are wild, volatile and caged; filmed with insightful prescience, elucidating neophytes to the massive benefits of Equine Assisted Therapy (EAT) therapy;  a myriad of animals are employed in pet therapy, aiding individuals fighting …

Deliciously quirky, fantastically off quilter, writer/director Benedikt Erlingsson teamed with stupefying actor Halldora Geirharosdottir, introduces viewers to a character(s) never to be duplicated or forgotten. Twins “Halla” and “Asa” approaching fifty are spiritual loaners; Halla a “Divine Demolition Diva”, an environmentalist, in Robin Hood style, single handedly slays the instruments threatening the ecological purity of her Icelandic landscape; we cheer …

Director James Kent (“Testament of Youth”) intriguingly, hauntingly tells a tale of romance, devastation, deceit between injured, irreparably altered souls; chaos, detritus, beautifully depicted in the “winter of discontent” in postwar Hamburg, Germany; actors Keira Knightley, “Rachel Morgan”, Alexander Skarsgard, “Stefan Lubert” and Jason Clarke, “Colonel Lewis Morgan” imbue their characters with heart-wrenching depth and integrity; the Morgan’s have requisitioned …

Jesse Eisenberg brings his unique brand of freneticism to a film informed by the speed of a hummingbird’s flutter of its wings; technological wizardry based on the prescience of a fiber optic “line” running underground from Kansas to New Jersey, resulting in vast profits, in milliseconds, on the stock market; Jesse is “Vincent Zaleski” a high-frequency trader, along with his  …

Absolutely nothing is as it appears in this “doppelganger” thriller, commencing with six-year-old “Adelaide” (mesmerizing, doe-eyed Madison Curry) wandering into a fun house at a neighborhood carnival; shivering encounter with her clone, leaves her irrevocably altered; jump to present day and adult Adelaide (outstanding, haunting depiction by Lupita Nyong’o) and her husband “Gabe” (naturally naïve, wholesome Winston Duke), daughter “Zora” …

Bollywood strokes its historical conflicts with iconic reverence, immense spectacle, lionization of its heroes, spectacular cinematography plus gifts adulation and exaggerated license, especially in India’s march towards doffing the shackles of British domination (“Gandhi”, “Mangal Pandey”,”Padmaavat”); “Kesari” vibrantly speaks to the “Battle of Saragarhi” between Sikh soldiers of the British Indian Army and Afghan Pashtun tribesmen; the film concentrates on …

German director Christian Petzold’s ingenious interpretation of Anna Seghers’s (1900-1983) 1942 novel of the same title, is compelling on a variety of levels; primarily a contemporary take on Nazi roundups in the late 1930’s and 40’s; reminiscent of Seghers personal experiences during WWII: born into a Jewish family, marrying a Hungarian Communist, arrested by the Gestapo, renouncing Judaism, fleeing to …

Instantly recognizable, is a woman, searching for an anchor, a “place in the sun”, with pulsating vulnerability, candid openness, she maneuvers the dance floor of a familiar night club; dancing flays the ordinariness of her life: unattached children, valueless job, psychotic neighbor; she possesses the capacity for incalculable love, but no one worthy of its measures; a divorcee, neither gay …

If you have seen “The Invisible Guest” 2016’s Spanish version of the same theme you will not be shocked by “Badla’s thrilling conclusion; except for switching the gender of the protagonists, this is a consummate clone,  every bit as titillating; starring, in his finest role in years Amitabh Bachchan as “Badla Gupta” a lawyer hired to defend “Naina Sethi” (remarkable …