Netflix and Beyond

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones.” Watching director Stefano Sollima’s gruesome scenario of “hitmen”, Marc Anthony’s pungently ironic oration at Julius Caesar’s funeral kept interfering with my concentrative faculties; blackness permeates this film, it is intentional, smothering, blurring lines of propriety on all sides; Mexican cartels have increased their resume, …

The International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of endangered species has exceeded 16,000 including: Amur Leopard, Black Rhino, Orangutan, Mountain Gorilla and the Giant Panda. Nature activists should find director J.A. Bayona’s “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” fascinating in its concept. The Dinosaur’s extinction is heralded at some 66 million years ago when a behemoth asteroid wiped them …

Director/writer Ramon Salazar’s “Sunday’s Illness” is as good as any film playing in today’s theaters; opening earlier this year at the Berlin Film Festival, Netflix’s prescience is a boon to those who crave watching excellence in one’s living room. Unlike any mother/daughter relationship you’ve experienced, nuances subtly revealed, profound performances, make this film a thrilling, psychologically titillating scenario. “Anabel” (Susi …

“Who knows what evil, lurks in the hearts of men? The shadow knows.” It took a week of intense contemplation before I decided to visit “Hereditary”, director/writer Ari Aster’s highly controversial film, saturated in demonology, horrifying mysticism and creepy spiritual forces, up to no good. This is not a movie for the faint of heart, mind and those seeking a …

Emanating from the screen is a slice of poignant perfection, a rarity in the age of “Marvel Mania”; “Hearts Beat Loud” with tenderness and grace encompasses a father/daughter relationship; Nick Offerman and Kiersey Clemons as “Frank and Sam Fisher” glowingly, beautifully depict a unit built on trust, respect and a genuine pride in each other. Nick, a musician, whose light …

In Greek mythology the goddess “Artemis” (daughter of Zeus, twin sister of Apollo) is a “protector”, a hunter, an all-round athlete, an accomplished maiden in all endeavors. Director/writer Drew Pearce had to be aware of the mythic implications when naming a hotel, that in actuality is a hospital, for the untoward, in 2028; as in most dystopian films, lawlessness reigns, …

Bollywood is massively productive in releasing, at a minimum, a thousand films a year; the vast majority with a predictable happy ending; an escape from the banes of tedium and angst. But the tragic conclusions, forever resonate in the consciousness of those who experienced them: “Devdas”, “Anand”, “Rang De Basanti, “Kal Ho Naa Ho”, are a few classics. It is …

The “Ocean” heist films first graced the screen in 1960; the Rat Pack (Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr.) had the time of their lives as thieving renegades; “Ocean’s 11” through 13, 2001-2007 with hunky, handsome George Clooney as “Danny Ocean” the franchise desperately strove to cleverly surpass the preceding films; hence in the MeToo era, director Gary …

Springing from Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin’s (1797-1851) fecund imagination is one of literature’s finest, bleakest, most sorrowful creatures, “Frankenstein”; written by Mary, while still eighteen years old, living with free-spirited, romantic British poet, Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglass Booth), at the request of Lord Byron (Tom Sturridge), a rival poet; culling from her own experience, a desire to rearrange fate. Director Haifaa …

Andre Leon Talley (1949) is an anachronistic icon, at 6’6, a monumental African American, raised by his inimitable grandmother in the segregated South, becoming a giant in the elitist, rarefied world of fashion. Filmmaker Kate Novack’s reverential documentary traces Talley’s rise from a saucy little boy, a scholarship to Brown University, working for Andy Warhol, eventually encompassed in the sphere of …