Netflix and Beyond

Actors Charlize Theron and Mackenzie Davis give worthy performances in a film that never satisfies, just overwhelms in its averageness. Theron, as  “Marlo” a pneumatic, beleaguered housewife, sinking unconstrained, into an emotional morass after the birth of her third child; enter “Tully” (Davis) a night nanny, designed to cure postpartum depression with huge injections of effervescence. It works for awhile …

There’s a quiet serenity, gentle integrity informing the entirety of this autobiographical movie; real people recording a traumatic, life-altering episode in their lives; Brady “Blackburn”(Jandreau) a Lakota Sioux cowboy, plays himself; he has sustained a severe head injury in a rodeo ring, his performance is staggering in its sincerity, not an ounce of self-aggrandizement, or pity touches his young spirit; …

The single redeeming factor of  director/writer Deniz Gamze Ergoven’s (“Mustang”) “Kings” is the archival footage of the March 3rd, 1991 beating of Rodney King and the subsequent riots on April 29th, 1992 after three police officers were acquitted of the crime; South Central L.A. suffered a conflagration of catastrophic proportions; one of the bleakest, historical stains of the twentieth century. …

Human trafficking is a mega, insidious business, a pandemic that has infected a myriad of countries; it is the fastest growing source, behind drugs and arms trade, of income for organized crime. Television and film(“Human Trafficking”, “The Whistleblower”, “The Jammed”) have focused on this cancer to little avail; millions of young lives (primarily female) are sacrificed to the highest bidders, …

From its commencement in the 5th century B.C. with the camera obscura,  followed by the collaboration of Joseph Niepce and Louis Daguerre, with the Daguerreotype to the invention of Kodachrome (1955-2010) by Eastman Kodak, man’s fascination with codifying the moment, freezing forever, a portrait of what was, has been ubiquitous through time. “Kodachrome” is a study in nostalgia, a whimsical …

Director/producer Shoojit Sircar and actor Varun Dhawan have created the unexpected from Bollywood; “October” is a quiet, introspective film, centering on two young people, training at a five-star hotel in Delhi, India. “Dan” (Dhawan) is flippant, “Brahminesque” in his attitude toward his employers and patrons; at twenty-one, the world is his lotus flower and he assumes it always will be. …

This disturbing, fragmented film directed by Lynne Ramsay is an episode, a “bubble” in a troubled, haunted, suicidal man, “Joe”; only Joaquin Phoenix could grasp the intricacies, trauma of this overwhelmingly disenfranchised, complicated character’s life.  Joe, a defender of the righteous, a slayer of the untoward, a savior of the unprotected; his mission accomplished with “hammer” like precision. With the …

In 1972, Beirut, Lebanon (one of the oldest civilizations in the world), a magnificent city referred to as the “Paris of the East”, lives U.S. diplomat “Mason Skiles” (Jon Hamm) his wife “Nadia” (Leila Bekhit) and their ward “Karim” (Yoav Sadian Rosenberg), a thirteen-year-old Palestinian refugee; into a benign, multi-cultural cocktail party, a terrorist group shatters, irrevocably, Mason’s harmonious lifestyle. …

This is not a good film; it binges on “poetic license”, sensationally portraying Senator Edward Kennedy (1932-2009) as a moronic megalomaniac; July 18, 1969, sounded the death knoll for Kennedy’s quest for the Presidency but did not destroy the aura of royalty, entitlement that informs his birthright; Kennedy remained senator of Massachusetts until his death. Regardless of his achievements, the …

Mesmerizing, hypnotic, powerful, original scenario, classified in the “horror” genre; director/writer/actor John Krasinski’s ingenuous portrait of survival, consummate love and strength, despite plummeting odds, is a tableaux of unparalleled, pervasive torture and fortitude. The Abbott family, soundlessly scavenges for sustenance in a desolate grocery store; communicating by signing, barefoot, filthy, their youngest of three children covets a toy airplane. Within …