Netflix and Beyond

Like houses of worship, museums are vessels of sanctification; as a child, walking through their hallowed halls, walls dancing with portraits of saints and sinners, beckoned by monumental angels, overcome with reverence, I thought this is where god, man and paint are one; creativity consecrated, empowered, only a few capable of envisioning, actualizing the mighty, sanctified and damned. As life …

Clair Foy rose to prominence as the actor who for two seasons starred as the young Queen Elizabeth II in Netflix’s “The Crown”; her portrayal of a vulnerable monarch, fervently in love with her husband, was a tender concoction of human and royal pedigree; torn between familial and monarchial duties, the “Crown” edged out the personal. It was a test …

This is not a film for the occasional movie-goer; it is an audacious, four-letter infused (“like”) tale of a teenage girl who performs sexual favors to earn funds to bail her errant father out of jail; she blackmails her “victims” by having her friends video the assignation. Appealing? Absolutely not, with the exception of Zoey Deutch’s performance as protagonist, seventeen-year-old …

Emotionally flayed from the onset when “Michael and Dafna Feldmann” are informed of their son “Jonathan’s” (Yonaton Shiray) death.  For fifteen minutes viewers are exposed to raw, pulverizing pain; with bleeding souls, and splintered hearts, Lior Ashkenazi (“Footnote”) and Sarah Adler (“The Cakemaker”) hypnotically generate the unspoken magnitude of the insurmountable. Writer/director Samuel Maoz’s complex scenario uses the fluid structure …

Highly anticipated, my expectations were painfully, slowly slaughtered as the film progressed; director Armando Iannucci’s dark parody, ironically and at times scathingly sharp, depicts the mendacious scavengers hovering around the stricken Stalin (Adrian Mcloughlin) in 1953. His greedy sycophants, acted by Steve Buscemi (Nikita Khrushchev, an unrealistic leap of faith required in his casting, not to disparage Buscemi’s impeccable comedic …

By far the most refreshing, richly satisfying film of 2018; a coming of age movie, stunning in its originality, performed to perfection by a corps of prodigious young actors; prescient directing by Greg Berlanti and a unique, intelligent screenplay by Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker. Its poignant warmth, naturalness, genuineness saturates every scene, resonates with every viewer. I loved “Simon …

From June 27 to July 4th, 1976, a hijacked Air France plane carrying 248 passengers was detained in Entebbe, Uganda, sanctioned by its leader Idi Amin; pro-Palestinian terrorists, eventually released all non-Israeli hostages; Israel initiated what was one of the most dramatic, sensational rescue missions in history. Directed by Jose Padilha, “7 Days in Entebbe” is a “starless” bastardized, diminished, …

Cursed with a hollow, vapid, platitudinous script, bludgeoning narrative “A Wrinkle in Time” is a lackluster, uninspiring attempt at a geometric, morality play. Director Ava DuVernay’s exceedingly ambitious rendition of Madeleine L’Engle’s 1962 book focuses on “Meg Murry’s” (Storm Reid), her brother, “Charles Wallace Murry” (Deric McCabe), and friend “Calvin O’Keefe” (Levi Miller) quest for her father, scientist “Dr.Alex Murry” …

Made the agenda of 2017’s Film Festivals’ highlights; it is a creepily compelling, unnerving tale starring two phenomenal ingénue actors (Anya Taylor-Joy and Olivia Cooke) as  “Lily” and “Amanda” dames of privilege in the “Daisy Buchanan” league;  Lily, lazily living with her mother and stepfather, yearning for admission to an elite college is reunited, after years of non-communication, with a …

Answering every question correctly (most of us were flayed by “Icarus”), with hundreds of entrees, for the first time in years, a winner is born;  I am ecstatic to announce that DAVID R. GUTHMANN takes home the Peneflix $250.00 prize!!! The toughest challenge is guessing the number of Academy Awards received for the Best Picture. “The Shape of Water” won …