Netflix and Beyond

From the onset there is a romantic perversity luridly lurking at the core of each scene; at times clandestine, oftentimes overt, always lusciously tantalizing a mesmerized, unsuspecting viewer.   Writer/director (P)aul (T)homas Anderson’s “Pygmalion” scenario goes deliriously, deliciously awry. “Reynolds Woodcock” (astounding Daniel Day-Lewis) a nascent fashion designer for the rich and titled in 1950’s London; effete and imperially slim, …

While on hiatus Peneflix has been immersed in the miraculous, curative effects of binging on Netflix; yes, it is an addiction and I’ve spent hours committed to self-analysis, why one allows these fictional forces to wrap their slippery tentacles around one’s psyche, kidnapping viewership for the duration of their tempestuous, taunting existence? Like Ulysses “Sirens” once exposed, doomed; they have …

As I peruse other critics best and worst films I feel fortunate that, because of my pay grade, have rarely seen many of the “worst”; no matter the product, each year there are enough quality films, that in retrospect my passion  is satiated. Granted I have not seen, “The Post”, “Phantom Thread” “Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool”.  So here …

Here is a mixed marriage, not seen since the Jodha/Akbar era; fifty-one-year-old, pneumatic, perennial bachelor Salman Khan (“Tiger”) paired once again with Katrina Kaif (“Zoya”) as East Indian and Pakistani agents sent to battle militants in Tikrit, Iraq; based on an actual event in 2014, terrorists took over a hospital and held 46 nurses (Indian and Pakistani) captive; the rescue …

Ridley Scott’s biopic, revolving around the 1973 kidnapping of J. Paul Getty’s (1892-1976) grandson, sixteen-year-old, high school dropout, J. Paul III, seethes with the despicability of an amoral man, whose zealous quest for wealth consumed any human decency, that should have led to philanthropy, but instead to egregious greed and Olympian, myopic, insensitivity, heartlessness. In the 70’s Getty’s oil empire …

Aaron Sorkin’s feature directorial debut shines a beacon on Molly Dubin Bloom (1978-), the “Princess of Poker” and her revealing book “Molly’s Game” (2014); the film is smart, really smart, but you don’t have to be an intellectual to comprehend its nuances, just recognize that they’re there. I, for example, with the exception of “face” or “tell”, know bubkis about …

Years ago, I experienced one of the “greatest” performances ever actualized on the stage, Hugh Jackman in “The Boy from Oz”, a dynamo of incredible proportions, he sang, danced, played the piano and flawlessly morphed into every stage of songwriter Peter Allen’s career; an unimaginable exploit, anchored forever in my archival theatric treasures. “The Greatest Showman” is not in that …

Tonya Harding from her birthdate, November 12th, 1970, never stood a chance at normalcy; fathered by her mother’s (LoVona) fifth husband, absconds early in her life, exists in poverty outside Portland, Oregon; a skating prodigy, but perpetually abused verbally, physically, emotionally by a harridan from hell, LoVona Harding. Allison Janney gives a dazzling depiction of a disgruntled, humbug who feels …

Director/writer Luca Guadagnino paints a portrait of luscious sensuality, a sublime, ethereal sensuousness;  intimacy vivisected on an altar of rarefied goodness; “Call Me By Your Name” is painfully, palpably beautiful. It is the summer of 1983 and American antiquity and archaeology Professor, “Pearlman” (insightfully wonderful Michael Stuhlbarg) invites a graduate student to spend the summer at his retreat in Crema, …

Writer/director Guillermo del Toro (“Pan’s Labyrinth”) once again capitalizes on his fecund imaginative prowess and serves a delicious banquet of fantasy, enchantment, deviousness and subterfuge; “The Shape of Water” weirdly wonderful, is a fantastic, tantalizing, titillating, exquisitely romantic experience. It is 1962, at a Baltimore research facility an “asset” (Doug Jones) is delivered, caged and howling (aka King Kong) from …