Netflix and Beyond

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 …

Audiences have recently been satiated with a myriad of “Winston Churchill” depictions: John Lithgow,”The Crown”, Brian Cox,”Churchill”, Michael Gambon,”Churchill’s Secret”, but not one can compete with Gary Oldman’s dazzling, intuitive interpretation of a man who changed the course of history. Director Joe Wright’s “Darkest Hour” brilliantly concentrates on Churchill’s initiation as England’s Prime Minister; it is 1940, Hitler with blitzkrieg …

Director/writer Dee Ree’s riveting masterpiece, focuses on racial divisiveness after WWII, in rural Mississippi; two families: “McAllan”, husband and wife “Laura” and “Henry” (Carrie Mulligan, Jason Clarke), brother “Jamie McAllan” (Garrett Hedlund) and “Pappy” (Jonathan Banks); “Jackson”, “Hap” and “Florence” (Rob Morgan, Mary J.Blige) and son “Ronsel” (Jason Mitchell); except for ownership, both families live within the eye of poverty’s …

It is a masterful, prodigious auteur who can produce a terrific film from one of the most disastrous movies ever realized. James Franco has accomplished, with verve, imagination and inimitable style, the magical. Mimicking the enigmatic Tommy Wiseau who wrote, directed, produced and starred in 2003’s catastrophic dud “The Room”; Franco’s interpretation, flawless indefinable accent, is gifted; Tommy, goth-like, dyed …