Netflix and Beyond

Shockingly, I have never viewed any of the Factory franchise; entering “Wonka” as a neophyte was a fantastically refreshing experience, primarily due to the performance of Timothee Chalamet as the dreamy Willy Wonka and his stratospheric recipes for the penultimate chocolate awareness. Chalamet’s pristine innocence as the naïve but embracing entrepreneur is enchanting, singing and dancing with enough zip and …

Greek director Yargos Lanthimos’s fecund imagination runs imaginative circles around his viewers, some frightening and deplorable; “The Lobster” (2015) detested by this reviewer but still resonates as an unforgettable tableau of the surreal, daunting power of “blinding” love; “The Killing of the Sacred Deer” (2017) masterfully mimics the “Myth of Iphigenia”, wronged goddess Artemis, revengefully demands King Agamemnon sacrifice his …

Preceding Beyonce were illustrious icons: Josephine Baker, Marian Anderson, Lena Horn, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Diana Ross; a myriad of others sang their way into the souls of countless; cementing their gifts into the chambers of the entitled. Beyonce ‘s Renaissance (rebirth) is a healthy retrospective of her assent into a rarefied realm, sorority of those touched by the gods …

Immersive perfection graces Bradley Cooper’s cloning of Composer/Conductor Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990); elegiac in deportment, dazzling depth, Cooper as star, producer, director oozes with the “blood, sweat and tears” of a rarefied genius, a polymath whose skill, innovation conquered the galaxy, anchored eternally in the stratospheric. “Maestro” without apology, spotlights Bernstein’s sexuality; in essence the man had a gargantuan capacity to …

Napoleon Bonapart (1764-1821) a man of military might, gifted France the Napoleonic Code of Law, still in existence today; established higher education, a central bank and a street and sewer system. So why in the name of filmdom did director Ridley Scott and actor Joaquin Phoenix depict his life as a cartoonish, blubbering, foppish dolt? Phoenix (Academy Award, “The Joker”, …

Tantalizingly, titillatingly twisted; Emerald Fennell accomplishes the hat trick as writer, producer, director with a film guaranteed to hibernate for eons in one’s memory; there are scenes shockingly deplorable but fittingly apropos of the major protagonist “Oliver Quick”, Barry Keoghan’s (“Banshees of Inisherin”) staggering performance, guaranteed to rival Cillian Murphy’s (“Oppenheimer”  and Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro”) at this year’s Academy Awards; …

Priscilla Ann Wagner (b. May 24th, 1945); her biological father James Wagner, was killed in a plane crash shortly after her birth; she was raised by her mother Ann and stepfather Paul Beaulieu, an officer in the Air Force; the question will always niggle as to why her parents allowed her at the age of fourteen, to date a man …

Michael Fassbender depicts a nameless assassin in David Fincher’s portrait of a man legitimizing his job as a soulless, “blinkless”, philosophical killer; basically, narrating his process and the skill, diligence, conditioned body and mind required of his proficiency; an avowed nihilist but not above quoting Christ, his faux sanctimoniousness cannot cleanse his bloody deeds. His mantra, redundantly pervasive is focused …

“THE HOLDOVERS”            IN THEATRES Poignantly predictable, two contradictory characters (“Professor Paul Hunham”, Paul Giamatti, and student “Angus”, Dominick Sessa), lock horns over a Christmas holiday at a boy’s boarding school; it is 1970 and director Alexander Payne remains true to the era; Giamatti’s curmudgeonly, warm and wonderful performance as a brilliant, flawed ancient civilizations teacher, …

Watching, this more than watchable film, percolating throughout, director Justine Triet and co-writer Arthur Harari’s (Triet’s husband) premise is the disparity in a relationship, a marriage, a partnership that over a period, success favors one party over the other; “A Star is Born” with a myriad of redundant remakes, echoes the demise of the male protagonist disintegrating with his partner’s …