Netflix and Beyond

India is cursed with its drug chaos, a ubiquitous issue plaguing nations worldwide. “Udta Punjab” is a serious, if at times sensational, depiction of the epidemic, its victims, perpetrators and the pervasiveness of this evil  “weapon of mass destruction”. Director Abhishek Chaubey has culled a superior cast to portray fictional characters in a realistic setting: Shahid Kapoor is “Tommy Singh”,  …

Matthew McConaughey is a presence, a gargantuan force in the film world; amazingly, each characterization transcends his prior role. This trait is vividly, pivotally evident in “Free State of Jones” where as “Newton Knight” a deserter from the Confederate Army, in the war between the states (Southerners contend that there was nothing “civil” about it), he leads a disparate pack …

“When a great genius appears in the world you can know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in a confederacy against him.” Jonathan Swift Thomas Wolfe (1900-1938) railed against his detractors until he was championed by Max Perkins (1884-1947), editor of Charles Schreiber’s Publishing. Max, a man whose prescience recognized and lionized writers Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott …

Penelope Cruz gives a dazzling performance as a vibrant schoolteacher, mother coping with the ugliness of breast cancer;  she soars as “Magda”, never shunning, hiding from the inevitability of her prognoses; she loves her soccer-playing son “Dani” (poignant portrayal by Teo Planell) with pure, uncensored, palpable devotion. Magda’s contagious, uninhibited  joy infects all who enter her sphere;  grieving “Arturo” (beautiful, …

There are minimal films where an actor is so remarkable that their performance transcends sentimentality: 2014’s “The Fault in Our Stars”, starring Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort, whose profound characterizations pulverized the tear ducts of the most frigid cynics, and now “Me Before You’’ (based on the novel by JoJo Moyes) director Thea Sharrock’s weepy, wonderful story of a beautiful, …

The creators of “The Good Wife” based their long-running television series (2009-2016) on women who stick by their politicians; husbands, caught and publically exposed, egregiously in violation of their marital vows. Anthony Weiner, a bombastic U.S. Representative (D. New York), resigned from Congress in 2011, after his midnight electronic trysts were unveiled. Directors Elyse Steinberg and Josh Kriegman gift “Weiner” …

You live long enough, regrets are part of the process; what in heaven’s name possessed me to buy this house, take this job,  accept this marriage proposal? Herein lies Maggie’s conundrum: she wants a child, not a husband, finds a “donor”, then surprisingly is cursed with a self-absorbed, pseudo-intellectual, totally ineffective in the “husband” department and the film mushily proceeds …

Oh, for the era when barbs were delivered deftly, charmingly, the victim unaware of being vivisected until exsanguination affirms that the arrow, skillfully aimed,  has hit its mark.  (Films starring Katherine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy). Director Whit Stillman has masterfully interpreted Jane Austen’s novella “Lady Susan” and Kate Beckinsale splendidly gifts the lambent, conniving, shrewd widow with inimitable control over …

At 2015’s Cannes Film Festival it was impossible, no matter the length of time spent in line, to get into this monumentally-hyped film by director Yorgos Lanthimos (“Dogtooth’); I viewed it today with six others in a cavernous theatre. It is one the bleakest, saddest, cruelest movies I have ever witnessed and I fervently wished I hadn’t. It takes place …

Dystopian detritus.  Periodically you experience a film that is unquestionably idiotic; blatantly bludgeons credibility; leaving viewers wondering about the validity of such “muck”; a metaphor gone disastrously awry. Based on the 1975 book by J.G. Ballard, director Ben Wheatley casts mega talents Tom Hiddleston (“I Saw the Light”, “The Night Manager”) and Jeremy Irons (“A Man Who Knew Infinity”) as …