Peneflix

An outstanding film, pivotal in addressing the magnetism of the classical world of ballet, is “The Red Shoes” made in 1948 and starring Moira Shearer and Anton Walbrook; why pursue an art form that cripples, deforms, eliminates childhood, loves; rewards: fleeting, ephemeral?

Bess Kargman’s “First Position” answers the question as she delves into the the lives and psyches of seven children struggling to compete in the Youth America Grand Prix; five thousand world wide participants, pared down to three hundred; eventually only a handful will garnish trophies and scholarships.  Seven disparate children, ranging in age from ten to seventeen are the focus of this insightful, sensitive documentary. Despite their differences, they all possess Olympian dedication, drive, vision to excel; pushing, punishing, demanding from their bodies grotesquely unimaginable feats; defying nature, gravity, commanding their souls to soar, fly with the butterflies, kiss the wind, touch and achieve, even surpass their whimsical, wildest aspirations.

Those who have flirted with the definitive realm of ballet will recognize the torturous hours of practice, mangled toes,  deformed arches, pneumatic ankles; falls, stumbles, that murder years of study; fervor, commitment, wills of iron propel them to dismiss the pain and forge forward.

“First Position” examines the families of the gifted, and the inimitable sacrifices they sustain to support their prodigies: “Joan Sebastian” rises from the poverty of Columbia; a visit home is one of the most compelling moments in the film; “Miko” of Asian-American descent, her passion and love of ballet is fed, nurtured by an overly -supportive, driven mother; “Michaela” an orphan from devastated Sierra Leone is given a chance to thrive by her adoptive parents, hers is a contemporary fairy tale; “Aran” divinely endowed, whose military family goes to monumental lengths to cater to their virtuoso son.  

Unlike “Black Swan” “First Position” shuns the dark side of this mystical, magical profession; eating disorders, unhealthy rivalries , ruined lives. Instead, Kargman perspicaciously probes the hunger, ambition, tenacity, maturity lurking beneath the surface of these young, aspiring devotees of ballet.

Concluding, with a passage from “The Red Shoes”, a conversation between “Vicky” the ballerina, and impresario “Lermontov” :

              Lermontov: “Why do you want to dance?”

              Vicky: “Why do you want to live?”

              Lermontov: “Well I don’t know exactly, but…….I must.”

              Vicky: “That is my answer too.”

“First Position” touches upon, clarifies the illusive, messianic power that sabotages and monopolizes those individuals who live only to dance and dance only to live!

FOUR STARS!!!!

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This stunning, exhilarating film based on Norway’s most popular fiction writer, Jo Nesbo’s novel, of the same name, is gruesome; a feast for cravers of guts and gore will have a gluttonously good time. Squeamish beware, you will be groaning and covering your eyes 25% of the film.  “Headhunters” defies boredom; it is horrific and hilarious simultaneously, and staggeringly well-constructed.

From the slick beginning “Roger” (diminutive, beautiful, immensely talented Aksel Hennie) instructs the viewer on the “art” of the perfect steal; replacing genuine art works with passable fakes; in and out in less then ten minutes; owners unaware of the rape of their masterpieces. This clandestine enterprise supplements a lifestyle mountains above his means, a desire to satiate his wife, “Diana” (luminously lovely, statuesque Synnove Macody Lund) a  goddess, a willow of wonder, beauty, refinement and genuine niceness, who is opening her own art gallery.

Roger’s day job as an executive “headhunter” for Pathfinders; his masterful skill of manipulation, cutting to the core of the interviewees with salient questions; Napoleonic in his control of the interview process; shattered when he encounters “Clas”(devastating handsome, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. “Game of Thrones” fans will recognize him as “Jamie Lannister”); a mercenary with a mission and a “Rubens”masterpiece. Here are protagonists, brilliantly matched and meteoric in their respective quests; keen action, at times implausible, flawless entertainment at roller- coaster intensity; palpating chases, escapes that will seal you to your seats. Creatively, director Morton Tyldum, elaborates on a scene in “Slumdog Millionaire”, unforgettable in its grossness; desperation, survival, drive men to do the unthinkable.

“Headhunters” assiduously, exponentially plummets the viewer with genuine, pulsating pleasure; leaving the theatre lusting for more, knowing the exorbitant price of admission was worth every kroner.

FOUR & 1/2 STARS!!!!

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Watching this film, Karl Marx’s  decree “religion is the opium of the people” kept galloping through my mind; religion can be addictive, controlling, destructive, resulting in anything but perfection.

Kathleen Turner is “Eileen Cleary”, nominated for “Catholic Woman of the Year”; her every neurotic breath is informed by her obsessive/compulsive desire to follow the rules of the Church, eventually attaining perpetual forgiveness, cleansing of her tarnished soul. Turner (sadly missing all shades of the siren in “Body Heat”) gives a genuine performance of a woman locked in archaic conventions; desperately trying to shape her twenty-first century children into nineteenth century molds of tradition. After the New Testament, running a close second, is the over-indulged mantra of “cleanliness is next to godliness”; unfortunately, no matter how tenaciously she prays or vacuums,  her son will not be less- divorced or her daughter less -gay.

A “host” of placid, one-dimensional characters rob the film of any depth or adhesive power.

Devoted, dedicated Catholics will writhe with justified ire, when in a heated argument Eileen screams “I don’t have to think, I am a Catholic”.

All prayed for a “final conclusion”, not caring a hoot whether she wins the Catholic Woman of the Year award; her competition was a vindictive, mean-spirited, snipe of a woman. The hierarchy are painted in beige, barely human hues.

I did like the end of “The Perfect Family” but not enough to redeem the pain of having to view such drivel; on the plus side, in the witnessing process, sins of the past, present and future have been expunged.

ONE & 1/2 STARS!

Caveat: Being self-employed has its advantages, there is not enough money in my zip code to induce me to see “Dark Shadows” or “ Whatever Happened to Johnny Depp?”

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There are times when a few lines are enough to achieve “brevity”, with a dash of “soul”, a smattering of “wit”.

“MARVEL’S THE AVENGERS”,  The perfect recipe comprised of every iconic, universal savior: “The Iron Man” (Robert Downey, Jr.; “Captain America” (Chris Evans); “The Incredible Hulk” (Mark Ruffalo); “Thor” (Chris Hemsthorth) the Norse god of thunder and lightening, wields his anvil and fells countless villains. My favorites were “Loki” , the Norse god of fire and trickery (aesthetically, beautifully mendacious portrayal by Tom Hiddleston) and the “Black Widow” (red- headed, buffed, lethal combination of “Lisbeth Salander and “Evelyn Salt”,  Scarlett Johansson). The 220 million dollars spent on this visual extravaganza guarantees a good time for both audience and actors!

THREE STARS!!!

“THE HUNTER” (On Demand) starring the remarkable, fearless, Willem DaFoe as “Martin”, a mercenary hired by an untoward biotech company to “capture” the last, illusive Tasmanian Tiger; reasons being highly suspect. “Martin” is frigid, calculating, cemented to his mission, his every move honed to perfection, never a misplaced step or unprovoked action; mind, body and temperament conditioned by his trade.

His facade is fissured by the “host” family; husband gone missing, self-medicating wife, two precocious,  unattended children. Skillfully, the plot revolves around Martin’s matriculation from cold -blooded “hunter”,  discovering untapped, virginal reservoirs of emotions. The children are the catalyst;  the “tiger” completes Martin’s metamorphosis.

“The Hunter” is mesmerizing, mysterious, unnerving, disturbing and harbors plenty of “Tasmanian Devils”, contributing chillingly to the fear factor.

THREE STARS!!!

“BEL AMI” (On Demand) starring Robert Pattison (cannot shake the “Twilight” imagery), Uma Thurman, Kristin Scott Thomas, Christina Ricci, in this truly awful,  bastardly interpretation of Guy de Maupassant’s 1885 novel of the same name.  Talent trashed in inimitable detritus. “Georges Duroy” with alacrity “beds” them and “weds” them, a pretty boy, (sans sharp incisors) desperately seeking to shun the strapping’s, stench of poverty,  via the chambers of women bored with their decrepit, wealthy, powerful husbands. All paltry, pathetic, manipulative individuals, regardless of finances,(“ money does not care who owns it”) bereft of dignity or class.

1/2 STAR

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“India, India, India, five letters, three syllables flows off the tongue, adheres to the mind, is an aphrodisiac for many, venom for a few”; India, a country of extremes, either embraces or repels; neutrality, anathema.”

I wrote this summary after my third visit to this country that has imprisoned my spirit and continues to lure me back to its  infinitesimal mysteries and attractions. It was with tremendous anticipation that I clamored to see “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” (for the elderly and beautiful); it happily exceeded my expectations.

Seven Brits, recognizing the perils of sinking into their dotage, find, via the Internet, the reasonable Marigold Hotel in Jaipur, India. They go for a myriad of issues: health, shrinking finances, seeking lost love, or just to step “outside the box” of inevitable stagnation. 

Director John Madden (“Shakespeare in Love”, “The Debt”, based on the novel “These Foolish Things” by Deborah Moggach) gives us a pecan, a delectable treat to savor long after imbibing, improving with a second helping. Every character is beautifully defined, refined, original but recognizable: Judi Dench, gives a legendary performance as a vulnerable, debt-ridden widow, seeking employment in a call-center (an iconic scene revolves around her instructions to the young, nubile Indians on how to snag the attention of the surly, distracted “victim” at the opposite end of the line); through her “blog” she unveils her transformation, challenges, heartaches; Maggie Smith is the bad-tempered, avid misanthrope, needing a hip replacement, who inadvertently lends dignity to an “untouchable”; Tom Wilkinson, a barrister, returns after a forty-year hiatus to seek “the love of his life”; Bill Nighy and Penelope Wilton give pivotal performances as a couple who have reached the nadir of their relationship, one succumbs to India’s charms, the other withers.

The Marigold Hotel, its condition of decrepitude and /or rehabilitation is an apt metaphor for this unlikely crew of expats (they improve or regress in tandem with the hotel) and its incorrigible, inept proprietor “Sonny” (grand performance by Dev Patel, “Slumdog Millionaire”) who in his delusional fantasies envisions the Marigold as the perfect segway, the final phase into the vast unknown.

Regardless of your chronological state “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” depicts a realistic, hilarious, joyful, unabashed romp of filmmaking at its pinnacle. I have always cringed at the insipid platitude: “you are as young as you think or feel” or those detested emails, gloating over the liberties in diet, dress, speech, etc. that are now allowed because you have exceeded the expiration date on restraints or civility. Age should bring sangfroid, levity and the simple pleasure, as one friend appropriately expressed “of waking up on the right side of the ground”.

“The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel” deserves a universal audience and stellar accolades for all people and places involved.

FOUR & 1/2 STARS!!!!

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Wins the first round of the playoffs as one of the worst films of 2012. Two fine actors, Emily Blunt and Jason Segal are “Violet and “Tom” , excruciatingly saccharine, superficial lovers unable to exchange vows. Why did the audience have to be crucified on their cross of ineptitude?   They mew, fawn, babble endearments (at tooth- ache intensity); she refers to him as “babe” so copiously I earnestly thought she had forgotten his name; which was not necessarily a bad thing. Their embarrassing gushiness, random displays of raunchiness are devoid of a centimeter of chemistry. One egregious sin I can never forgive in my screen characters is boredom; Violet and Tom have cornered the market, championed, monopolized tedium.

This movie could have been legitimate if it had concentrated on viable issues that many couples are confronted with; Violet and Tom are from different countries, cultures, religions, disparate interests. Anyone who has ever loved, been disappointed in romance, conquered the chasms or sunk in the mire of failed relationships will exit knowing even as neophytes that could have written a finer script.

On the positive side it is not as bad as any of the “Sex and the City” movies.

ONE STAR!

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This enchanting, compelling film is a slice of reality served poignantly by writer and director Philippe Falardeau, based on the play by Evelyne de la Cheneliere addressing  loss, trauma, guilt; young and mature souls , seeking a curative redemption.

“Monsieur Lazhar” (magnificently and sensitively portrayed by Mohamed Fellag) an Algerian immigrant, is hired as a substitute teacher after a beloved instructor’s horrific demise. Middle school children( powerfully acted by neophytes) desperately seeking answers, their naive minds and hearts unprepared for the blackest of circumstances.

Rarely will you see a movie so perfectly balanced; with flawless pace and grace the plot unfolds, unmasking the pain of both instructor and pupils; nothing is as it seems. Monsieur Lazhar employs unconventional methods to ignite the imaginations and skills of his young, tortured charges. “Alice” (exquisite portrayal by Sophie Nelisse) and “Simon” (Emilien Neron) embody the evolvement of fledgling immaturity into precocious maturity. It is astounding that untrained actors give amazing, succinct,  award-winning performances.

Monsieur Lazhar is a teacher who believes in discipline, respect; he is burdened by overwhelming events in his life and relates to the suffering of his young students. He teaches the fables of La Fontaine and with lightening perspicacity has the students compose their own fable. Alice’s speech is the highlight and climax of this stunning (lacking all artifice, sentimentality) forceful character analysis; it is unlikely that these individuals will fade from memory.

Many have had a “Monsieur Lazhar” in their lives; a teacher whose inspiration, devotion, passion opened windows of wisdom, unknown, dormant vistas, erasing barriers blocking creativity; with their electrifying stimulation, came recognition, accomplishment; a life of fulfillment, contentment, knowing you tested the waters and swam, maybe not at the Olympic level, but a medal winner, nonetheless.

The gift of “Monsieur Lazhar” was remembering the teacher who saw what was unseen by others, even yourself; leaving the theatre realizing it had been many years since I recalled my muse, Ms. Moline, without whom, I might not have chosen “the road  less traveled, and that has made all the difference.”

FOUR & 1/2 STARS!!!!

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Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) has fascinated me my entire life; an attraction/repulsion whose tentacles have permanently enslaved my lust for the macabre.  His ghoulish, gruesome tales; the “stuff” of nightmares, reflecting his tortured spirit are offset by poetry so magnificently beautiful, spiritual that huge passages have resided comfortably in my memory bank.

John Cusack is credible as the crazed, alcoholic, desperate “Poe” frantically trying to save his beloved “Emily” (the beautiful Alice Eve) from a “copycat” murderer, who baffles,  plagues police and Poe with his realistic reenactment of Poe’s most heinous stories (“The Pit and the Pendulum”,  “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”, “The Cask of Amontillado”).

Director James McTeigue creates an eerie, murky 1849, Baltimore; horse -drawn carriages, fashionably dressed women whose hems mop the rain- streaked streets; mayhem in male- dominated newsrooms. He over indulges the “nevermore” reprise and plummets to the level of intellectual abuse the ubiquitous “craven raven”.   But I was “never” bored and always intrigued, sometimes that is sufficient entertainment.

In his limited life Poe culled from the deepest reservoir of his imagination and beleaguered psyche powerful narratives redolent of the Spanish Inquisition, the Black Plague; pungently he capitalized on the human condition; fears, all shun in daylight, but trespass and haunt the darkness, gloom of uncontrolled dreams: buried alive,  stalked by evil; Poe gleaned from his pen the blackest caverns of malevolence, giving them life, enhancing his literary legacy.

Whether we accept or deny the veracity of “all that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream” it is delectable cuisine for contemplation.

TWO & 1/2 STARS!!

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This fascinating psychological study will leave you pondering long after its conclusion.

Personally, I have never given much thought to the job description of the “Pope”; realize he has over a billion “employees” with benefits; monumental “infallibility”, as  the replacement for Simon/ Peter (first Pope), it is impossible for him to error in matters of Church dogma. This is stress at the celestial level!

“We Have a Pope” is powerfully original; written, directed by (and  costarring ) Nanni Moretti (as the psychiatrist aiding the newly elected Pope through a major crisis); it is more tragic than comedic and commands the viewer to empathize with the “man” who has just been elected Pope, by the College of Cardinals, as the voice of God.

“Melville”( profound performance  by Michel Piccoli) is immediately overwhelmed with his appointment; he is terrified, dwarfed by what he feels are his inadequacies: there are huge lacunas in his life, unfulfilled desires, quests never sought or tested;  a life lived in the protection of the Church. He escapes his “protectors”, mixes with the populace as an ordinary man; his journey, struggle towards enlightenment is genuine, lacking in sentimentality; there is no catastrophic epiphany .

Perfectly structured to combat Melville’s angst you are treated to one of the most heart-warming scenes in recent films; a volleyball game with the Cardinals representing countries in a tournament; the psychiatrist is the referee in this joyous, exhilarating example of “comic relief”; for a brief moment these men of God become boys of sport.

Moretti’s brilliant use of Anton Chekhov’s “The Seagull” as a metaphor for Melville’s dissatisfied, frustrated existence lends a richness to this oddly wonderful film.

Regardless of your religious preference, never again will you be blasé or cavalier, while anticipating the white smoke bellowing from the Vatican chimney announcing, “We Have a Pope”.

FOUR STARS!!!!

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My first thought was of Frank Sinatra’s song of living his life, conquering massive professional and emotional hurdles, thriving on his terms, in hindsight, satisfied.

“My Way” is Kang Je-gyg’s epic of WWII from the Korean/ Japanese perspective; at times melodramatic, testing one’s believability in the quasi nonfictional story of two young men, privileged and poor, wizards at running, competing for the “gold” in marathon matches: “Joon-sik” ( Jang Dong-gun) a Korean boy whose family is indentured to “Tatsuo’s’ (Joe Odagiri) Japanese,  entitled clan. They meet in 1928 and we share the next twenty years in their hostile, tempestuous, torturous, eventually glorious relationship.

Quite simply, although flawed, I simultaneously savored and cringed , during this exhilarating  visceral spectacle of war and it heinous results. The blood- thirsty will be satiated with battles eliminating thousands; matching the invasion of Normandy flicks like “The Longest Day” and “Saving Private Ryan” the filming is breathtaking, realistically depicted. Viewing the atrocities and barbarism of the Japanese toward the Koreans and Chinese; Russia, systematically killing their prisoners of war; a myriad of examples of “man’s inhumanity to man”; climaxing on the beaches of Normandy where the nightmare of Hitler’s Third Reich is dealt a hemorrhaging, mortal wound. 

Reminded of a quote by Bob Riley, “hard times don’t create heroes, it is during the hard times when the hero is created”; it was deliciously entertaining watching two boys become men; multiple vicissitudes erased their disparate lineage resulting in two individuals ultimately living “their way”.

THREE & 1/2 STARS!!!

For Now………..Peneflix