Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX

  This is the smartest movie of the season (albeit a dull season). I loved every second watching these two mid-life friends driving, eating and performing through the lustrous landscape of Northern England; it a tour de force; dialogue brilliantly written (Michael Winterbottom, “Tristram Shandy”) and delivered by Steve Coogan (playing himself) and Rob Brydon (playing himself). Steve, an actor ... Read More »

A few months ago I eulogized the passing of Elizabeth Taylor now I must do the same for a neighborhood theatre that was courageous in showing first run Bollywood films. For five years I diligently strove to increase the viewership of this fascinating, complex, and vastly entertaining, joyous genre. Alas I must admit, begrudenly, defeat.  This is a personal loss ... Read More »

Yes, your eyes are not deceiving you; but my choices were: “Mr. Popper’s Penguins”, “Green Lantern”, “Kung Fu Panda”.  I was ultimately satisfied with my decision. This collaboration between J.J. Abrams and Steven Spielberg is terrific; their imaginative powers whip up a perfect concoction of magic, mayhem and genuine believability. It is 1979 and a group of adolescents, filming their ... Read More »

If you were fortunate to have seen the trailers; choose another flick to visit. There were no secrets to discover nor surprises to behold; boredom prevailed. You have a father/ son team; Hal, (Christopher Plummer) and Oliver, (Ewan McGregor); Hal at seventy-five has rambunctiously exited the “closet” and now romping in an alternate lifestyle, denied in his prime; Plummer is ... Read More »

A marriage adrift; two islands floating on a river of miscommunication, passion suffocated by the repetition of the mundane; a child away for the first time;  his cohesiveness, the acrylic holding the unit together missing, only adding to the nothingness, meaningless moments of a hardly endured existence of never looking or seeing the partner, the co-creator of the “beautiful boy.” ... Read More »

The heat index was flirting with a perfect 100 degrees or I would never have ventured outside my comfort zone to attend this film; now I must bless that hellishly hot day for my initiation into the fantastic world of mutants, telepaths, “angels” and “demons”. Oh, what a baptism it was! This was a maiden voyage, virginal in its ignorance: ... Read More »

Terrence Mallick has created this gargantuan memorial for a lost brother; a portrait of pain, suffering so horrifically torturous, purgatorial to experience, yet there are moments of excruciating beauty, freezing one’s breath, speeding one’s heart. This practically script- less film is based on the premise that there two paths to follow in life, one of peace the other, nature; the ... Read More »

Yes, I was the hooded, shaded, crouching lump of barely- breathing humanity in the last row. My fear of being sighted was fictional, the next senior person was no more than thirty! Why did I venture into this mindless fluff? Because two super intelligent friends told me I should not miss it; they were correct; I have ceaselessly been intellectually ... Read More »