Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX

How’s does one define the fascination of documentaries/films focusing on the fashion industry?  Hidden, silently simmering from one to the next: “Ultrasuede: In Search of Halston”, “Valentino: The Last Emperor”, “The September Issue”, “The Devil Wears Prada” , “Coco Before Chanel”, is a lustful fantasy for the extravagantly magisterial wardrobe; created for the favored few; the “Cinderella Syndrome” , a ... Read More »

Russell Crowe’s baptism as a director might not be perfect but deserves applause for initiative, ambition and heart. Based on the horrific outcome of the Battle of Gallipoli (1915), where over a thousand Turkish and Allied Powers were annihilated, the result of an unsuccessful attempt by the Allies, striving to gain control of the sea route from Europe to Russia ... Read More »

We live in an era where billions are spent on cosmetics and plastic surgery yearly; growing old is anathema, forbidden, shunned at any/every cost; a wrinkle, instead a badge of a well-lived life,   is  “photo-shopped”, botoxed, lasered, expunged  out of existence; “youth” an elusive aphrodisiac slips, evaporates, like sand through a sieve, no matter the roadblocks constructed to impede its ... Read More »

There is something erotically compelling, hypnotic, resonating from this exquisitely -filmed tale about Artificial Intelligence; in this age where “Siri” computers, cars, a myriad of machines communicate regularly, is it unreasonable to believe that a robotic marvel could be created to respond appropriately and intelligently to human instincts, impulses, complexities, questions? “Ex Machina” wonderfully explores the gray, amorphous area between ... Read More »

Writer/director Olivier Assayas, aided by gifted actors depicts and ode to “ageing”, a commentary on contemporary interpretations of past and present “characterizations”; how time changes one’s outlook;  it is a play within a play and as much as I yearned to like it found the protagonists tiring, familiar and uninteresting. “Maria” (flawless Juliette Binoche) is asked to star in a ... Read More »

What could have been a magnificent story of fortitude, besting the most stringent, violent, suppression of light, spirit, evaporates, uncomfortably, into the meandering and melodramatic; loosely based on the true narrative of “Afshin Ghaffarian” (poignantly portrayed by Reece Ritchie), an Iranian dancer forced to camouflage his formation of a dance troupe, hiding from Iran’s “morality police”; it is 2009 and ... Read More »

Paul Walker (1973-2013) was the prime reason I went to see “Furious 7”; my only indulgence with the “Furious Franchise; what is it about the death of the young and beautiful that haunts? The “Kennedy’s” father/son; Marilyn Monroe; Princess Diana; saved from the vestiges of age, clipped from the everyday; petrified in time; unrealized potential. Only the living can fill ... Read More »

Paul Cezanne said Claude Monet was only an “eye”, but God, what an eye”; watching Wim Wenders (“Pina”) and Juliano Salgado’s documentary “The Salt of the Earth”, focusing on the forty- year career of photographer Sebastiao Salgado (Juliano’s father), I was mesmerized by the overwhelming depth of sensitivity, profound respect in which Salgado imbues his subjects; portraits of nameless, shunned, ... Read More »

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), an Austrian Symbolist painter, whose genius has grown exponentially through the ages; an awe-inspiring wizard, an alchemist with a brush; gold leaf enhanced the beauty of his portraits; once exposed to his works one never forgets their metallic magic.  In 1907 he was commissioned to paint the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1881-1925) , ethereally luminous, an ... Read More »