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Yearly Archives: 2019

DABANGG 3 (HINDI: ENGLISH SUBTITLES)

Salman Khan wrote and stars for the third time as “Detective Chulbul Robinhood Pandy”; an excessive three hour egregious homage to himself; self aggrandizement rarely, if ever, seen on the screen; Khan’s a clone of Narcissus, a mythological figure who fell in love with himself; narcissism at its zenith; inflated physique and ego strutting excessive silliness, stale dance sequences, and ... Read More »

UNCUT GEMS

Valium inducing, emotionally pulverizing, “Uncut Gems” sears to the soul one man’s addiction to living on the edge, a gambler, constantly questing the ultimate high, pushing to lethal limits his megalomania; Adam Sandler, like Sacha Baron Cohen in “The Spy”, switches oeuvres, and stuns as “Howard Ratner”, a jeweler, in possession of a stone of such magnitude, he is willing ... Read More »

1917

Writer/director Sam Mendes’s visual, fictionalized account  of a WW1 incident told to him by his grandfather, Alfred Mendes; “1917” differs from traditional “war” films in its intimacy; two British corporals sent on a death-defying mission, through still volatile, vacated enemy lines, to cauterize an attack by an ally battalion, an attack, orchestrated by the Germans, risking the lives of 1,600 ... Read More »

LITTLE WOMEN

This spirited fourth major film adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s (1832-1888) seminal “Little Women” (1868) is a refreshing, feisty, revamping of a tale that has everlasting appeal; its timelessness touching imaginations, one generation after another; director Greta Gerwig’s contemporary interpretation resonates with the pungency of twenty-first-century resolve adorned in the accoutrements of the nineteenth century; Concord, Massachusetts; severity of the ... Read More »

THE “CATS” CONUNDRUM

“Cats” debuted in London,1981; based upon T. S. Eliot’s 1939  “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, with Merlin magic, stupefied audiences with his innovative, anthropomorphic felines; it was a sensation that captured the imaginations of theater goers throughout the world and continues to do so, even today, with this uneven production by Academy Award winning director ... Read More »

A HIDDEN LIFE

Writer/auteur Terrence Malick, has superlatively, with fecund imagination, blessed audiences with a masterpiece simmering in sacredness; a marriage of such profundity, depth, it transcends description; an aesthete, Franz Jaggerstatter (August Diehl) marries Fani (Valerie Pachner), a woman whose every fiber is matched dreamily with her husband; peasant farmers, in the Elysian, pastoral fields of Austria; twentieth- century madness of WWII ... Read More »

BOMBSHELL

After seeing Showtime’s “The Loudest Voice”, starring a pneumatic Russell Crowe, as Predator Poster Boy, Roger Ailes, Founder and CEO of Fox News; “Bombshell’s” repetitive version holds minimal surprises, just subtle analysis of the same scenario; top notch performances by Charlize Theron as Megyn Kelly’s clone; Nicole Kidman as the impetus (bombshell) Gretchen Carlson, signaling the demise of the bovine ... Read More »

A BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD

If you missed 2018’s “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?”, (reviewed 7/4/18) joyously heartfelt documentary featuring the blessed Fred Rogers (1928-2003) directed by Morgan Neville, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”  will satiate your wonderment of a man whose goodness surged from his every pore; director Marielle Heller, without compromising Mr. Rogers mystique, concentrates on his empathetic skill to disinfect more ... Read More »

RICHARD JEWELL

Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find” was pungently resonating watching Clint Eastwoods’s biopic of the treacherous treatment of Richard Jewell, a thirty-three-year-old security guard who discovered a bomb, in 1996’s Centennial Olympic Park, Atlanta, Georgia; saving countless, his fate twisted, screaming that “no good deed goes unpunished”, the F.B.I. and the media target him as the prime ... Read More »

THE ASTOUNDING DISINTEGRATION OF “THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL”

A supernova, diving with lightening speed, into a sea of mediocrity; the dazzling brilliance of the first two seasons, with the exception of a few funny minutes, has been invaded, stalked by voluminous misguided, tragic, supercilious lunacy, idiocy. Why would any viewer want to see Miriam’s parents Abe and Rose Weissman slip into premature dotage by becoming involved with Trotskyites? ... Read More »

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