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Monthly Archives: June 2020

BABYTEETH (ON DEMAND)

This fine Australian film, won prizes at many 2019 film festivals; without sensationalism it splays to the core a family’s horrifying pain of watching their teenage daughter’s loosing battle with intransigent cancer. Director Shannon Murphy (screenplay: Rita Kalnejais) in tandem with an extraordinary cast emotionally sear viewers with a revelatory, insightful vision of coping with the unimaginable. Eliza Scanlen’s, “Milla” ... Read More »

BOLLYWOOD DOUBLE HEADER: PAATAL LOK (AMAZON) & SHE (NETFLIX) ENGLISH TRANSLATION

Shamefully, I have taken too long of a hiatus from my Bollywood Buddies; here are two series guaranteed to keep you in comfortable confinement; performances are creatively captivating (superior casting); detectives of both genders, imbue their roles with intelligence, ingenuity, intuitive integrity. “Paatal Lok” features a long ignored, unpromoted police inspector, “Hathiram Chaudhary” (stellar, Jaideep Ahlawat) who serendipitously gets a life-altering case when four people ... Read More »

YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT

And I suggest you do the same; a watery, nebulous copycat version of 1980’s “The Shining” (hard to top Jack Nicholson’s performance, scary scenario and the eerie, elegant, deserted hotel that haunts with impunity). Kevin Bacon (has many jewels in his filmic crown “You Should Have Left” is faux); “Theo Conroy” a wealthy man acquitted of the murder of his ... Read More »

SHIRLEY (AMAZON PRIME)

Elizabeth Moss at thirty-seven has penetrated and incarcerated “characters” of immense diversity: “Mad Men”, “The Handmaid’s Tale”, my personal favorite “The Square”, recently “The Invisible Man” and now the weirdest, most peculiar “Shirley” a brilliant writer of the horror genre, an agoraphobic, stymied, finding inspiration in a young, pregnant woman “Rose” (well-matched Odessa Young) and her husband, “Fred” (Logan Lerman); ... Read More »

THE 12TH MAN (2017) (NORWEGIAN/GERMAN: ENGLISH SUBTITLES) NETFLIX, HULU

It is baffling that I missed this profusely profound historical film based on a man, possessing Olympian attributes and daunting, divine courage; Hemingway defines courage as grace under pressure; Jan Baalsrud’s (1917-1988) paranormal, formidable fortitude led to his escape from the Nazi’s in the spring of 1943, Norway; a magnificent testament, celebration of man’s will to transcend normalcy, inhabit the ... Read More »

THE TRIAL (ITALIAN: ENGLISH SUBTITLES) NETFLIX

Panned by critics when released in 2019; audiences ignored the “panners” and relished its scandalous scenario; an Italian thriller with enough twists to hook one’s attention for the entirety of its eight episodes; coated with an aura of scintillating sleaze, inimitable of Italian and French filmmakers, delicious to ingest and imbibe; superb acting transcends any plot shortcomings: Vittoria Puccini, as ... Read More »

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