Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX
Midway through this stunning, scintillating, elucidating filmic journey, saturated with individuals, the “other” struggling with the “norm”, fighting for an identity within their personal parameters, despite cultural intransigence. Commencing with director Steve James’ documentary:
A COMPASSIONATE SPY
Theodore Hall (1925-1999), prodigious, who at eighteen and a senior at Harvard was recruited by the government to help develop the atomic bomb (Manhattan Project) and subsequently shared its formula with the Soviet Union. Despite being a poignant love story (wife Joan Hall, 1920-2013) audiences are left with a problematic conundrum, why?
THREE & ½ STARS!!!
CHILE 1976
Director Manuela Martelli depicts, without gory sensationalism, the story of one woman’s Herculean efforts to save a lone dissident during Jose Pinochet’s reign of terror (1973-1990). Courage comes in many guises, actor Aline Kuppenheim as heroine “Carmen” is stratospheric.
FOUR STARS!!!!
ONE FINE MORNING
French director Mia Hansen-Love’s film of a friendship blossoming into a passionate pairing (Lea Seydoux and Mel Poupaud, electrifying); peppered, balanced with the disintegration of an intellectual’s seasoned mind. Emotionally pulverizing.
FOUR STARS!!!!
R.M.N.
Romanian director Cristian Mungiu’s hellishly realistic depiction of a town in flux and confusion about immigrants invading and taking their jobs; a riveting town-hall meeting, reveals the enormity of the cavern existing between the natives and the interlopers.
FOUR STARS!!!!
BURNING DAYS
Director Emin Alper’s magnificently mesmerizing film about depravity, corruption in a tiny portion of drought-infused Turkey is compelling on multi-levels: actors of distracting beauty; dissolute, villainous, amoral government; extreme misogynism and xenophobia; percolating with an underlying, riveting aura of sexual possibilities.
FIVE STARS!!!!!
To Be Continued…..
Peneflix
