It has been some time since I have submerged myself in a Bollywood epic; and I could not have ventured into a more appropriate tale, starring one of my most cherished Bollywood Boys: Shah Rukh Khan, gone is the dimpled, oh, so loveable, enchanting boy wonder, replaced by a man to be reckoned with; his sculpted style, redolent with mettle, ... Read More »
Hugh Jackman, (“Peter”) is a worthwhile reason to view “The Son”; struggling from a major iron deficiency, an anemic plot, whose nucleus is a wrestling, divorced father, unequipped to aid a chronically, cumbrous, depressed teenager, “Nicholas” (Zen McGrath); a prequel to “The Father” erases all the sublimity, formability invested in a film anchored by Anthony Hopkins (his role in “The ... Read More »
Hermine Beck (1923-2022) was a formidable woman who “sucked the marrow out of life” and graced its presence for almost a hundred years; I met her in Kolkata, India in 2004 and knew karmically that this was the “beginning of a beautiful friendship”, it was, until its finality. Hermine introduced me to “The Power Broker” by Robert Caro (1935-) a ... Read More »
Fredrik Backman’s 2012 novel “A Man Called Ove” translates prodigiously in director Marc Forster’s version of a charismatic curmudgeon, circumstantially forced to keep living after the death of his wife; Tom Hanks (in tandem with his son Truman Hanks, as an aged and youthful “Otto”) dazzles as a man at the precipice of despair, aching only to be united with ... Read More »
Bill Nighy is overwhelming, stratospheric, instinctively perceptive in his role as “Mr. Williams”, based on the film “Ikiru” by Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa (“Seven Samurai”); here is a brilliant remake of a 1952 classic. No longer Japan, but London, where a robotic bureaucrat, Mr. Williams, learns of his imminent death and shockingly realizes he has never lived; impeccably imbued with ... Read More »
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) and his supernaturally bleak imagination translated into thrilling, titillating prose and poetry, has long held an undeniable fascination, compellingly haunting appeal: “Lenore”, “Annabelle Lee” their absence festers at the heart of Poe’s sensibilities, he mourningly acclaims the expiration of beauty; “the pale blue eye” of the purest ingenue, denied maturity. “The death of a beautiful woman ... Read More »
WOMEN TALKING The power of intelligence resonating at the core of this prodigious film is astonishing; at certain points, wishing to “pause”, “rewind”, and “replay”, cementing a vocabulary of deducted reasoning, purely processed, through the words of women, sorely abused, illiterate, questioning the dictates of a religion that demands “forgiveness” for egregious behavior, perpetrated by a male population, justified in ... Read More »
WHITNEY HOUSTON: I WANNA DANCE WITH SOMEBODY (IN THEATRES) Naomi Ackie (Houston), Stanley Tucci (Clive Davis, record producer) and Ashton Sanders (husband, Bobby Brown) cannot salvage, what should have been a dynamic biopic, from mediocrity. Her blistering rise, from the age of nineteen to her tragic demise at forty-eight, was infused with impending gloom: nasty parenting, drug enabling husband, doomed ... Read More »
Lovable, despicable? Possibly, bucketsful of both. Undebatable, it is electrifying, mesmerizing, hypnotically addictive for every second of its three plus hours. Writer/director Damien Chazelle (“LaLa Land”,”Whiplash”) gifts a glorious, energetic, oftentimes inordinate paean to Hollywood’s embryonic bygone era. Commencing in 1926 silent movies are at their peak and idolized leading man “Jack Conrad” (Brad Pitt, with age exponentially swells, imbuing ... Read More »
Occasionally, I see a film, that in retrospect, I wish I hadn’t; Darren Aronofsky’s “The Whale” captures the top prize in this category besting “Mother”, Aronofsky’s 2017 movie starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem and Michelle Pfeiffer; examples of boundary destruction at the “celestial” level; a more fitting title would have been “Death by Diet”. Granted Brendan Fraser’s ardent, overpowering depiction ... Read More »
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