Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX

Because of my travels I was able to partake in half of the movie blitzkrieg assaulting Chicagoans the first week of our annual film festival. Disappointed, I was not. It was heartening meeting so many devotees (a euphuism for addicts) of film. It was reassuring that their were so many others more advanced in the 12 step program of compulsiveness ... Read More »

By request, reposting this review! Written by Angus McLachlan (“Junebug”). Directed by John Curran (“The Painted Veil”). Rarely will you see a blacker film; film noir at its pinnacle or nadir, depending on your perspective. It is profoundly dark; disturbing, troubling and extremely problematic. From the first scene the audience is dumbfounded by an act that imprisons in concrete a ... Read More »

Yesterday at the annual Holocaust Luncheon in Chicago over two thousand people paid  homage to a remarkable woman, a survivor of the worst atrocity ever visited upon mankind. As a young girl with her mother and brother (her father had been murdered) she lived for years in barns, huddled in dark infested holes, ate what could be scavenged from an ... Read More »

Sandwiched between the viewing of these two profoundly provocative films based on real people I read the story of the tragic suicide of an 18 year old college boy who was filmed clandestinely, having a sexual encounter which was subsequently screened on the Internet. He knew the filmmakers, “friends” who were responsible for his death. The victim and his friends ... Read More »

Gordon Gekko is back!!!!!!! He saunters out of prison in his seedy, dated suit with his four pound cell phone, an empty money chip, surrounded by fellow tattooed releasees and emanates fearless fortitude; incarceration has strengthened his resolve, his unquenchable determination to rise, like a phoenix from the ashes of his fraudulent past to the elevated status as Wall Street’s ... Read More »

Before reading another word, I have a confession to make.  I like Ben Affleck, I have always liked him; I even liked “Pearl Harbor” the movie that was universally panned by all who have written one word of film criticism or those few who viewed the movie. That being said I thought “The Town” vindicated the scathing, divisive, pejorative reviews ... Read More »

  ANIMAL KINGDON One of the toughest, grittiest, crime films in recent years. For almost two hours you will be breathless, clutching your seat, shutting your eyes; the tension, supreme anxiety and tightly wrought writing and directing will stay with you long after you have exited the theatre. This Australian movie written and directed by David Michod won the world ... Read More »

In October of 2004 I took my first of five excursions to India. Finally on this my fifth trip, I was granted THE Bollywood experience I had fervently wished for. There is a vast difference between Hollywood and Bollywood and not just the production process. Hollywood is a destination; the gargantuan 45-foot-high, 350-feet-long sign nesting in the Santa Monica Mountains, ... Read More »

In the theatres also On Demand! Sweet, lovely film involving two decent, good and interesting people accidently thrown together in the exotic, confines of Cairo, Egypt. Patricia Clarkson, with her magnetic charm plays Juliette, the stranded wife of a U.N. official. She is escorted and introduced to the mysteries and religious practices  of Cairo by Tareq (Alexander Siddig, who smolders ... Read More »

  In the last few years whenever someone asks me if I have seen the latest Julia Roberts or in this instance George Clooney film, my negative kites take flight. Last night I saw “The American” and my kites are now another ring around Saturn. It is vying along with “Sex and the City 2” for first place as one ... Read More »