Clint Eastwood is an urban icon; he’s the “make my day” guy, legendary “Dirty Harry”; I have seen Clint Eastwood and his presence off the screen is just as magnificent as on, pulsating with charismatic enormity; so why in the name of his vast and stellar career would he produce, direct and star in this abysmal testimony of self-aggrandizement? He ... Read More »
You will investigate one of the more intriguing protagonists on today’s screen; “William Tell” (depicted with astounding skill by Oscar Isaac), is a gambler with inscrutable control, a card counter, winning just enough to live, avoiding the casino’s radar screen; Tell is the purist study of PTSD I have ever witnessed; jailed for his role as an interrogator at Abu ... Read More »
“CANDYMAN” (in theatres) A refreshing rendition of the 1992 original; taking it seriously from the get-go was an easy task because of the casting and direction (Nia DaCosta); “Candyman” is an urban legend, rising from the defunct Cabrini Green project in Chicago; doomed by his reputation, murdered unjustly; to meet him, stand in front of a mirror and say his ... Read More »
“MYSTERY OF THE LOST PORTRAIT” (AMAZON PRIME) Remarkability pungently, powerfully informs these two documentaries about a man, a polymath, whose iconic genius defies categorization: analyzation of the human body, helicopter, parachute, armored tank, a pioneer in the field of robotics, but it is his visionary paintings that cement his lionization, still pulsating fervently at the center of today’s art world, ... Read More »
SKIP: BECKETT (NETFLIX) In fairness I could not last for more than 15 minutes of tested endurance; insufferable travails of “Beckett” (John David Washington) and his unflinching, clueless, girlfriend “April” (Alicia Vikander); a sparkless relationship and plot deserving of cauterization at its inception. ANNETTE (AMAZON PRIME) Yikes! Adam Driver and Marion Cotillard, two respected, consummate actors had me cringing with ... Read More »
Aretha Franklin (1942-2018) regardless of her gender, race, or possibly despite it, earned the highest honors of any individual in her league: 18 Grammy Awards, including Lifetime Achievement, Hall of Fame, Pulitzer Prize, Presidential Medal of Freedom; she not only touched the celestial, she owned it; her life was informed by the Vietnam War, the assassinations of John and Robert ... Read More »
“HIT & RUN” (ENGLISH/HEBREW) NETFLIX A scintillating collaboration between Israel and Netflix starring inimitable, aggressively masculine, swashbuckling Lior Raz (“Fauda”) as “Segev Azulai”, a benign tour guide in Tel Aviv, his lithesome wife, “Danielle”(Kaelen Ohm) a dancer, whose death, initially assumed accidental, proves anything but; bouncing from New York and Israel, the scenario quivers with layers of duplicity, no one, ... Read More »
“Dance is the hidden language of the soul” and no one understood, cornered or capitalized on this more than Alvin Ailey (1931-1989); director Jamila Wignot employs her intuitive documentary acuity, splaying upon the screen, a poor boy whose feet took him to heights rarely conquered; Ailey, infused his choreography with profound spirituality (“Revelations”); jazz with its unique African-American heritage reverberates ... Read More »
Meet “Bill Baker” (Matt Damon) a simple man, a recovering alcoholic, relying on a higher power to secure his sobriety; a construction worker hailing from “The Sooner State”, Oklahoma, the least likely individual to have a daughter, “Allison” (Abigail Breslin) serving prison time, for murder, in Marseille, France. “Stillwater” pulsates as a plagiarized version of the Amanda Knox (four years ... Read More »
Bullies have plagued mankind since the Cain and Abel era; persecuting those whose idiosyncratic individuality is in opposition to the norm: loners, nerds, homosexuals, mavericks, nonconformists; the growth of the internet has fed the epidemic, especially among the young and disenfranchised: Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virigina Tech, Santa Fe High School, the travesty continues; director Reinaldo Marcus Green and actor/producer Mark ... Read More »
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