Netflix and Beyond

What could have been a magnificent story of fortitude, besting the most stringent, violent, suppression of light, spirit, evaporates, uncomfortably, into the meandering and melodramatic; loosely based on the true narrative of “Afshin Ghaffarian” (poignantly portrayed by Reece Ritchie), an Iranian dancer forced to camouflage his formation of a dance troupe, hiding from Iran’s “morality police”; it is 2009 and ... Read More »

Paul Walker (1973-2013) was the prime reason I went to see “Furious 7”; my only indulgence with the “Furious Franchise; what is it about the death of the young and beautiful that haunts? The “Kennedy’s” father/son; Marilyn Monroe; Princess Diana; saved from the vestiges of age, clipped from the everyday; petrified in time; unrealized potential. Only the living can fill ... Read More »

Paul Cezanne said Claude Monet was only an “eye”, but God, what an eye”; watching Wim Wenders (“Pina”) and Juliano Salgado’s documentary “The Salt of the Earth”, focusing on the forty- year career of photographer Sebastiao Salgado (Juliano’s father), I was mesmerized by the overwhelming depth of sensitivity, profound respect in which Salgado imbues his subjects; portraits of nameless, shunned, ... Read More »

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918), an Austrian Symbolist painter, whose genius has grown exponentially through the ages; an awe-inspiring wizard, an alchemist with a brush; gold leaf enhanced the beauty of his portraits; once exposed to his works one never forgets their metallic magic.  In 1907 he was commissioned to paint the portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I (1881-1925) , ethereally luminous, an ... Read More »

This portrait of teen bullying should be required viewing from primary school through the college level (plus their parents/guardians); brutally, achingly realistic, writer/director Amy S. Weber’s pseudo documentary is a masterpiece of blindness: parents unaware of a child’s devastation; children hiding their psychological trauma; teachers shunning their responsibilities, accepting the norm; bullies, their deadly tactics; what deep-seated, festering problems gave ... Read More »

Recently, I turned on the “Charlie Rose” show and lo and behold there was “Danny Collins”; I had seen the film starring Al Pacino at a screening a week earlier; moderately entertaining, loosely  based on Steve Tilston, a British folk singer who received a letter from iconic John Lennon, almost forty years after it was written. Pacino had not doffed, ... Read More »

What might have been an interesting scenario, spirals down tubes of improbabilities, landing on a flatbed of absurdity, resulting in melodramatic,  pandering obfuscation, highlighting the pneumatic pectorals of Sean Penn. Commencing in 2006 in the blighted detritus of the Congo, an unnamed monolithic corporation, uses assassination as a tool for controlling the natural resources; “Jim Terrier” (sour, surly Penn) is ... Read More »

Once upon a time, in the year 1697 a Frenchman, Charles Perrault wrote “The Glass Slipper”; in 1812 The Brothers Grimm elaborated upon the tale of beautiful, orphaned “Ella”, relegated to the status of servant by her heinous stepmother and her two wretched daughters. So, for centuries this bewitching fable has touched the hearts and imaginations of all who have ... Read More »

“Nothin says lovin like somethin from the oven”, the Pillsbury Dough Boy would have expanded to unlimited proportions in the kitchens, of once ubiquitous delicatessens, now just a “chosen” few. “Deli Man” is a scrumptious,  succulent, salivating love story; the heart of this delicious documentary pulsates with the vibrancy of David “Ziggy” Gruber a third-generation “deli man”; Cordon Bleu trained, ... Read More »

There are fictional characters, once encountered, that remain perpetually parked, closeted in one’s literary landscape: Holden Caufield, Scarlet O’Hara, Rhett Butler, Sherlock Holmes, Hester Prynne, Hannibal Lecter, Daniel Deronda, Moby Dick/Captain Ahab, Miss Havisham, Sydney Carton, Becky Sharp, Lisbeth Salander, Fishman; in Robert Koppel’s newest, exhilarating, fantastical “Odyssey” we meet “Ira Fleckenstein” and his hilarious, outrageous relatives and friends; following ... Read More »