Peneflix MOVIE REVIEWS BY PENEFLIX

In the profoundly silent first moments of the film we watch a solitary wrestler in a balletic performance with an  anthropomorphic partner; Mark Schultz, Olympic Gold medalist, practices his quintessential wrestling techniques; Channing Tatum gives the greatest performance of his career as this lost, isolated athlete, living in the shadow of his older brother (17 months), Dave, also an Olympic ... Read More »

Knowing that audiences were to be served only a portion of the third book in Suzanne Collins’s “Hunger Games” trilogy; leaving partially satiated appetites, unanswered dilemmas, lacking the magnetism of previous “Game” movies; light on energy, heavy on angst; difficult to be invested in the half-baked. The commencement is ploddingly slow: “Katniss Evergreen” (abundantly talented Jennifer Lawrence) must psychologically accept ... Read More »

For those of you with a challenged attention span I am giving this salacious sludge, staring the stammering savant (Woody Allen) 1/2 star. Mr. Allen has gifted his legacy to actor/writer/director John Turturro. “Fading Gigolo” is a pathetic scenario revolving around an inventive florist “Fioravante” (Turturro), financially destitute, who allows himself to be conscripted into male prostitution by his friend ... Read More »

Director Spike Lee’s remake of Park Chan-wook’s Korean, 2003 film of the same title, is shatteringly brutal, ugly and by far the most horrifying, disturbing movie of the year; its bloodthirsty, barbaric scenario is not for those of feint  sensitivities; its meanness continues to haunt, days after viewing. If revenge is best served cold “Oldboy” hovers at the Antarctica level. ... Read More »

Matthew McConaughey joins the elite league of actors who have shed morbid amounts of weight to define the role’s they are depicting: Christian Bale  “The Machinest” Michael Fassbender, “Hunger”, contemporaries; three men, young enough to replenish what they sacrificed in months of scary, voluntary anorexia. Matthew McConaughey, as nonfictional “Ron Woodroof”: raunchy, alcoholic, drug- addicted, heterosexual; diagnosed HIV positive in ... Read More »