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Emilia Perez is a film like no other. When I started to watch it, I gave up after ten minutes. This can’t be for me, I thought. It’s all flash. After a couple friends mentioned how exciting a film it is, I returned to Netflix to give it a second chance. So glad that I did!
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David Lynch has passed. His films will live on for many years to come. From the short films of the late sixties and early seventies, including The Grandmother and The Amputee, to his breakout feature Eraserhead in 1977. From The Elephant Man, the brilliant Blue Velvet, Twin Peaks, to Wild at Heart, Mulholland Drive to the TV version of Twin Peaks.
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Conclave begins with a dead pope and the subsequent gathering of the college of Cardinals to elect a new pope. Cardinal Lawrence, played by Ralph Fiennes, is dean of the college and stands at the core of this sacred rite. If this description sounds like a religious drama, you wouldn’t be wrong, but you would be far from correct. Conclave is a fast-moving whirl of mysteries, a thriller filled with suspense.
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Maria, Pablo Larrain’s lavish biopic of the last days of Maria Callas, and The Critic, a dark thriller about a fictional evil-minded London theater critic in the 1930s, are available for streaming. While it’s a treat to have two star-driven features for home viewing, both films are well-acted, look great, but are limited in appeal.
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The newly-released documentary with the lengthy title “Martin Scorsese Presents Made in England, The Films of Powell and Pressburger” or sometimes simply called” Made in England”, is now available on disc from Cohen Media Group and for streaming on various sites.
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Strong performances by an ensemble of black players and a moody, authentic atmosphere are the highlights of a new, energetic reworking of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. As a newcomer to feature-length film directing, Malcolm Washington takes Wilson’s complicated, tiered plot and makes it clear, palatable, and very entertaining. He also is its co-writer along with Virgil Williams.
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Holiday movies of the 1940s are among my favorites.
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Kevin Smith has always been a one-of-a-kind filmmaker. He sees life in his unique, quirky manner and then translates that oddball view to celluloid. Well, maybe not celluloid, but to a digital format.
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Before streaming became a viable means of viewing television programming, Americans had a sketchy look at British sitcoms, Britcoms. For reasons of extreme popularity, I surmise, WMHT repeatedly programs As Time Goes By and Keeping Up Appearances every Saturday evening.
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In the past couple decades, filmmakers have come up with a digestible script format to deal with death, one that attracts some mainstream audiences. Rather than analyze death, these films focus on family relations. How do loved ones or those siblings and other kin who aren’t even keen on each other, deal with each other when a family member is dying or has died.