— by RON WILKINSON — The snarky sequence backing the opening credits would have made Leslie Nielsen blush. Extracting, satirizing and francofying moves from Bruce Lee to Eddie Murphy, the action starts here. In fact, this pitch perfect farce on the good, the bad and the romantic never le[...]
Archive for February, 2019
Review: Woman at War
— by BEV QUESTAD — This gorgeous Icelandic film is a could-have-been. It is majestic in geography and deep in scope. A couple glitches just keep it from the Oscar list for best foreign film, but the totality of “Woman at War” is still a must-see for those who appreciate fresh perspec[...]
Review: Who Killed Cock Robin?
— by RON WILKINSON — Nothing is as it seems until the end of this Taiwanese pot-boiler, when the more things change, the more they stay the same. A young, idealistic and ambitious newspaper reporter hustles to make a name for himself. In so doing, he sticks his nose into things that migh[...]
Top 5: The Year’s Best Documentaries
— by BEV QUESTAD — Asked to pick the best documentary is like being given a selection of high-performance vehicles and asked which you’d like to buy. Would it be the SVAutobiography Land Rover, the Chrysler Pacifica Limited van, the Tesla Model X, or the Lamborghini Veneo Roadster? Lik[...]
Review: Of Fathers and Sons
— by BEV QUESTAD — “Of Fathers and Sons” is a startling Academy Awards nomination. Talal Derki, a Syrian based in Berlin, dangerously masquerades in northern Syria as an al-Qaeda sympathizer. He lives as a guest of Abu Osama, one of the founders of Al-Nusra, the Syrian arm of Al-Qaed[...]
Review: Cold War (aka Zimna Wojna)
— by BEV QUESTAD — Up for an Oscar for Best Film in a Foreign Language, “Cold War” delivers a passionate romance caught in the cross-hairs of Stalin’s Iron Curtain. Brilliantly executed, it has already won the European Award for Best Film. It is an exquisitely shot black and white [...]
Review: The Changeover
— by RON WILKINSON — Timothy Spall is outstanding as a demon stealing youth in this devilish fantasy thriller. Unfortunately, his screen time is all too short and the remaining key members of the cast and crew do not pick up the slack. The good news is that this family movie can be enjoy[...]
Review: Sammy Davis Jr.: I’ve Gotta Be Me
— by BEV QUESTAD — On March 24, 1962, I got my first crush. I was 12 years old. Dad had taken Mom and me to the Orpheum Theatre in Seattle to see a one-man show put on by the greatest entertainer on earth. His charisma and joy performing filled the very air and I […][...]
Review: Minding the Gap
— by BEV QUESTAD — “This device cures heartbreak” is written on the underside of a skateboard. How much that is true is one of the themes examined in Oscar-nominated “Minding the Gap,” an Oscar-nominated documentary about a group of skateboarders from a depressed side of town in [...]
Review: Donnybrook
— by RON WILKINSON — In a land of broken promises, the raw will to survive stands in stark relief. Desperate people do desperate things and the law that most of us have the privilege of following does not count for much. Such is the hardscrabble world of Jarhead Earl and his family. Set [...]
Review: Capernaum
— by BEV QUESTAD — “We’re insects, my friend. Parasites!” explains Zain’s father, the defendant in a trial for parental negligence. The plaintiff is his 12-year-old son who is suing both cruel parents for giving birth to him. Capernaum is a messy place of disregard where chaos an[...]
Review: Hale County This Morning, This Evening
— by BEV QUESTAD — Hale County is in Alabama. Sixty percent of the population is black and 40 percent is white. The median income for a family is about $31,000. About 27 percent of the population lives below the poverty line, which includes the folks featured in this documentary. Filmmak[...]
Review: Among Wolves
— by RON WILKINSON — A motorcycle gang of traumatized war veterans rides into town. They are acting out with bike acrobatics, looking tough as nails, taking no guff. Then they are listening to the nun at the local orphanage telling them what to do about the malfunctioning wiring. There a[...]
Review: High Flying Bird
— by RON WILKINSON — Professional sports have reached a point of almost religious sanctity, and dogma, all over the world. As expected, the money changing hands leads to corruption, major or minor, in almost every league. Director Steven Soderbergh fit right into this film, since the mod[...]