— by BEV QUESTAD — This review is the last in a three-part examination of films dealing with the Guantanamo prison situation. It’s a seemingly normal day in Afghanistan. A teacher and his family are in their small home in Kabul. A knock is heard at their door and men take the teacher f[...]
Author Archive
Review: My Little One
— by BEV QUESTAD — From the moment we see 10-year-old Frida, with red and yellow Indian war stripes streaked across her face, screech up in an old, beat-up and perhaps stolen truck, we suspect things aren’t exactly as they should be. We are assured of this assumption after we learn she[...]
Review: Cow
— by BEV QUESTAD — “Cow” takes place on a big, kindly run English farm. There is no narration. We are simply observers of the life of a particular black and white Holstein (I think) cow, number 1129. The film begins with the camera on her face. We have no idea from her calm demeanor [...]
Review: The Contractor
— by BEV QUESTAD — James Foster (formidably played by Chris Pine) is standing at attention, expressionless, while a military board announces that he will receive an honorable discharge with no pension or healthcare. Later, we learn the special forces sergeant has been a heroic combatant [...]
Review: Guantanamo Diary Revisited
— by BEV QUESTAD — This review is the second in a three-part examination of films dealing with the Guantanamo prison situation. Released from Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2015 for lack of evidence and a negative polygraph after 14 years of imprisonment and torture by the US governmen[...]
Review: The Mauritanian
— by BEV QUESTAD — How long do you keep a prisoner without charge or evidence? How strenuously can you interrogate, encourage, and even torture a prisoner to get a confession? At what point will a person say anything? Two months after planes flew into the World Trade Center Towers, the m[...]
Review: Alice
— by BEV QUESTAD — In a small wooden building lit by candlelight in the dark of the night, two slaves are married quietly and secretly. Their lives are really not their own to determine. The new husband, Joseph, will be sent off the next day, like a stud bull, to impregnate a slave from [...]
Review: Man of God
— by BEV QUESTAD — “I am the leader of the whole world. What would you like me to give you?” This true-life story of Nektarios of Aegin grabs attention from the start and soon spreads into your heart and soul like the incoming crash of a Mediterranean wave. A showing of “Man of God[...]
Review: Drive My Car
— by BEV QUESTAD — Up for an Oscar in two categories, best film and best international feature film in a foreign language, “Drive My Car” was also on Barack Obama’s list of Favorite Movies of 2021. On one level it is an intellectual’s film, with references to Anton Chekov and exi[...]
Review: MLK/FBI
— by BEV QUESTAD — “MLK/FBI” deals with the sacred so it must be honest, accurate and complete. “MLK/FBI,” in Sam Pollard’s master hands, documents the story of a massive movement that challenged American values and societal structure. He also tells the dark side: White resista[...]
Review: Billie Eilish: The World’s a Little Blurry
— by BEV QUESTAD — “I’ve been walkin’ through a world gone blind/… I’m scared/I’ve never fallen from quite this high/Fallin’ into your ocean eyes” (Finneas, “Ocean Eyes,” 2015). At 13, Billie Eilish and her brother, Finneas, posted this song, written b[...]
Review: Attica
— by BEV QUESTAD — Inmates riot, capture guards (one dies), close down the prison and demand better treatment. Is this going to end well? For five days in September 1971 in upper state New York, 1,281 out of the approximately 2,200 prisoners at Attica Correctional Facility took an amazin[...]
Review: Belfast
— by BEV QUESTAD — Perfect timing. That “Belfast” was coincidentally released in 2021, the year of the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, sends an ominous shudder down my back. The film, an autobiographically-inspired look at an early time in film-maker Kenneth Branagh’s life, opens [...]
Review: Day of Rage
— by BEV QUESTAD — They came from all 50 states, many on chartered buses in the dark of the early morning. One quiet group solemnly recited the Pledge of Allegiance. They were gathering for a “Save America” march in response to what they understood was an illegal ratification of a fr[...]