— by RON WILKINSON — As the chicken embryo consumes the food inside the egg, so do we consume the world’s resources. Consumption threatens to become more than a means to an end. It threatens to become an end unto itself. The beautiful things in this movie are not the priceless things w[...]
Author Archive
Review: Boys Cry
— by RON WILKINSON — Two teens slamming down pizza from their bottom rung jobs radiate their lust for life. Sprung from work and cruising home they hit and kill a pedestrian on a dark street. They did not see the victim, because he did not want to be seen. Terror stricken, they flee the [...]
Review: Naples in Veils (aka Napoli velata)
— by RON WILKINSON — The camera spins around a dizzying spiral staircase as shots ring out. Cut to an obscure, abstract play being performed in the apartment of a member of the ensconced elite. A stunningly sexy Adriana (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) is swept off her feet by the equally sensual [...]
Review: Marlina the Murderer in Four Acts
— by RON WILKINSON — Whatever acts of bloody violence Marlina may be guilty of, her crimes are nothing compared to the delightful twist director Mouly Surya has put in the neck of the spaghetti western. The lone cowboy, modestly dealing with laughably outrageous fortune with simple, term[...]
Review: Charm City
— by RON WILKINSON — A great documentary takes on a life of its own. By the end of “Charm City,” it is obvious that to write this as fiction would be impossible, this is a screenplay written by those who know. There is no middleman, the viewer is in a world that few could […][...]
Review: Ghost Box Cowboy
— by RON WILKINSON — A stranger in a strange land sees gold nuggets falling out of the sky. The cowboy puts on his hat and rides for the horizon, horse and camel. The Ghost Box is the key. A strange, inexplicable black box that talks to the spirits of the dead while warding off […[...]
Review: Ghost Stories
— by RON WILKINSON — Professor Phillip Goodman is comfortable with himself. As an A-list psychic debunker, he is quite at home shattering others’ spiritual illusions. His mad dog attacks on celebrated practitioners of the sixth sense almost always win him another stuffed head over the [...]
Review: Island of the Hungry Ghosts
— by RON WILKINSON — Tiny Christmas Island, Australia, may be the world’s most beautiful and mystical place. At least, the most beautiful place in which you would never want to live. The sea pounds its jagged, rocky shoreline whistling, wheezing and sometimes screaming through blowhole[...]
Review: Zama
— by RON WILKINSON — Don Diego de Zama suffocates within a glass cage in the sweltering miasma of Spanish colonial Paraguay. A minor official of an invasion, he is stationed where occupiers are sent to die. If they do not die they are forgotten. South American born, and slowly being writ[...]
Review: Journey’s End
— by RON WILKINSON — Hardly the first film about The Great War, the pin-point focus of this essay on mental disintegration makes it one of the best. It is a stripped-down production, shot almost entirely in the mud-filled trench sets. Most of the dialogue takes place in the incredibly sq[...]
Review: Big Fish and Begonia
— by RON WILKINSON — Every soul is a fish on a journey through the sea and the setting is water for much if this riveting film. The movie is animated but the story line is so complex and has so many symbolic references that it is most suitable for adults. The magic is in […][...]
Review: Lowlife
— by RON WILKINSON — In his narrative feature debut, writer/director Ryan Prows shows some good stuff, but not enough to make this flick a success. It unabashedly copies the style of “Pulp Fiction” but does it to considerably reduced effect. The movie opens in a great setting in what[...]
Review: 12 Days (aka 12 jours)
— by RON WILKINSON — A dozen residents of a French psychiatric hospital have one thing in common. None of them volunteered to be there. They have been adjudicated to be a danger to themselves or others. Therefore, they will stay in the lock-up until the authorities decide they can leave.[...]