— by RON WILKINSON — Director Jonathan Gurfinkel follows 15-year-old Gili (Sivan levy) through a few days of her life as she begins attending a new school. The new school is a new life for Gili, with new surroundings, a new neighborhood, a new social circle and new social demands. The fi[...]
Author Archive
Review: Crave
— by RON WILKINSON — Director Charles de Lauzirika’s atmospheric thriller aims to get at what makes us tick; those countless, terrifying moments that we live with all of our life. These are the moments when we should have done something, but did not. These are the lost opportunities th[...]
Review: The Wind Rises (aka Kaze Tachinu)
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 2013 New York Film Festival, Hayao’s first feature length directorial release since “Ponyo” in 2008 starts off as a striking peon to animated steam punk fantasy but ends up as an interminable repeating link of soap opera slush. The opening scene[...]
Review: Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?
— by RON WILKINSON — Yes, it may be impossible to consider the consequences of describing a river that becomes a highway, or of attributing possession of a ship that has been completely reconstructed or of converting the title of this film from a question to statement by moving the first[...]
Review: Narco Cultura
— by RON WILKINSON — This raucous cinema verite’ features rock star Edgar Quintero and Mexican drug cop Riccardo “Richi” Soto, two men caught up in a crime war that has taken on a life of its own. Quintero is the lead singer of wildly rich and popular rock group BuKnas de C[...]
Review: Cut to Black
— by RON WILKINSON — Bill Ivers has had some tough times. But his tough times have only just begun and we are going to be part of the toughest time of his life. A former NYPD detective, Ivers was disgraced as part of the routine of crime in the big city. Out of the […][...]
Review: The Great Beauty (La grande bellezza)
— by RON WILKINSON — Paolo Sorrentino’s updated “La Dolce Vita” has neither story nor direction by the great Fellini, nor the gravitas and bodies of Mastroianni or Ekberg. But it has everything else. The people are twice as beautiful, the costumes are twice as unabashedly rich, the[...]
Review: Dallas Buyers Club
— by RON WILKINSON — It is 1985 and the sexual expectations of freedom loving Americans are about to be turned one hundred and eighty degrees. The HIV virus hits gay males the hardest, intravenous drug users the second hardest and rodeo cowboys. Rodeo cowboys contract HIV? Yep, some of t[...]
Review: The Motel Life
— by RON WILKINSON — Alan and Gabe Polsky’s debut film is a look at the bad side of being the “Y” generation. Set in what appears to be the dead of winter, in the worst winter on record in the Reno/Elko high desert of northern Nevada, two brothers try to find their way out [&hellip[...]
Review: Aftermath (aka Pokłosie)
— by RON WILKINSON — Like still waters that run deep, “Aftermath” is an atmospheric triumph that will be too slow for most American audiences. Not that this is not a great film. It is a great film, but it is too studied and framed and there is not enough plot progression to keep the [...]
Review: Last Love
— by RON WILKINSON — Directing her fourth big screen movie, emerging world-class filmmaker Sandra Nettelbeck directed this family grief drama. She also wrote the screenplay after Francoise Dorner’s French novel “La Douceur Assassine” (“A Moment of Sweetness”) publis[...]
Review: These Birds Walk
— by RON WILKINSON — The film opens with a very old man washing small boys in a metal tub. As he washes the boys, who seem in a state of shell shock, he comments on their bodies. The old man is not talking to the boys. They are two to five years old, malnourished […][...]
Review: The Missing Picture
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 2013 New York Film Festival, Rithy Panh’s documentary is a scathing and heart rending tale of the Khmer Rouge campaign of terror. Using childlike clay figures, the film maker is able to put the audience into the place of a child who is incapable of [...]
Review: Sweet Dreams
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened November 2012 at the third annual DOC NYC documentary film festival, “Sweet Dreams” is the story of Kiki Katese, one of the few people in crisis-torn Africa who walks her talk. Rather, perhaps it should be said that she drums her talk. She did so by foun[...]