— by RON WILKINSON — Hip Hop has gotten a bad rap (no pun intended). Initially invented as an angry reaction to the police brutality and institutionalized poverty and imprisonment of New York’s Bronx in the 1970s, it has emerged as a viable audio art form that actually appeals to some [...]
Author Archive
Review: La Camioneta
— by RON WILKINSON — Every year in American hundreds, if not thousands, of American school buses are sold at bargain basement prices. These buses have reached some magical point in American juris-prudence where they are no longer considered safe for American children. Or, perhaps, they[...]
Review: Wasteland
— by RON WILKINSON — Primed and pumped up for that next cruel and gritty, dark and dirty, “The world is no damned good” noir mystery thriller, you are a bit taken aback when the lead character, Harvey Miller (Luke Treadaway), shows up on the screen. There are two problems. The first [...]
Review: Blood
— by RON WILKINSON — Director Nick Murphy claims he chose the Hilbre Islands off England’s West coast as the shooting location for this film because, growing up there, he thought it would be a good place to hide a body. That may or may not be the case, but it turns out to be […][...]
Review: Charge
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 2013 Cinedigm Docurama series, “Charge” is the story of one of sport’s longest and most treasured institutions rediscovering itself. The International Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) Race is the most treasured and dangerous competition in a spor[...]
Review: Every Blessed Day
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at New York’s Lincoln Center’s Open Roads: New Italian Cinema, “Every Blessed Day” is a madcap comedy, and serious exploration, of values and emotions. Hidden away in the intimate corners of Italy, young couple Antonia and Guido are madly in love. De[...]
Review: Romanzo di una strage
— by RON WILKINSON — It is 1969 and conspiracies are everywhere. In America students in every college across the land are protesting the Viet Nam war, racial injustice and political corruption of all kinds. The cold war is heating up to fever pitch as the USA and the USSR rattle sabers a[...]
Review: The First Man
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the “Open Roads: New Italian Cinema” program at New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center, this is not a film for the faint of heart. Those who have some knowledge of Albert Camus’ last, unfinished novel know this story bears the fateful ending of[...]
Review: The Time Being
— by RON WILKINSON — In one of the most atmospheric films to come out of California in some time, debut director Nenad Cicin-Sain helms a screenplay by himself and Richard N. Gladstein in the film “The Time Being.” A film ostensibly about painters and painting, the story is more abou[...]
Review: Iceberg Slim: Portrait of a Pimp
— by RON WILKINSON — Robert Lee Maupin was born in Chicago in 1918 and grew up in the bowels of some of the worst ghettos in America. Several decades later, he was drinking at a bar when a man pulled a gun in anger and fired a shot. The shot was aimed at the […][...]
Review: Computer Chess
— by RON WILKINSON — Did underground indie writer/director star Andrew Bujalski set out to make a tedious and irritating film on purpose, or did it just turn out that way? A flick with moments of genius, most of this movie plays like Andy Warhol’s spectacular “Sleep,” which consist[...]
Review: A Band Called Death
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 39th Seattle International Film Festival, “A Band Called Death” could just as well be called “A Band Coming Back to Life.” Directed by Mark Christopher Covino and Jeff Howlett and featuring none other than Alice Cooper himself, this is a Horat[...]
Review: Our Nixon
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 39th Seattle International Film Festival, this amazing film ranks as one of the greatest assemblies of home movies ever made. As the story goes, presidential insiders H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, John Erlichman, and/or Dwight Chapin were Super 8 v[...]
Review: Comrade Kim Goes Flying
— by RON WILKINSON — Cornering the Most-Over-The-Top-Film-Award at the 2012 Seattle International Film Festival is this incredible North Korean Horatio Alger story of a coal miner’s daughter (I am not making this up) whose desire to become a trapeze artist takes her to the big city a w[...]