— by RON WILKINSON — Six young hikers head off into one of the most impenetrable wilderness areas in the USA with bookbags and floppy cotton clothing. Although properly dressed for a game of beach volleyball the viewer just knows something is going to go wrong. Giddy with prospects of br[...]
Author Archive
Review: The White Tiger
— by RON WILKINSON — Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav) describes India as having hundreds of castes and thousands of gods. He is ambivalent toward the gods and has no choice as to his caste. Simplifying the bewildering complexities of Indian culture he boils it down to two castes – those w[...]
Review: M.C. Escher: Journey to Infinity
— by RON WILKINSON — To those of us who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, he was an icon. To him, we were an enigma. “Out of control hippies,” as his diaries read. MC Escher simply could not fathom what we saw in his work. We saw infinity, the joining of earth and […][...]
Review: Night of the Kings
— by RON WILKINSON — In a prison run by the inmates a newcomer seems destined to hold a special place in the hierarchy. However, there is a catch. Under the red moon he must tell stories until dawn or be hung by a most uninviting meat hook suspended above a concrete staircase. Scheheraza[...]
Review: The Night
— by RON WILKINSON — And what a night it was. The Hotel Normandie is said to have seen more death than the WWII beach of the same name. Unlike the Eagles Hotel California one is able to leave any time by the simple act of telling the truth. Death is not a possibility, as […][...]
Review: Atlantis
— by RON WILKINSON — No, not that Atlantis. This is the Atlantis of the recent future. It is 2025, a year after a devastating war that bombed a nation back to the 19th century. War and capitalist greed have left water poisoned with chemicals, statesmanship poisoned with propaganda and hu[...]
Review: Acasa, My Home
— by RON WILKINSON — Every few months, weeks or days, many working Americans dream of life in the wild. The simplicity of nature offers the ultimate freedom, work we like when we like it, without modern backstabbing urban politics. Then we sober up. There were people here who lived like [...]
Review: Wander
— by RON WILKINSON — Opening with a nicely done highway accident in a colorless prairie, the setting could be Roswell New Mexico. The scenery is so plain and the tarmac so barren there must be something bad just outside of camera range. The shots shift to a huge red sign marking the entr[...]
Review: Neither Confirm Nor Deny
— by RON WILKINSON — The early 1970s were not boring. Continuing the momentum of the riotous 1960s, a five year period saw President Nixon’s resignation, the end of US involvement in Viet Nam and the Hughes Glomar Explorer. OK, the Glomar Explorer may not be at the top of everyone’s [...]
Review: Jacinta
— by RON WILKINSON — Most parents would go to extremes to protect their child. They would sacrifice their life, their wealth, their honor, perhaps even their wife or husband. As it turns out, these sacrifices only scratch the surface. Consider the sacrifice of leaving one’s child. Aban[...]
Review: The Jump
— by RON WILKINSON — It is hard to make a genuinely entertaining documentary because genuinely entertaining people are hard to find. Simas Kudirka is genuinely entertaining. When his factory processor fishing boat pulled up next to a US Coast Guard boat off New Bedford, Massachusetts he [...]
Review: Dave Not Coming Back
— by RON WILKINSON — Scuba diving is not for everyone. The claustrophobia alone is insurmountable for some and the demands on equipment expertise and body chemistry add to that. The subsection of scuba diving known as cave diving presents multiples of danger above that. One can surface i[...]
Review: Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You
— by RON WILKINSON — The Boss is back. Almost 60 years after heading up his high school band, the Castiles, on the Jersey Shore, what stands before you is a rock survivor. As the camera pokes its head into the recording studio to film Bruce and the E-Street Band recording their new album[...]