— by WILLIAM STERR — Voiceover by narrator Bill Nighy (“Page Eight”): “In 1973, a then-unknown 19-year-old musician produced an album that would change the face of music … forever. That musician was Mike Oldfield; the album, “Tubular Bells.” So begins this documentary on the [...]
Author Archive
Review: Blonde
— by WILLIAM STERR — In 2000, Joyce Carol Oates published her biographical novel “Blonde,” which was a dramatic imagining of the career of Marilyn Monroe. Oates has referred to her subject as “my Moby Dick, the powerful galvanizing image about which an epic might be constructed, wi[...]
Review: The Accursed
— by WILLIAM STERR — It is a dark and stormy night. A girl scratches a cross into the trunk of a massive old tree, its branches festooned with Spanish moss. A young woman joins her and together they walk toward an isolated cabin, firelight flickering in its window. “Don’t come inside[...]
Review: Hatching
— by WILLIAM STERR — Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is so lucky. She is a member of a perfect Finnish family. That’s what her vlogger mother claims. She lives in a perfectly decorated house with a beautiful mother, doting father and sweet younger brother. At least that’s what the family vlo[...]
Review: This Land
— by WILLIAM STERR — “This Land” is not so much a film as it is an ode to the people who make up the American electorate. Director Matthew Palmer (“Breakdown”) assembled a team of more than 50 filmmakers to shoot footage of selected people across the country on Nov. 3, 2020. That[...]
Review: Speak No Evil
— by WILLIAM STERR — Bjorn, Louise, and their little girl, Agnes, are on vacation in Italy, enjoying the sites and the company of other vacationers. Among those they meet are a Dutch couple — Patrick, Karin, and their little partially mute son, Abel. Abel and Agnes are of similar a[...]
Review: Four Winters
— by WILLIAM STERR — On Sept. 1, 1939, Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II. The Nazis had been oppressing various peoples, especially Jews, within Germany since 1933. Now, as they drove through Poland and into other nations, the mass roundup and subsequ[...]
Review: My Imaginary Country
— by WILLIAM STERR — On September 11 (sound familiar?), 1973, the democratically elected government of Chile fell to the forces of the Chilean military, headed by General Augusto Pinochet. The violent coup, fomented by the United States Central Intelligence Agency, also resulted in the s[...]
Review: We Are Gathered Here Today
— by WILLIAM STERR — Henry Stone is a tough man. Everyone says he is as strong as a bull. But two days ago he was admitted to St. Maria’s Hospital with severe COVID-19. Today he is dying, and his family is gathering via Google Meet to say their farewells. The above few sentences are [&[...]
Review: Thirteen Lives
— by WILLIAM STERR — In 2018, a Thailand youth soccer team and their coach were trapped in a flooding cave. Thirteen lives, perhaps lost forever. In 2021, a documentary of the event was released by National Geographic Films. It featured actual footage and the participation of the real pe[...]
Review: I Dream of a Psychopomp
— by WILLIAM STERR — “I Dream of a Psychopomp” is a TERRIBLE title for a movie. First of all, what is a “psychopomp”? According to the Oxford Languages: psy·cho·pomp noun 1. (in Greek mythology) a guide of souls to the place of the dead.[...]
Review: RRR
— by WILLIAM STERR — “Rise. Roar. Revolt.” That is the meaning of the three Rs that constitute the title of this 2022 Tollywood extravaganza. And they certainly do describe it. Based on an imagined meeting between two real-life Indian revolutionaries who fought the British Raj but ne[...]
Review: Ithaka: A Fight to Free Julian Assange
— by WILLIAM STERR — The island of Ithaka symbolizes home: the end of the journey, the goal of the mythic trek. As such, it is taken from Homer’s “Odyssey.” The film “Ithaka: A Fight to Free Julian Assange” begins with the words of Nils Melzer, UN Rapporteur on Torture: “Tort[...]
Review: Endangered
— by WILLIAM STERR — Allison Meyers (Lizzie Zerebko – “For the People”) is a frustrated woman. She is an architect who is without a job, and whose job search has so far resulted in nothing. She is also a person who, in voice-over, methodically describes her philosophy of develo[...]