— by RON WILKINSON — There is something about the way that Alice (Emily Beecham) is so heavily made-up that suggests the ethereal. This will be a dreamlike movie, so drop the niggling techie criticisms and get your unconscious in gear. The modern corporation has created a team of super-b[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: Saving Atlantis
— by BEV QUESTAD — Plato mentioned that Atlantis was the unfortunate, great kingdom that fought and lost to mighty Athens. Also losing favor from the gods, Atlantis was so totally destroyed that it was overcome by the sea. While subsequent writers have found evidence that Atlantis was ov[...]
Review: American Muslim
— by BEV QUESTAD — Two rabbis organize a supportive, protective chain outside a Brooklyn mosque where Muslims come to pray each Friday. Touched by their connection to a heritage of suffering, Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum and Rabbi Marisa Elana James, along with congregants from Congregation Be[...]
Review: Joker
A new release from the DC comics movie universe, “Joker” tells the story of Arthur Fleck, a bullied and isolated man who suffers a mental breakdown. Played by Joaquin Phoenix, the actor takes the audience into a moral dilemma, asking them to have compassion for a clearly disenfranchised man who [...]
Review: Scandalous
— by RON WILKINSON — When The National Enquirer founder Generoso Pope Jr. hit upon the journalistic idea of the century he thought he had a good thing. The trick was a two-pronged attack to give readers what they wanted, Olympian size schadenfreude, and put the paper where they could see[...]
Review: Radioflash
— by RON WILKINSON — A flash and the lights go off. There is no power. After a while there is still no power. The power is off everywhere. At least everywhere in the film studio. Luckily, we have this old HAM amateur radio. Let’s connect the car battery to the power plug and see [&hell[...]
Review: Narrowsburg
— by RON WILKINSON — A forgotten town in upstate New York gets a chance at the big time that would be the envy of city fathers across America. Long in the shadow of New York City, with the glitz and glamour of Broadway beaming almost to Poughkeepsie, the Narrowsburg Film Festival of 1999[...]
Review: The Great Green Wall
— by BEV QUESTAD — Inna Modja, a wildly popular Malian-French singer, takes a stunning journey across Africa, from Senegal on the Pacific to Djibouti on the Red Sea. As she travels, she and her band create music and collaborate with other singers and instrumentalists along the way. Her i[...]
Review: The Fourth Kingdom
— by BEV QUESTAD — Most films at DOC NYC are shown once, but “The Fourth Kingdom” is scheduled for two screenings. Why? In the first minutes of this documentary cinema verité, it looks like we are in for a story about garbage in Mexico and the people who take care of it. But as [&he[...]
Review: On the Inside of a Military Dictatorship
— by RON WILKINSON — By the very nature of dictatorships and military regimes, documentaries about them are rare. This riveting film about the leadership, and humanitarian crisis, of Myanmar is a good example of the genre. Director Karen Stokkendal Poulsen works within strictly defined b[...]
Review: Brooklyn Inshallah
— by BEV QUESTAD — A normal guy with a pastor’s collar is walking on a Brooklyn street in New York City. We hear him greet a passer-by, “Wa alaykumu as-salam. My name is Khader El-Yateem, a candidate for City Council.” How El-Yateem got to this sidewalk is actually more fascinating[...]
Review: Cory in Brick City
— by BEV QUESTAD — “We are modern day freedom fighters. We are the people that have to somehow rescue what we claim to stand for,” says Cory Booker in prescient rhetoric back when he was mayor of Newark, New Jersey. Booker was elected mayor of Newark, New Jersey, in 2006 when gang wa[...]
Review: Searching For Mr. Rugoff
— by RON WILKINSON — It is only right that the story of one of the pioneers of indie film theatres should premiere at this year’s DOC NYC. A city that claims more persons reflexively identified as “A piece of work” than anywhere else in the USA is, no doubt, proud to have this subj[...]
Review: Sheep Hero (aka Schapenheld)
— by BEV QUESTAD — Soft, gorgeous, blue fog rests in a thin line on the meadow as the sun rises on a shepherd and his flock. He has slept the night in the field and greets the day praising his situation: “Openness, peace, space, freedom, my own choices, not someone else’s. That’s i[...]