— by BEV QUESTAD — Last Monday, I spent five hours preparing, serving, and cleaning up dinner for 15 homeless at my church in Vancouver, Washington. We alternate providing dinners, breakfasts, and overnight housing with another church. By 7:30 p.m., the guests nestled in on fold-out matt[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: 20 Days in Mariupol
— by BEV QUESTAD — The city is still and quiet. Not a tree leaf moves, as if trying not to call attention to itself. At the border, a two-pronged attack, though denied, is methodically being organized. One will come from the north into Kyiv and the other, here, 35 miles from Russia in th[...]
Review: Rustin
— by BEV QUESTAD — Diversity, inspiration, compassion, and transformation are the guiding principles of Higher Ground (HG), the Obamas’ production company. Michelle Obama says, “I always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire us, to make us think differently about the w[...]
Review: Yellow
— by BEV QUESTAD — In a sea of blue burqas, only a cat runs free, scampering freely from rooftop to rooftop high above the fettered women below. This 12-minute exceptional documentary short was nominated for a British Academy Film Award (BAFTA) for best short doc. It begins by showing th[...]
Review: American Dreamer
— by WILLIAM STERR — Dr. Phil Loder (Peter Dinklage – “Game of Thrones”) is a professor of Economics at Brockton University in Massachusetts. He’s an adjunct professor. That means he has no tenure, no protections against claims of improper behavior, a very low salary, and no [...]
Review: Beyond Utopia
— by BEV QUESTAD — Fording rivers, climbing mountains, circling in a jungle, and hiking in the dark to evade capture, this long circuitous odyssey from North Korea through China to South Korea is what lucky North Koreans can expect to endure. For the unlucky it is betrayal by the broker,[...]
Review: Veselka
— by WILLIAM STERR — “Jason Birchard has a hunger to feed people …” So intones narrator David Duchovny (“The X Files”), who himself has some Ukrainian ancestry, at the beginning of this documentary about a unique Ukrainian restaurant in New York City. The restaurant began a[...]
Review: Four Daughters
— by BEV QUESTAD — It was 2015 when Barack Obama approved the bombing of an Islamic terrorist center in Libya. Here, Noureddine Chouchane, a militant commander connected to two deadly attacks in neighboring Tunisia, was killed. Surviving were his wife and his wife’s sister. “Four Dau[...]
Review: The Peasants
— by WILLIAM STERR — Epic. That is the term the Nobel committee used in awarding Wladyslaw Stanislaw Reymont the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1924 for his novel, “The Peasants.” In 2023, the film version of “The Peasants” was released at various film festivals. It will be releas[...]
Review: Cold Meat
— by WILLIAM STERR — The story of the Wendigo is an enduring one that has been the basis of numerous films over the years. It appeared as a motivating character in Steven King’s 1983 novel “Pet Cemetery,” as the title character in numerous films, as the possessing spirit in Guiller[...]
Review: Nimona
— by BEV QUESTAD — Who’s bad, who’s good, and what’s the truth? These are life’s questions. But, as this film says, “If you want a happily ever after you are going to have to wait, because the monsters are always out there.” Isn’t that the truth? “Nimona” is an animatio[...]
Review: Vishniac
— by WILLIAM STERR — Imagine the breadth of a life that began before the end of the 19th century and lasted almost until the 21st. Further, imagine that life beginning in Czarist Russia, passing through Wiemar and then Nazi Germany, and ending in 1990 New York City. That was the life of [...]
Review: The Painter
— by WILLIAM STERR — Peter Barrett (Charlie Weber – “Panama”) was a CIA operative. He specialized in extra-legal killing of large numbers of other killers in order to carry out his missions. On one of these, he discovered that his wife, Elena (Rryla McIntosh – “Under Wr[...]