— by WILLIAM STERR — “Project Z” is one roller coaster of a ride! It starts out as a couple driving an RV through the countryside. They are talking back and forth about relationship issues when the RV hits something. They pull to a stop and then … suddenly people start appe[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: Home is a Hotel
— by BEV QUESTAD — Back in the ’70s, US Bank was considering buying up property in the old part of Portland, Oregon, where the “bums” hung out in dilapidated, tiny one room old hotels with a shared bathroom down the hall. My housemate was the US Bank project coordinator[...]
Review: Glorious
— by WILLIAM STERR — Have you ever stopped along the highway at a rest-stop bathroom? If so, you know what a disgusting, even harrowing, experience it can be. Following some sort of breakup with his girlfriend, Brenda (Sylvia Grace Crim – “The Hunt”), Wes (Ryan Kwanten – [...]
Review: Americanish
— by BEV QUESTAD — “Take off your scarf and wax your mustache!” orders Maryam’s anxious mom, Khala. She knows the importance of Americanization. After she immigrated to the US years ago with her Pakistani husband and two daughters, he promptly left her to search for an American wom[...]
Review: Superpower
— by BEV QUESTAD — Individualist and political activist Sean Penn, possibly cringing at so public a media display, stepped onto talk show sets to promote his new movie, “Superpower.” Sean Hannity tried to engage him in political sparring, but he quietly just said, “I don’t agree [...]
Review: Miranda’s Victim
— by WILLIAM STERR — Patricia Weir is a shy, sexually inexperienced high school girl in Phoenix in 1963. She has a hectoring mother who is always after her to be prim and proper, and to be mindful of what the rest of society thinks of her. One late Saturday night, Patricia is on a [&hell[...]
Review: And Then Come the Nightjars
— by WILLIAM STERR — Nightjars are medium-sized birds that are active at dusk and in the night, closely related to whip-or-wills. Like those birds, they are superstitiously viewed as harbingers of disaster or death. Devonshire, England. 2001. One of the worst outbreaks of foot and mouth [...]
Review: Wild Beauty: Mustang Spirit of the West
— by BEV QUESTAD — Smokey mist over early morning vistas, vibrant red sunsets, and grand rusty red mountains in the distance set the idyllic scenes for wild horses nuzzling noses in their family units and galloping freely in sync over the plains. The song, “A Horse with No Name” play[...]
Review: It’s Basic
— by BEV QUESTAD — Imagine Lucille, a single parent with nine dependents as a school bus driver. In St. Paul, Minnesota, she earns $32,394 a year. She gets up at 4 am. Daycares don’t start until 6 a.m., so she wakes her two toddlers up and lugs them with her on her route. They [&he[...]
Review: A Haunting in Venice
— by WILLIAM STERR — “It was a dark and stormy night …” Well, it didn’t start out that way. In this, Kenneth Branagh’s third outing into the world of Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot following “Murder on the Orient Express” and “Death on the Nile” – we meet a ve[...]
Review: Tiger Within
— by BEV QUESTAD — Forever made famous as bushy browed, disgruntled Lou Grant on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show,” beloved actor Ed Asner went on to many other roles in features, documentaries, voice-overs and political issues. Despite his death in 2021, his last starring feature was rele[...]
Review: Haunting of the Queen Mary
— by WILLIAM STERR — Ah, the long gone glory of transoceanic travel! Promenading on the deck while enjoying the bracing North Atlantic air. Then dressing for dinner, served in the sumptuous surrounding of the first class dining room. High on one wall, a mural of the ocean, with Europe on[...]
Review: American: An Odyssey To 1947
— by WILLIAM STERR — What’s it like to be a child prodigy? Few of us know, and that’s probably a good thing. “American: An Odyssey To 1947,” the latest documentary from Danny Wu (“Square One: Michael Jackson”), begins with a detailed biography of Orson Welles, the “enfant t[...]