— by BEV QUESTAD — After seeing this film I immediately contacted a life-long friend in the art biz. You’ve got to do a show on prison art! Include work not just by those incarcerated, but also by ex-cons who are desperately trying to survive on the outside. Because they usually don’[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
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: Bandit
— by BEV QUESTAD — It’s around 1985. Robert Whiteman (played with extraordinary brilliance by Josh Duhamel) walks into a bank and asks the teller for all her cash. She shoves several bundles over, but then Whiteman wonders, where is he going to put it all? He asks her if she has a bag.[...]
Review: Tiger 24
— by BEV QUESTAD — This is the true story of a murder trial in India. There is indisputable identity, grief on all sides and visceral gore. The perpetrator is Ustad, a male referred to as T24. He has a beautiful partner and two gorgeous children. His fourth victim was Rampal, a forest gu[...]
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: Carmen
— by BEV QUESTAD — I had the opportunity to sit at dinner with holy men, priests dressed in long black cossacks, just outside Beirut in 2019. An exquisite Lebanese chicken dinner had been prepared by our hostess, lovely Pauline, but the conversation began to lag. So I proffered advice th[...]
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: Explorer
— by BEV QUESTAD — Ranulph Fiennes, who goes by Ran, is in the Guinness Book of Records Hall of Fame as the greatest living explorer. At the age of 65, he is the oldest to summit Mount Everest and the only person to circumnavigate the globe, crossing both poles within three years. Asked [...]
Review: The Legend of Molly Johnson
— by BEV QUESTAD — Leah Purcell provides a gut punch that is hard to forget. Though her story takes place in Australia’s outback in 1893, what happens to her protagonist – strong, self-sufficient Molly Johnson – has been repeated throughout geography and time. How much of this stor[...]
Review: Here Be Dragons
— by BEV QUESTAD — Hiding in tall grass, a young man and woman have found a place to be innocently together. Unfortunately, it is Serbia in the early 1990s and the two are on somewhat opposing sides. David Locke is a British soldier, technically neutral, on a UN team tasked with mitigati[...]