— by WILLIAM STERR — “Hit the Road” is a small movie. It has a small cast, and most of the action takes place inside of a small car. It is also a movie with a big, big heart. This is the story of an Iranian family making a road trip across the mostly barren […][...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: State Funeral
— by WILLIAM STERR — On March 5, 1953, Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, absolute dictator of the Soviet Union, died. For three days, he had lain in a coma as his condition declined following a massive stroke. For 31 years, from 1922 until his death, he ruled Russia and its vassal states wit[...]
Review: The Contractor
— by BEV QUESTAD — James Foster (formidably played by Chris Pine) is standing at attention, expressionless, while a military board announces that he will receive an honorable discharge with no pension or healthcare. Later, we learn the special forces sergeant has been a heroic combatant [...]
Review: Guantanamo Diary Revisited
— by BEV QUESTAD — This review is the second in a three-part examination of films dealing with the Guantanamo prison situation. Released from Guantanamo Bay detention camp in 2015 for lack of evidence and a negative polygraph after 14 years of imprisonment and torture by the US governmen[...]
Review: The Mauritanian
— by BEV QUESTAD — How long do you keep a prisoner without charge or evidence? How strenuously can you interrogate, encourage, and even torture a prisoner to get a confession? At what point will a person say anything? Two months after planes flew into the World Trade Center Towers, the m[...]
Review: Alice
— by BEV QUESTAD — In a small wooden building lit by candlelight in the dark of the night, two slaves are married quietly and secretly. Their lives are really not their own to determine. The new husband, Joseph, will be sent off the next day, like a stud bull, to impregnate a slave from [...]
Review: Fabian: Going to the Dogs
— by WILLIAM STERR — It’s the late 1920s in Berlin, Germany. The Wiemar Republic is beginning to crumble under the multiple onslaughts of a failing economy, social disintegration, and the rising Nazi party. Jakob Fabian (Tom Schilling) is a young man from Dresden who has moved to the c[...]
Review: Man of God
— by BEV QUESTAD — “I am the leader of the whole world. What would you like me to give you?” This true-life story of Nektarios of Aegin grabs attention from the start and soon spreads into your heart and soul like the incoming crash of a Mediterranean wave. A showing of “Man of God[...]
Review: Drive My Car
— by BEV QUESTAD — Up for an Oscar in two categories, best film and best international feature film in a foreign language, “Drive My Car” was also on Barack Obama’s list of Favorite Movies of 2021. On one level it is an intellectual’s film, with references to Anton Chekov and exi[...]
Review: A Banquet
— by WILLIAM STERR — Imagine you are a woman methodically cleaning a chair, scrubbing thoroughly. In the background, someone is coughing – very hard – trying to breathe. You go on scrubbing as the coughing gets more and more desperate. Finally, you rise and try to comfort a man who s[...]
Review: Gasoline Alley
— by WILLIAM STERR — Have you ever watched a movie and thought: “This wouldn’t be half bad if it wasn’t for that one actor”? (And especially when that actor is the draw for the entire movie?) Welcome to “Gasoline Alley” and Bruce Willis. I don’t know whether Willis is t[...]
Review: King Knight
— by WILLIAM STERR — Imagine the Brady Bunch from early 1970s television – but as a coven of witches in LA. The introductory scene to “King Knight” even has the three by three layout of pictures of the “family” with a cat in the center housekeeper position. We are introduced to[...]
Review: Strawberry Mansion
— by WILLIAM STERR — Released by Music Box Films, a distributor of foreign and independent films, this 2021 surreal production from Ley Line Entertainment deals with a future in which dreams can be recorded and played back to our conscious minds. Evidently everyone does this, and it is a[...]