— by RON WILKINSON — Perhaps it is because his past efforts were more Rabelaisian than revelatory, Mads Brugger’s latest will be taken with a grain of salt – even after he rightfully and correctly declares “Everything is Real.” The story that has Mads on the cusp of buying interm[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: Passing
— by BEV QUESTAD — “All of us are just passing for something or other, aren’t we?” Irene muses rhetorically. As the crack in her ceiling spreads out, the howling wind gets stronger and snow begins to fall. The exquisite cinematography enhances this important story about race and id[...]
Review: Out of the Blue
— by WILLIAM STERR — In preparation for viewing director Dennis Hopper’s “Out of the Blue,” I re-watched his seminal picture, “Easy Rider,” which I’d not seen since its theatrical release in 1969. The reason for this was Hopper’s own description of “Out of the Blue” as [...]
Review: Simple as Water
— by BEV QUESTAD — Yasmin stands on the cement walkway at a sea port in Athens with her four children. They are chasing a balloon and each other. She carefully monitors them and then herds them into their tent under the freeway overpass. Here she gets out her cell phone and lets them see[...]
Review: Ascension
— by RON WILKINSON — If you were going to create a successful capitalist nation from scratch, which would come first, smile training or sex dolls? Such appears to be the choice in China as the productivity behemoth groans and stretches through its growing pains as a developed economy. As[...]
Review: The Real Charlie Chaplin
— by BEV QUESTAD — The great irony is that Charlie Chaplin and his films were received enthusiastically and sympathetically before WWII and as communistic and unpatriotic after. Initially wildly popular throughout the world, “The Real Charlie Chaplin” details the man behind his chara[...]
Review: Grandpa Was An Emperor
— by RON WILKINSON — Still revered by many to this day, Emperor Haile Selassie ruled Ethiopia for decades. This film examines the coup that unseated him in 1974 through the eyes of his great granddaughter (Yeshi Kassa), and the reverberations of that coup throughout Selassie’s extended[...]
Review: Summer of Soul
— by RON WILKINSON — The most significant memory in this stirring documentary is how it sat on the shelf for nearly five decades due to lack of public interest. Woodstock, located one hundred miles to the north and bursting out at the same time, became legend while the Harlem Cultural Fe[...]
Review: The Rossellinis
— by BEV QUESTAD — Roberto Rossellini was a famous director in Italy, but in the end, it is the haunting “Casablanca” star Ingrid Bergman, whom he married in 1950, that made his personal life international news and this film, “The Rossellinis,” mandatory viewing. Roberto Rosselli[...]
Review: Pig
— by BEV QUESTAD — Robin Feld (Nicolas Cage) and his delightful hairy pig are living in a rustic cabin in the Mt. Hood forest where bushy ferns and moist dirt hide truffles that grow in the root systems of the tall Douglas fir trees. Oregon truffles can sell for $600 to 5,000 a pound. [&[...]
Review: Gaza Mon Amour
— by BEV QUESTAD — This could be a sweet story of a 60-year-old bachelor who is smitten by a woman around his age. He attempts to court her, but doesn’t really know what to do except wear too much men’s cologne. Endearingly shy, their stilted encounters and attempts to communicate fa[...]
Review: Adventures of a Mathematician
— by BEV QUESTAD — “The Adventures of a Mathematician” is based on the autobiography of a Polish-Jewish scientist, Stanislaw Ulam, who refused to go to that fateful atomic test in the hot July desert south of Los Alamos in 1945. Already arguing with Edward Teller regarding the feasib[...]
Review: The French Dispatch
— by RON WILKINSON — Wes Anderson fans relish the games he plays with reality. The characters steadfastly do their own thing, despite conflicts with others and half the time this results in snarky, lighthearted humor. As in several of Anderson’s earlier movies, Bill Murray (here playin[...]
Review: Exegesis Lovecraft
— by WILLIAM STERR — “Exegesis – the critical explanation or interpretation of a text, especially of scripture.” The creator of this documentary has taken a liberty in applying it to a person, although, for many, the writings of Howard Philips Lovecraft have taken on the attributes[...]