— by BEV QUESTAD — Filming this documentary was as dangerous as being a subject in what was being filmed. Bullets had to be dodged and raw footage had to be periodically smuggled back to the US. Just to be named in the credits earns exile if not prison and brutal retaliation. This is the[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: The Jump
— by RON WILKINSON — It is hard to make a genuinely entertaining documentary because genuinely entertaining people are hard to find. Simas Kudirka is genuinely entertaining. When his factory processor fishing boat pulled up next to a US Coast Guard boat off New Bedford, Massachusetts he [...]
Review: Duty Free
— by BEV QUESTAD — It’s Boston and Rebecca is the head housekeeper for an inn facing hard times. Her one-bedroom apartment, where she has raised two boys, is above the inn and part of an employment package arranged around 50 years ago. At 75 years of age, she has spunk, energy and driv[...]
Review: Dave Not Coming Back
— by RON WILKINSON — Scuba diving is not for everyone. The claustrophobia alone is insurmountable for some and the demands on equipment expertise and body chemistry add to that. The subsection of scuba diving known as cave diving presents multiples of danger above that. One can surface i[...]
Review: Bruce Springsteen’s Letter to You
— by RON WILKINSON — The Boss is back. Almost 60 years after heading up his high school band, the Castiles, on the Jersey Shore, what stands before you is a rock survivor. As the camera pokes its head into the recording studio to film Bruce and the E-Street Band recording their new album[...]
Review: Nocturne
— by RON WILKINSON — How far would you go to be the best piano player in the world? In the case of Juliet, it turns out she will go quite a ways, including having sex with a surrogate devil and suffering black eyes out of nowhere. And that is before the spontaneous bleeding from [&hellip[...]
Review: Wine and War
— by BEV QUESTAD — I drank my first Lebanese wine, a 1968 Ksara red, in 1970 during the early days of the Lebanese Civil War. I still have the wine labels, pressed and mounted. It was a smooth, hardy wine that was cheaper than beer – maybe $1.50 a bottle. Now, there is a […][...]
Review: The Lie
— by RON WILKINSON — How far would you go to protect your family? Probably not far if your daughter was a jerk like Kayla. But that is not the point. Suspend disbelief for an hour or two and enter the world of Jay and Becca, Kayla’s estranged parents about to be brought back together [[...]
Review: Evil Eye
— by RON WILKINSON — An attack out of nowhere leaves a young woman barely alive. Her attacker is dead, at least dead as far as we know. Thirty years later, she tells her daughter, “He is dead, but not gone.” The stage is set for intercontinental mother-daughter bonding-bondage in New[...]
Review: Black Box
— by RON WILKINSON — There was a car accident. A very bad accident that killed a man’s wife, the mother of his child, the love of his life. The accident damaged his brain and caused memory loss. At least partial memory loss. The memories are coming back. Memories of things that do [...]
Review: Don’t Read This on a Plane
— by RON WILKINSON — A young, aspiring writer gets her first big break when her novel is published. Walking out the door for her exciting round of readings to promote the book, she gets the perfect phone call from her perfect publisher. He and the company are perfectly bankrupt and she i[...]
Review: Kingdom of Silence
— by BEV QUESTAD — The film begins with a view from an open window, a white curtain gently fluttering in the breeze, and a view of tightly connected rooftops. But all is not as gentle nor innocent as it seems. Welcome to the Middle East, and, most especially, Saudi Arabia and the story o[...]
Review: Pearl
— by BEV QUESTAD — At the outset, we hear self-assured, talented, silky-haired Pearl announce at a private high school admissions interview, “I want to control my destiny.” Just hours later, blood sprays out on a window in her living room and she is screaming. Concurrently, across to[...]