— by RON WILKINSON — Now for something completely different. Oscar-winning director Jonathan Demme (“The Silence of the Lambs”) teams up with Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody (“Juno”) in a film featuring Oscar-winning superstar Meryl Streep as the aging rock band front woma[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: Dark Places
— by RON WILKINSON — Charlize Theron plays Libby Day, a woman approaching middle age with a terrible secret. Twenty five years earlier, her family was murdered in the night. As one of only two survivors of the killings, Libby was able to support the conviction of her devil-worshipping br[...]
Review: Best of Enemies
— by RON WILKINSON — On the surface, Robert Gordon’s and Morgan Neville’s documentary “Best of Enemies” is about a series of nationally televised debates in 1968 between the liberal Gore Vidal and the conservative William F. Buckley Jr. As it turns out, there is a lot mor[...]
Review: Cartel Land
— by RON WILKINSON — With “Cartel Land,” film-maker Matthew Heineman obtains unmatched access to the Mexican drug business and executes a heart rending story of the fight locals are waging against the megalithic force of drug cartels. The film starts out with a riveting look [...]
Review: The Outrageous Sophie Tucker
— by RON WILKINSON — Perhaps 1 percent of today’s film viewing audience has ever heard of Sophie Tucker. That is too bad, because she came from a time when stars were born not out of technical special effects, computerized sound producing and outrageous tabloid headlines, but out of a [...]
Review: Mr. Holmes
— by RON WILKINSON — An aging Sherlock Holmes (Ian McKellen) is still solving cases despite galloping senility gaining on his senses by leaps and bounds. Apparently, even fictional heroes are subject to time and tides, as the magnificent background of the white cliffs of Dover would sugg[...]
Review: Court
— by RON WILKINSON — Writer/director Chaitanya Tamhane’s debut feature film is more allegory than story. The characters in the movie almost hover above the meanings developed from scene to scene. On the surface, “Court” is a film about a performing artist who is arrested fo[...]
Review: Southpaw
— by RON WILKINSON — This boxing tale splashes the latest hi-tech boxing sequences in front of the audience in no holds barred graphic violence, but the film is saved by one key performance. Twelve-year old-Oona Lawrence punches through the ordinary passive child role to put out some wor[...]
Review: The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed …
— by RON WILKINSON — Felix Herngren’s comedy “The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared” has made a big splash in European markets but is going to have tougher going in the USA. Although the film will probably unseat the reigning champion “The Girl W[...]
Review: A Poem is a Naked Person
— by RON WILKINSON — The naked persons are few, but this is a pretty naked film. The first feature length effort by rock-doc veteran director Les Blank, “A Poem is a Naked Person” is as spontaneous and un-produced a rock star flick ever made. Unfortunately, Leon Russell is to[...]
Review: Terminator Genisys
— by RON WILKINSON — Ignore the time travel science-babble and concentrate on the feeling of a nuclear holocaust that seethes into your theatre and plants flying buses in your lap. 3-D IMAX is the only way to see the latest in the Terminator franchise, a sci-fi cauldron with a, yes, char[...]
Review: Jurassic World
— by RON WILKINSON — Director Colin Trevorrow lands on the audience with both feet and eight claws in this thermo-nuclear explosion of dinosaur interactions that go horribly wrong. This is exactly what one would expect, given that mankind seems intent on finagling chromosomes until Hammo[...]
Review: The Yes Men Are Revolting
— by RON WILKINSON — When Yes Men Andy Bichlbaum and Mike Bonanno launched their “Survivaballs” into New York’s East River to protest the lack of an effective United Nations climate change policy, they were not surprised when legal action ensued (“Yes, just stay to the le[...]