— by RON WILKINSON — Directed, written and produced by Stanley Nelson, this riveting documentary takes the viewer inside the closed doors of the Panthers as well as the FBI and local law enforcement agencies. This is important because the message of the film is as much about the misuse o[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: A Walk in the Woods
— by RON WILKINSON — “A Walk in the Woods,” Ken Kwapis’ peon to growing old gracefully, features Robert Redford and Nick Nolte as the unlikeliest pair ever to walk the Appalachian Trail. Based on the book by travel raconteur Bill Bryson (with a screenplay by Rick Kerb and B[...]
Review: Learning to Drive
— by RON WILKINSON — “Learning to Drive,” director Isabel Coixet’s meet-cute vehicle for Ben Kingsley and Patricia Clarkson, turns out to be a compact instead of a full-sized car. The screenplay by Sarah Kernochan and Katha Pollitt walks rather than runs through the whi[...]
Review: Goodnight Mommy
— by RON WILKINSON — Co-writers/directors Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala put together a traditional but high quality horror flick in “Goodnight Mommy,” a tale of lethal mother-son conflict. A mostly silent soundtrack lets the great acting and screenplay tell the story. This[...]
Review: The Visit
— by RON WILKINSON — M. Night Shyamalan unleashes another one on a gleeful public with this psycho-horror movie about a suitably dysfunctional family. In “The Visit,” Becca and Tyler (Olivia DeJonge and Ed Oxenbould) traipse off into rural Pennsylvania to visit Nana and Pop P[...]
Review: The Fool (aka Durak)
— by RON WILKINSON — A multiple prize-winner at the 2014 Locarno Film Festival, Yury Bykov’s movie is a profound tragedy. Opening with a no-holds-barred look inside a dilapidated Russian state-owned apartment building that houses the poor, the desperate and the despaired in bestial con[...]
Review: Queen of Earth
— by RON WILKINSON — Writer/director Alex Ross Perry’s urban pot-boiler “Queen of Earth” falls well short of expectations. A high bar was set by avid Elisabeth Moss fans who came to adore her as she stole the show in the blockbuster “Mad Men” TV series. Toward the end o[...]
Review: Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery
— by RON WILKINSON — Arne Birkenstock’s fascinating documentary “Beltracchi: The Art of Forgery” is a skillful and entertaining examination the latest, and what may be the greatest, con game of all time. Starting in the 1970’s, Wolfgang Beltracchi painted works of art fal[...]
Review: Meru
— by RON WILKINSON — “Meru” may be one of the best mountain climbing movies ever made. The insights provided through personal interviews with climbers Conrad Anker, Jimmy Chin and Renan Ozturk, and the narrative by Jon Krakauer, make this film a tightly-woven tale competing with the [...]
Review: Phoenix
— by RON WILKINSON — Director Christian Petzold re-unites with leads Nina Hoss and Ronald Zehrfeld in the multiple award-winning mystery neo-noir “Phoenix.” Petzold and Hoss enjoyed multiple awards for their previous efforts in “Wolfsburg,” “Toter Mann,” “Yella” a[...]
Review: The Overnight
— by RON WILKINSON — Patrick Brice is not going to sugar coat it. We are messed up and we better figure why and learn to get on with our lives before it is too late. This is a heavy message for a film maker to project in his second feature film. But he really […][...]
Review: Irrational Man
— by RON WILKINSON — This year’s Woody Allen film is a murder mystery. Actually, it is not much of a mystery since we know all about the murder. The only mystery left is to see if the killer gets away with it or not. Sort of a “Columbo” episode without Peter Falk. The first [&helli[...]
Review: Ricki and the Flash
— 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[...]
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[...]