— by BEV QUESTAD — Norway’s entry for consideration for a 2014 Oscar didn’t make the final cut, and when you see it, you’ll know why. A pretty single mother, Mina is starved for love and affection but has no idea how to get it. Soon enough, a man begins a flirtation on the street [[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: The Galapagos Affair
— by BEV QUESTAD — Ever get so disgusted with the government that you would like to branch out, so to speak, to your own uninhabited island? This is the way it was in 1929 for two Germans, Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch. They were totally disillusioned with society, calling it “a hu[...]
Review: The Wind Rises
— by BEV QUESTAD — The 86th Oscar nominations have bravely, and rightly, fingered “The Wind Rises” as one of five works for Best Animated Film. At home in Japan, the film opened with overwhelming success and abrupt, surprising controversy. The same will happen here if it wins for bes[...]
Review: Labor Day
— by JESSIKA OWENS — When I heard the name of a new movie, “Labor Day,” I immediately envisioned a tame comedy chick flick. Then the trailer was released and I became confused. That initial trailer was short and filled with dramatic crescendos. An image of Josh Brolin with hi[...]
Review: Call Me Kuchu
— by BEV QUESTAD — Religion, culture and politics menacingly collide in this documentary over the life of a proposed political bill in Uganda and the life of David Kato. In what turns out to be a more dangerous culture of vigilantes and extremists than they had bargained for, filmmakers [...]
Review: American Hustle
— by RON WILKINSON — “The Fighter” mega-stars Christian Bale and Amy Adams reunite with director David O. Russell in a pot-boiling romp through political and law enforcement corruption in the morally adrift 1980s. Bale plays con man Irving Rosenfeld who, after founding a string of[...]
Review: Nuclear Nation
— by RON WILKINSON — After a sequence of electrical and mechanical failures stemming from the March 11, 2011, earthquake and subsequent tsunami that smashed into the Fukushima prefecture on Japan’s East coast, the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant reactor containment vessels explod[...]
Review: Inside Llewyn Davis
— by RON WILKINSON — Strange and whacky, yes, but the Coen Brother’s latest movie falls short of the mark set by their previous pieces, especially the similar “O Brother Where Art Thou.” Attempting to create the strange, offbeat and wonderful aura of the mythological search of “O[...]
Review: S#x Acts (aka Shesh peamim)
— by RON WILKINSON — Director Jonathan Gurfinkel follows 15-year-old Gili (Sivan levy) through a few days of her life as she begins attending a new school. The new school is a new life for Gili, with new surroundings, a new neighborhood, a new social circle and new social demands. The fi[...]
Review: Saving Mr. Banks
— by BEV QUESTAD — We get caught up in our own difficult stories, in patterns of expectation that recycle old troubles, but the trick is to change our mindset. Walt Disney will reveal his difficult childhood story that ironically fueled his happy-ending films and magical kingdoms. He als[...]
Review: Crave
— by RON WILKINSON — Director Charles de Lauzirika’s atmospheric thriller aims to get at what makes us tick; those countless, terrifying moments that we live with all of our life. These are the moments when we should have done something, but did not. These are the lost opportunities th[...]
Review: The Wind Rises (aka Kaze Tachinu)
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 2013 New York Film Festival, Hayao’s first feature length directorial release since “Ponyo” in 2008 starts off as a striking peon to animated steam punk fantasy but ends up as an interminable repeating link of soap opera slush. The opening scene[...]
Review: Is the Man Who is Tall Happy?
— by RON WILKINSON — Yes, it may be impossible to consider the consequences of describing a river that becomes a highway, or of attributing possession of a ship that has been completely reconstructed or of converting the title of this film from a question to statement by moving the first[...]
Review: Narco Cultura
— by RON WILKINSON — This raucous cinema verite’ features rock star Edgar Quintero and Mexican drug cop Riccardo “Richi” Soto, two men caught up in a crime war that has taken on a life of its own. Quintero is the lead singer of wildly rich and popular rock group BuKnas de C[...]