— by RON WILKINSON — The film opens with a very old man washing small boys in a metal tub. As he washes the boys, who seem in a state of shell shock, he comments on their bodies. The old man is not talking to the boys. They are two to five years old, malnourished […][...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: Alias Ruby Blade
— by BEV QUESTAD — Abigail Disney, niece of Walt, searches for true-life Peter Pan/Cinderella stories and supports their production into the best human rights films on the face of the Earth. “Ruby Blade” is one of the best. It has all the courage, perseverance and magic that makes a [...]
Review: The Missing Picture
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 2013 New York Film Festival, Rithy Panh’s documentary is a scathing and heart rending tale of the Khmer Rouge campaign of terror. Using childlike clay figures, the film maker is able to put the audience into the place of a child who is incapable of [...]
Review: Sweet Dreams
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened November 2012 at the third annual DOC NYC documentary film festival, “Sweet Dreams” is the story of Kiki Katese, one of the few people in crisis-torn Africa who walks her talk. Rather, perhaps it should be said that she drums her talk. She did so by foun[...]
Review: The Square (aka Al Midan)
— by RON WILKINSON — This documentary is a firsthand account of the Egyptian revolution in the setting of Cairo’s Tahrir Square in 2011 through Mohamed Morsi’s overthrow in 2013. Screened at the 2013 New York Film Festival, it is directed by Jehane Noujaim, who also directed indie fa[...]
Review: 12 Years a Slave
— by JAMES SHAW — This year already has delivered several Oscar nominee-type films — including “Fruitvale Station,” “Gravity,” “Prisoners” and “Captain Phillips” — but Steve McQueen’s “12 Years a Slave” has moved right to the top of the list. In my opini[...]
Review: Tall as the Baobab Tree
— by BEV QUESTAD with ARDELLE ANDERSON — After a son falls from the village baobab tree and breaks his leg, there is no money for the necessary medical care – unless dad sells a daughter off for marriage. This re-enactment film is based on a true story, acted out by local rural Senegal[...]
Review: Carrie
— by JAMES SHAW — It is very hard to make original movies these days, so Hollywood tends to re-make, create sequels or spin-off from past popular films. The original 1976 version of “Carrie” was based on the 1974 Stephen King Novel, a story about an out-cast teenage girl named Carrie[...]
Review: Camille Claudel 1915
— by RON WILKINSON — Nominated for the Golden Bear, the top award at the Berlin Film Festival, Bruno Dumont has added another bitter pill to his weighty list of accomplishments with “Camille Claudel 1915.” He has either won or been nominated for most of the top European film [...]
Review: Concussion
— by JAMES SHAW — I am not one for clichéd movies and the following scene is all too familiar. A married couple with kids has their relationship tested either through personal complications or temptations. The relationship loses its spark and gets dull and repetitive. One person usually[...]
Review: Enzo Avitabile Music Life
— by BEV QUESTAD — So often there are docs about musicians with frustratingly little of their music to demonstrate why a film was made about them in the first place. But it isn’t this way with “Enzo.” This portrait film of his musical gifts is more like going to an actual concert i[...]
Review: The Network
— by RON WILKINSON — To 99 percent of Americans, Afghanistan is a battlefield. It is a place of misery and horrendously bad memories for hundreds of thousands of US service members and their loved ones. The number of Afghan casualties is at least double that of the Americans, not even in[...]
Review: Running Wild
— by BEV QUESTAD — In 1988, at age 65, Dayton Hyde looked at his life and asked himself what he really wanted to do. Then he gathered his credit cards, applied for a loan and left his wife and family on their Oregon ranch and headed to South Dakota. There Hyde bought 11,000 acres [&helli[...]