— by RON WILKINSON — Starting off with great archival footage of the now famous marijuana fear mongering campaigns of the mid-twentieth century, Riley Morton’s documentary (written by Nils Cowan) picks up the trail of the long and winding road towards marijuana legalization in Washingt[...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: Seeds of Time
— by BEV QUESTAD — “The way in which we are feeding the current population is not sustainable. Twelve of the hottest 15 years have taken place in the last 16 years. …We’re really in a race against time. We need to mobilize before it’s too late. We’re gonna pay a price if we don[...]
Review: Anna
— by RON WILKINSON — Mark Strong (Jim Prideaux in the 2011 remake of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy”) comes back a good guy in “Anna” (aka “Mindscape”). He is still as cold and calculating as ever, approaching the diagnosis of his most recent case as he approached[...]
Review: Bright Days Ahead
— by RON WILKINSON — Marion Vernoux’s romantic comedy starts off with recent retiree Caroline (Fanny Ardant—“8 Women,” Confidentially Yours”) plunging ahead with retirement at the Bright Days Ahead senior center. The screenplay has Caroline visiting the center with trepidation [...]
Review: Beneath the Harvest Sky
— by RON WILKINSON — Casper (Emory Cohen – “The Place Beyond the Pines”) and Dominic (Callan McAuliffe – “The Great Gatsby”) grow up together in the tiny community of Van Buren just south of the Canadian border. They are very different people. Dom is hard working and has his [...]
Review: Dangerous Acts
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 40th Seattle International Film Festival, Madeleine Sackler’s awesome, thrilling and beautiful biopic of the underground theatrical group “Unstable Elements of Belarus” is part nail-biting spy story and part inspirational political performance a[...]
Review: Dormant Beauty
— by RON WILKINSON — Some Italian films err on the lighthearted side, some on the heavy. Marco Bellocchio’s angst-fest “Dormant Beauty” is so laden with emotion soaked evocation the average American viewer may want a divorce after the first 15 minutes. The story, written by[...]
Review: The Signal
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 40th Seattle International Film Festival, “The Signal” features computer hackers Brenton Thwaites (playing Nic Eastman) and Beau Knapp (playing Jonah Breck), who receive a very mysterious message. A couple of quick replies indicate they ar[...]
Review: Blueberry Soup
— by BEV QUESTAD — Blueberry soup, often served cold on New Year’s Day, is high in anti-oxidants. Tradition says it cleanses and purifies the system. Hopefully, this metaphor will eventually prove an accurate description for the ground-breaking constitutional experiment in Iceland. In [...]
Review: 40 Days of Silence
— by RON WILKINSON — Screened at the 40th Seattle International Film Festival, Saodat Ismailova’s “Chilla” came as a surprise to an audience expecting the Indian crime thriller “Monsoon Shootout.” As the SIFF staff pointed out, “this is no Monsoon Shootout.” Indeed, Ismailo[...]
Review: Stand Clear of the Closing Doors
— by RON WILKINSON — Emerging director Sam Fleischner is able to put his dozen-plus lenser creds to good use in this surrealistic yet grounded narrative of a boy lost in the New York subways. Winner of a Special Jury Mention for Best Narrative Feature at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, t[...]
Review: Half of a Yellow Sun
— by BEV QUESTAD — In the beginning, two beautiful women are dining at a stately dinner in their luxurious family home. In a seeming eyeblink, they are caught in the tightening vise of a desperate civil war. This is a harrowing story of imperialism and the now-familiar pattern of events [...]
Review: The Double
— by RON WILKINSON — Writer/director Richard Ayoade follows up his well-received “Submarine” with a gutsy adaptation of Dostoevsky’s redoubtable novel. Starring Jesse Eisenberg and Mia Wasikowska, “The Double” trots out a remarkable cast of famous actors, even more rema[...]