— by BEV QUESTAD — Dennis the Menace meets Mary Poppins in Singapore. Well, Dennis is spot-on but the sweet Filipino young lady who comes to be a servant in this household has her hands full. Set in Singapore circa 1997 during an economic crisis, Teresa is the new household maid (played [...]
Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category
Review: Winter’s Tale
— by ADAM DALE — From Warner Bros. Pictures and Akiva Goldsman, a well-known producer and writer making his directorial debut, “Winter’s Tale” is a movie loosely based on the 1983 novel by Mark Helprin. It is a tale of love, loss, destiny, the fight waged between good a[...]
Review: Ernest and Celestine
— by BEV QUESTAD — A cute little mouse, Celestine, wants to be an artist, not a dentist like expected. Mice, you know, are partial to their crucial incisors and value the health of their teeth. Therefore their society is built around the dental arts, including procuring spare incisors fr[...]
Review: Village at the End of the World
— by BEV QUESTAD — Though the sun shines, biting wind brushes through the air, icebergs loom like monoliths from the bay, and temperatures don’t get too far beyond freezing. This is Sequinnerpoq, the summer season when the sun shines. The little Inuit fishing village, Niaqornat, nestle[...]
Review: Just a Sigh
— by BEV QUESTAD — Working out an interpretation of Blaise Pascal’s theme on happiness, filmmaker Jérome Bonnell gives us 24 hours, beginning and ending with a ride on a train. Gabriel Byrne is perfectly cast as the interesting older man. Coming in from England to Paris for the funera[...]
Review: Endless Love
— by JESSIKA OWENS — Valentine’s Day for movie-goers means only one thing, brace yourself for love stories shoved down your throat. The issue becomes, what love story could possibly be released at this point that is fresh and something that hasn’t been done a thousand times o[...]
Review: Mary, Queen of Scots
— by BEV QUESTAD — Many will flock to see “Mary Queen of Scots” with its dark and musty castles, mist-shrouded gentle landscapes and richly-colored costumes. Swiss filmmaker Thomas Imbach, with multiple writers, has idealized Mary as a romantic figure from Elizabethan times, truly mo[...]
Review: I Am Yours (aka Jeg er din)
— 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 [[...]
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[...]