— by BEV QUESTAD — The Portland International Film Festival (PIFF) has chosen eight, from nearly 90 films it featured this year, for encore showings. Festival publicist Nick Bruno reports these films were chosen because they met two criteria: viewer popularity and distributor permission for an additional screening. “Soufra,” my choice as the best documentary […][...]
Trailer: Spoor
— by BEV QUESTAD — The environment of this film – its lighting, cinematography, music and woods in lush Polish mountains – reveals the story just as much as the words, expressions and actions of the outstanding cast. A movie especially for members of the NRA, it tells of hunters and their prey and religion’s […][...]
Trailer: For Ahkeem
— by BEV QUESTAD — It’s Missouri, October 2013 to March 2015. Barack Obama is president and a Missouri courtroom has exonerated a policeman of shooting an 18-year old African-American. It is a time of both hope and despair in our country and also in the life of Daje Shelton, a teenage girl living in […][...]
Trailer: Makala
— by BEV QUESTAD — This is the story of Kabwita Kasongo, a poor man living with his beautiful family in a mud brick hut in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Makala is word for the charcoal he makes. Emmanuel Gras, the film’s creator, lets you can walk in Kabwita’s shoes for about one […][...]
Review: The Young Karl Marx
— by RON WILKINSON — They were the best of times and, well, you know the rest. Raoul Peck follows up his vibrant Oscar-nominated “I Am Not Your Negro” with this yeasty diatribe on the eve of socialism. “Das Kapital” is brewing in a pot of larger than life characters who live for work, liberty […][...]
Review: Western
— by RON WILKINSON — Lanky lead Meinhard Neumann plays a different kind of cowboy in “Western,” a low-key pondering of war and peace. Meinhard works on a German construction crew that must build a dam in remote Bulgaria. A self-described former “Legionnaire,” its seems he has been sent to Bulgaria by the same powerful, […][...]
Get excited for Game of Thrones Season 8
— by TOM HARRISON — The decision to wait until 2019 for the final six-episode season of “Game of Thrones” may seem counter-intuitive to keeping fan momentum going to finally find out who will end up on The Iron Throne of Westeros, but it is in fact a very effective one. By limiting the connection […][...]
Trailer: The Rape of Recy Taylor
— by BEV QUESTAD — Oprah Winfrey announced the December death of Recy Taylor during her powerful 2018 Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award acceptance speech. She let the world know of Taylor’s gang rape by white boys, her courageous accusation, her connection to Rosa Parks and how that influenced Rosa Parks’ 1955 bus ride […][...]
Review: Lots of Kids, a Monkey and a Castle
— by BEV QUESTAD — This bizarre feature memoir was filmed by Spanish actor/director Gustavo Salmeron, at the pit of his family’s demise. While his mother, Julita, had gotten her three wishes – lots of kids, a monkey and a beautiful castle – they lose it all in the Spanish economic collapse. In the chaos, […][...]