— by RON WILKINSON — Christopher Nolan’s $165 million IMAX space lollapalooza is all the better for starting in the most modest of environments. It is some time in the future, some place in the American Midwest. Things are not going well, according to the elderly respondents. Blights are decimating okra (a blessing to some) […][...]
Review: The Heart Machine
— by RON WILKINSON — Writer/director Zachary Wigon’s essay on the vicissitudes of internet love starts innocently enough. A quiet, intimate conversation in the privacy of Cody’s (John Gallagher Jr. of “The Newsroom” and “Short Term 12”) East Village apartment with a possible significant other. The woman is Virginia (Kate Lyn Sheil of “House of […][...]
Review: Seeds of Hope
— by BEV QUESTAD — This is the story of Masika Katsuva, a Congolese woman of extraordinary resolve and resiliency. Though she has wanted to kill herself many times, and though she sometimes prays to God to take her life just so she can get some rest, Masika is a transformer of spirits and lives. […][...]
Review: Return to Homs
— by BEV QUESTAD — The new Homs sidewalk is a passage through the crashed out walls of uninhabited apartments inside bombed-out buildings. If you want to get somewhere, just take a mallet and make holes in a series of walls. Eventually you will make it to the end of the block where you can […][...]
Review: Reaching for the Stars (aka Sepidah)
— by BEV QUESTAD — So we finally have it in an innocent documentary about a young girl interested in astronomy. “If you do something wrong I’ll kill you. I swear to God. Whether it’s my own daughter or my sister’s. I mean it.” Dialogues like this are just one reason for the importance of […][...]
Review: The Canal
— by RON WILKINSON — Film archivist David (Rupert Evans) smells a rat. Maybe it is that his wife, Alice (Hannah, Hoekstra) seems distracted by her business associate, Alex (Carl Shaaban), and seems to be pulling away from David. That could be because she is having an affair with Alex. Then, again, it could be […][...]
Review: The Decent One (Der Anständige)
— by RON WILKINSON — “The Decent One,” Vanessa Lapa’s riveting documentary (co-written with Ori Weisbrod) reveling the life of SS-leader Heinrich Himmler is, if nothing else, a remarkable collection of archival footage. Although some (most?) of this footage has been seen before, it is edited and assembled with great skill. The result is an […][...]
Review: Citizenfour
— by RON WILKINSON — Almost a year and a half after filmmaker Laura Poitras’ and journalist Glenn Greenwald first met with whistle-blower Edward Snowden, his name has become a household word. Snowden contacted Poitras and asked her to be a part of that historic meeting from the first day that he began telling his […][...]
Review: The Blue Room (aka La chambre bleue)
— by RON WILKINSON — Directed and written by Mathieu Amalric (co-written by leading lady Stéphanie Cléau), “The Blue Room” is superficially a cautionary tale about marital infidelity and, on a deeper level, a psychological study in promises made, and implied. Based on Georges Simenon’s classic novel of the same name, the film tells the […][...]
Review: Private Violence
— by BEV QUESTAD — The most quizzical thing about women who are being abused is their reticence to get out of their situation. Some people think it’s because they are poor and dependent upon the man. “Where else can they go to support their children?” we wonder. But in this film, the lid[...]