— by BEV QUESTAD — Maybe it’s difficult being a movie star who is badgered by press, a police person who is wearing a body camera or a university president defining the First Amendment before Congress, but just try being a schoolteacher dealing with misbehavior correctly in the classroom. How can we (I’ve been a […][...]
Review: The Inventor
— by BEV QUESTAD — The Pope asks the inventor, “Why can’t you be satisfied with just painting pretty things for God?” But Leonardo hardly has time to answer. He is driven to investigate the cosmos. He wants the answers to life’s deepest questions. He is warned, “Don’t you worry that your desire to know […][...]
Review: Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning
— by BEV QUESTAD — Like most Tom Cruise thrillers, “Dead Reckoning” is full of death-defying, hair-rising and honestly, pretty comical moments for the hero. Beginning with an explanation of “the most fearsome killing machine in the world ever devised by man and impossible to find,” it falls to Ethan Hunt (Cruise) to save the […][...]
Review: The Taste of Things
— by BEV QUESTAD — Eugenie (marvelously played by Juliette Binoche) is picking vegetables from her cook’s garden in the verdant Loire Region of France. It is 1889 and she is an extraordinary cook for a famous chef, Dodin Bouffant (the superb Benoît Magimel), who owns a modest chateau where they have both lived and […][...]
Review: To Kill a Tiger
— by BEV QUESTAD — This is a violent story filmed within a gentle, moving, inspiring, gorgeous ambiance with lilting sitar, tabla and flute music whispering throughout as if this was a love story. And indeed it is. It shows the stand-out courage, commitment and love of a father who supports his daughter’s honor, at […][...]
Review: Never Too Late for Love
— by BEV QUESTAD — Man vs. The Establishment. Retired Professor Astolfo has been evicted from his apartment of twenty years in Rome so that the owner can give it to her daughter and new husband. What now? Why not move into that section of the run-down palace willed to him many years ago? Though […][...]
Review: Radical
— by BEV QUESTAD — Matamoros, on the Rio Grande border across from Texas, is known for its year-round subtropical climate, deep-water seaport, Hispanic culture and crossing point for cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine, weapons and human trafficking. The entire town is at-risk and sixth grade is often the year students decide whether they will continue with […][...]
Review: Blueback
— by BEV QUESTAD — It is Abby’s 8th birthday. Her mother exclaims, “You know what that means!” They go out into the bay in their speedboat and Mom tosses a special ring overboard. Abby seems hesitant and scared. With just a snorkel, her mother expects her to follow the anchor chain down to the […][...]
Review: Jacob the Baker
— by BEV QUESTAD — A news reporter is assigned to interview Noah, the writer of the Jacob the Baker series, which has been translated into 18 languages. She resents the assignment, wanting to cover more important new stories, but she complies. She asks all the good questions and with every answer from Noah I […][...]
Review: Total Trust
— by BEV QUESTAD — In the US, freedom includes easily obtaining guns and having demonstrations with incendiary rhetoric. It is also a place where there are mass shootings, school shootings, random shootings and college presidents who ignore students calling for the genocide of another group. In the US, there have been more than 40,000 […][...]