— by BEV QUESTAD — Oh troubling waters of misguided humans and good intentions, how and when can we distinguish between the calling of God and the Sirens of Titan? In a classic modern tragedy, John Chau found himself drawn inexorably to proclaim the gospel to the last isolated tribe on earth, the North Sentinelese. […][...]
Review: Ferrari
— by BEV QUESTAD — Just the name Ferrari immediately evokes observations about the car: fast, red and expensive. With a few red flags, the man behind this famous fine-tuned vehicle was known to be calculated, distant, and autocratic. “Ferrari” is based on the revealing yet stark story of Enzo Ferrari’s life in 1957, his […][...]
Review: American Fiction
— by BEV QUESTAD — An African-American author and professor with a PhD, a genius with excellent writing ability, crafts an acclaimed novel. Another author, feigning he is a fugitive from the FBI, misspells words and uses a vernacular dialect. He writes about a rough, poverty-ridden Black experience in America. Which book would you most […][...]
Review: The Boys in the Boat
— by BEV QUESTAD — It’s 1936 and Joe Rantz (Callum Turner) lives in a Seattle Depression-era Hooverville. He stands with men in a soup line for one ladle of thin gruel. He mother died when he was fourand his father left the family when he was 14. He’s a quiet, muscular guy used to […][...]
Review: The Teachers’ Lounge
— 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 […][...]