— by WILLIAM STERR — In 2000, Joyce Carol Oates published her biographical novel “Blonde,” which was a dramatic imagining of the career of Marilyn Monroe. Oates has referred to her subject as “my Moby Dick, the powerful galvanizing image about which an epic might be constructed, with myriad levels of meaning and significance.”* In […][...]
Review: Art & Krimes by Krimes
— by BEV QUESTAD — After seeing this film I immediately contacted a life-long friend in the art biz. You’ve got to do a show on prison art! Include work not just by those incarcerated, but also by ex-cons who are desperately trying to survive on the outside. Because they usually don’t have access to […][...]
Review: The Accursed
— by WILLIAM STERR — It is a dark and stormy night. A girl scratches a cross into the trunk of a massive old tree, its branches festooned with Spanish moss. A young woman joins her and together they walk toward an isolated cabin, firelight flickering in its window. “Don’t come inside until the screaming […][...]
Review: Bandit
— by BEV QUESTAD — It’s around 1985. Robert Whiteman (played with extraordinary brilliance by Josh Duhamel) walks into a bank and asks the teller for all her cash. She shoves several bundles over, but then Whiteman wonders, where is he going to put it all? He asks her if she has a bag. She […][...]
Review: Tiger 24
— by BEV QUESTAD — This is the true story of a murder trial in India. There is indisputable identity, grief on all sides and visceral gore. The perpetrator is Ustad, a male referred to as T24. He has a beautiful partner and two gorgeous children. His fourth victim was Rampal, a forest guard in […][...]
Review: Hatching
— by WILLIAM STERR — Tinja (Siiri Solalinna) is so lucky. She is a member of a perfect Finnish family. That’s what her vlogger mother claims. She lives in a perfectly decorated house with a beautiful mother, doting father and sweet younger brother. At least that’s what the family vlog presents. In reality, Tinja is […][...]
Review: This Land
— by WILLIAM STERR — “This Land” is not so much a film as it is an ode to the people who make up the American electorate. Director Matthew Palmer (“Breakdown”) assembled a team of more than 50 filmmakers to shoot footage of selected people across the country on Nov. 3, 2020. That’s right. Election […][...]
Review: Carmen
— by BEV QUESTAD — I had the opportunity to sit at dinner with holy men, priests dressed in long black cossacks, just outside Beirut in 2019. An exquisite Lebanese chicken dinner had been prepared by our hostess, lovely Pauline, but the conversation began to lag. So I proffered advice that went something like this: […][...]
Review: Speak No Evil
— by WILLIAM STERR — Bjorn, Louise, and their little girl, Agnes, are on vacation in Italy, enjoying the sites and the company of other vacationers. Among those they meet are a Dutch couple — Patrick, Karin, and their little partially mute son, Abel. Abel and Agnes are of similar age and their parents form […][...]
Review: Four Winters
— by WILLIAM STERR — On Sept. 1, 1939, Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany invaded Poland, triggering World War II. The Nazis had been oppressing various peoples, especially Jews, within Germany since 1933. Now, as they drove through Poland and into other nations, the mass roundup and subsequent slaughter of millions began. History records that, for […][...]