— by BEV QUESTAD — In a small wooden building lit by candlelight in the dark of the night, two slaves are married quietly and secretly. Their lives are really not their own to determine. The new husband, Joseph, will be sent off the next day, like a stud bull, to impregnate a slave from […][...]
Review: Fabian: Going to the Dogs
— by WILLIAM STERR — It’s the late 1920s in Berlin, Germany. The Wiemar Republic is beginning to crumble under the multiple onslaughts of a failing economy, social disintegration, and the rising Nazi party. Jakob Fabian (Tom Schilling) is a young man from Dresden who has moved to the capitol to seek out a fast-paced […][...]
Review: Man of God
— by BEV QUESTAD — “I am the leader of the whole world. What would you like me to give you?” This true-life story of Nektarios of Aegin grabs attention from the start and soon spreads into your heart and soul like the incoming crash of a Mediterranean wave. A showing of “Man of God” […][...]
Review: Drive My Car
— by BEV QUESTAD — Up for an Oscar in two categories, best film and best international feature film in a foreign language, “Drive My Car” was also on Barack Obama’s list of Favorite Movies of 2021. On one level it is an intellectual’s film, with references to Anton Chekov and existential questions. On another […][...]
Review: A Banquet
— by WILLIAM STERR — Imagine you are a woman methodically cleaning a chair, scrubbing thoroughly. In the background, someone is coughing – very hard – trying to breathe. You go on scrubbing as the coughing gets more and more desperate. Finally, you rise and try to comfort a man who sits on the side […][...]
Sedona International Film Festival winners
— by LYNETTE CARRINGTON — The film “Delicious,” a mouth-watering historical comedy pairing a gifted chef and his unlikely protégé who must find the resolve to free themselves from servitude in 1789 France, was named both Best of Fest and winner of the Director’s Choice Best International Film Festival Award at the 28th annual Sedona International […][...]
Review: Gasoline Alley
— by WILLIAM STERR — Have you ever watched a movie and thought: “This wouldn’t be half bad if it wasn’t for that one actor”? (And especially when that actor is the draw for the entire movie?) Welcome to “Gasoline Alley” and Bruce Willis. I don’t know whether Willis is taking his remaining years to […][...]
Review: King Knight
— by WILLIAM STERR — Imagine the Brady Bunch from early 1970s television – but as a coven of witches in LA. The introductory scene to “King Knight” even has the three by three layout of pictures of the “family” with a cat in the center housekeeper position. We are introduced to the four couples […][...]
Review: Strawberry Mansion
— by WILLIAM STERR — Released by Music Box Films, a distributor of foreign and independent films, this 2021 surreal production from Ley Line Entertainment deals with a future in which dreams can be recorded and played back to our conscious minds. Evidently everyone does this, and it is an accepted form of entertainment. The […][...]
Review: The Jump
— by WILLIAM STERR — This documentary, produced in 2020 but only recently released in the USA in Los Angeles, recounts a remarkable event that occurred on Nov. 23, 1970. At that time, a meeting was being held off the coast of Massachusetts between Soviet officials representing their fishing fleet, and private American fisheries representatives. […][...]