The Toll Booth — Unsettled Desperation in Turkey
The Toll Booth (2014), more accurately, the” toll taker,” has a nice play on words in it, at least in …
Category Archives: Movies
Women say: Hands Off! — Three Films of the Changing Conversation in Islam
The long fight for autonomy, independence and freedom against enemies canny and brutal, is one of the most popular subjects …
The Big Short: The Street, The Book, The Movie
There are no good guys in Adam McKay’s new movie, The Big Short, nor in the book of the same name …
Enough! — Algerian Film Maker looks at War
Djamila Sahraoui (b 1950) Algerian born director, now living in France was 41 when the thirteen year civil war erupted in …
Halfaouine: Boy of The Terraces –Coming of Age in Tunis, 1990
Every once in a while the unexpected out does itself. In Halfouine, Ferid Boughedir’s small 1990 movie from Tunis not …
Ninah’s Dowery
Whew! Watching Ninah’s Dowery (2012), a movie from a small Camaroon film crew, directed by the sure-handed Victor Viyuoh I was carried into the …
Trumbo: On the Black List for Being Red
Yep. Go see it. Good, straight-ahead story, mixed fabulously well with archival footage of the era – the ’40s and …
Halima’s Path: Love, Neighbors, Enemies and Loss in the Bosnian War
I prefer movies that immerse me in the real world, rather than those which provide distraction, through song and dance, fanciful fictions or …
Taxi — A Forbidden Film from Iran
Jaffar Panahi’s Taxi, an entry at the recent Mill Valley Film Festival has made it into at least limited distribution in …
WW I In The Italian Alps: Torneranno i Prati by Ermanno Olmi
Ermanno Olmi is best known in the United States for his 1978 movie, The Tree of Wooden Clogs, even though …
A Poet and His Work, In Film
Poetry in film, now there’s a small sub-genre of the movie world. Hayden Reiss‘s long labor of love, Robert Bly: …
Old School, New School — Detectives in Post-Franco Spain
Marshland (La Isla Minima) by Spanish director Alberto Rodriguez laces a sharply honed policía procesal (sadistic serial killer included) with traces from Spain’s recent fascist …