The most recent Ryusuke Hamaguchi film entitled “Evil Does Not Exist” is a puzzling one considering evil is omnipresent in the film. The best I can devise here is that there is an absence of evil in nature but interpose man with nature and evil is inescapable. Debate it if you wish but has Ryusuke… Read More RKS 2024 Film: “Evil Does Not Exist”: A Puzzling Name for This Film!
The documentary “Home Court” tracks basketball whiz kid Ashley Chea from her sophomore to senior year at her preppy high school Flintridge in a Los Angeles suburb. Mildly inspirational and heavily troublesome is “Home Court”. Ashley is the daughter of Cambodian parents running their donut shop a la Ted Ngor. Father Baov Chea works as… Read More RKS 2024 Film: “Home Court”: Inspirational or Troublesome?
Sixteen-year-old Runa fled ISIS controlled Kurdistan with her parents and four younger brothers. Trapped in a forest between Belarus and Poland her mother is felled by hypothermia and later dies in a Polish hospital. The family had spent 18 days in a frozen forest attempting to enter Poland. The Polish government had previously retaliated against… Read More RKS 2024 Film: HOTDOCS 2024: “Silent Trees”: A Minefield to Somewhat Normalcy
Should I simply refer to the American documentary “A Photographic Memory” as rich, eerie, extensive, thorough, melancholic, uplifting and intriguing? Or might I say it is going to be remembered as one of the best Hot Docs 2024 documentaries? Considering the enormous sums I am paid to review films, the mind-boggling swag bags that flow… Read More RKS 2024 Film: Hot Docs 2024: “A Photographic Memory”
It’s hard to pan a film with such lavish wardrobe in a Versailles setting. I have been to Versailles twice and it is certainly indicative of grandeur and wealth but with “Jeanne du Barry” populate it with rich period costumes of the era of Louis XV it is worth the price of admission to see… Read More RKS 2024 Film: “Jeanne du Barry”: Grandiose, Pomp and Circumstance but Somewhat Vacuous: Poor Yawny Depp
“Norwegian Democrazy” delves into the limits and constraints placed on free speech and the stresses on Norwegian society by the influx of Islamic immigration. The Muslim population of Norway is 182,000 constituting 3.3% of its total population. 55% of the Norwegian Muslim population live in Oslo and Viken. The Islamic influx is not restricted to… Read More RKS 2024 Film: HOT DOCS 2024: “Norwegian Democrazy”
“Sweetland” is based on Michael Crummey’s novel of the same name. The Fisheries Household Resettlement Programme administered by the Canadian federal government and Newfoundland provincial government offered somewhat meagre payments for inhabitants of remote outports to relocate to “economic centres of development”. Did economic theory destroy and mutilate the fabric of historic Newfoundland? To receive… Read More RKS 2024 Film: “Sweetland”: Time to Recognize a New Canadian Film Classic: The Sea Giveth the Governments Taketh
Robin (Vaughn Murrae) a junior teen arrives from Spokane, Washington to the Canadian province of Alberta with his somewhat geeky computer dad, Dan (Matthew Rankin). Robin experiences a flashback now and then about his past particularly his mother. The meaning of the flashbacks might constitute a moviegoer’s delight. Add to this ambiguity is Dan’s aversion… Read More RKS 2024 Film: “Before I Change My Mind”: Enough Well Done Ambiguities to Choke a Horse
Amidst great political and bureaucratic clapping the California Department of Corrections (CDC) opened the “state of the art” Pelican Bay State Prison’s Security Housing Unit (SHU) in 1989. Pelican Bay was designed for solitary confinement. Hundreds spent years in solitary confinement some as long as thirty years despite the United Nation’s maximum set at 15… Read More RKS 2024 Film: HOT DOCS 2024: “The Strike”: Memories of the East German Circus
True confessions. I am not a cat lover. I am a “dog person”. Once upon a time I was cornered by a Quebecois cat and kept prisoner for a few hours. I suppose that cat sensed my at best “indifferent” attitude toward cats. I might share that story with you one day. Then I met… Read More RKS 2024 Film: HOT DOCS 2024: “American Cats: The Good, Bad And The Cuddly”: Calling All Cat Activists and Cat Lovers
Set the Bar 