A Review by Alvin G. Burstein This movie, an indie, the second effort by Anthony Scott Burns, who co-wrote, directed and filmed it, won favorable attention at Canada’s 2020 Fantasia Film Festival, and a positive rating by the rating accumulator Rotten Tomatoes. Ever since my childhood encounters with the Gothic tales of Edgar Allen Poe […]
A Review by Alvin G. Burstein This subtitled French film, available on Amazon Prime,written and directed by Filippo Meneghetti, is a debut effort that packs a jarring punch. Its exploration of a passionate relationship between two women at an age some French would delicately call “certain” shatters any presumption of attenuated sexuality in the elderly, […]
A Review by Alvin G. Burstein A lifelong addict to Conan Doyle’s fictional accounts of Sherlock Holmes, I am generally intolerant of those adaptations that clash with my images of the sleuth and his trusted Dr. Watson. The bakers dozen or so of Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce were marginally acceptable to me. Their adaptations […]
A Review by Alvin G. Burstein In a search for an end of the year movie to review, the spate of Christmas releases didn’t appeal to me. Citizen Kane popped into my mind because of its frequent citation as the all-time greatest movie by both the American Film Institute and its British counterpart. It was […]
J. R. ‘Bob’ Dobbs and the Church of the SubGenius A Review by Alvin G. Burstein This film will not be everyone’s cup of tea. It is not a drama or biopic. It is part documentary and part essay, posing a problem and raising troubling questions. It is an indie film funded by a Kickstarter […]
Stonehearst Asylum A Review by Alvin G. Burstein This reworking of a short story by Edgar Allan Poe was filmed in Bulgaria in 2013 and is now available on Amazon. Its opening scene is a clear echo of a lithograph that hung in Freud’s study, a reproduction of a famous painting by André Brouillet, A […]
by Alvin G. Burstein Once upon a time, centuries ago, in sub-Saharan central Africa, a group of tribes discovered a miraculous source of radioactivity, Vibranium. The competition for control of the lode was resolved when the leader of one of the tribes imbibed a tea concocted from an herb that the mineral had affected, acquiring […]
Secret Window A Review by Alvin G. Burstein With conventional movie theatres still COVID risky, andhaving subscribed to a new dish based media provider, I havea plethora of movie options. A horror flick based on a StephenKing story and starring Johnny Depp tempted me, despite itsage—it is a 2004 release—and it turned out to be […]
Parasite A Review by Alvin G. Burstein Parasite, a South Korean film, premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, becoming the first South Korean film to win the Palme d’Or. It went on to win four awards at the 92nd Academy Awards (the Oscars), winning Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, and Best International […]
A Review by Alvin G. Burstein This is a brilliant, daring 2019 Russian film directed by KatimirBalagov. It takes the American viewer to a place that many ofus have never been, one in which survival is an openquestion. The circumstance of its actors being unknown to usmakes them more real, gives their anguish more bite. […]
A Review by Alvin G. Burstein Any recommended reading list for the COVID-19 era wouldinclude Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year and Camus’The Plague. With theatre going still interdicted because of thevirus, I checked Google for on-line movies of either.Nothing for Defoe. A foreign language version of Camus’work was listed., But, for some reason, […]
A Review by Alvin G. Burstein Growing up in the 1930’s, going to the movies was a special treat. Summers in Omaha, on the banks of the Missouri river could be hot, and the marquees would promise “20 degrees cooler inside.” The Italianate architecture of the Paramount theatre induced a sense of luxury, and stars […]
A Review by Alvin G. Burstein For decades, H. L. Mencken adorned the public sphere as an acerbic social, political critic and literary critic. Said to have coined the term Booboisie, he opined, “On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White […]
Knives Out A Review by Alvin G. Burstein Card five of Henry Murray’s Thematic Apperception testportrays a middle-aged woman looking through an open doorwith an expression shock and maybe anger on her face. Wegraduate students learning about the test called it TheSnoopy Mother card. Now, more sophisticated, I might retitleit Family Secrets. Adam Smith has […]
Little Women A Review by Alvin G. Burstein This 2019 film is the latest version of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel, first published in 1868 and reissued countless times in print, as well as formatted for television and the stage. Its many iterations speak for something compelling in the work. There is an important sense […]