Category: Film/TV Reviews

STRANGER AT THE GATE Film Review

Director Joshua Seftel: “To me, this is the story of a collision course between Richard “Mac” McKinney and the congregants of the Muncie Islamic Center. It’s a story so relevant to our world today – a world filled with misunderstanding, people taking sides, and seemingly unbridgeable societal gaps – and yet this story shows there is hope. I believe the film can serve as a glimpse into what is possible when we stay open and kind, a story about family, compassion, and forgiveness.” – Review by Gregg W. Morris

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A F*ckin’ A, 5-Star Beast of a Movie – Audiences Should Prepare to Be Blown Out of Their F*ckin’ Seats

LOW LIFE generates a visceral cinematic vibe akin to the visceral whoosh Ukraine freedom fighters reportedly get from a f*ckin anti-Putin HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) obliterating a column of #fckinRussian tanks and weaponry – if not Vladimir Putin himself. True, this movie is not about the Ukraine-Russian war but a war of sorts being wage against pedophiles by a small time YouTube-ing vigilante, Benny Jensen, played by Wes Dunlap. – By Gregg W. Morris

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KARMALINK, Film Review of Director Jake Wachtel’s Mesmerizing Sci-fi Reincarnation Artificial Consciousness Search for Enlightenment Movie

The way that Director Jake Wachtel made his film can mesmerize audiences around the world. He uses a “sci-fi lens to tell the story of a boy facing the alienating effects of technological progress (the literal displacement of his soul) as a mirror for forms of neo-colonialism and cultural displacement.” It is shot through a prism of mesmerizing psychedelic dreamscapes about reincarnation, artificial consciousness, and the Buddhist search for enlightenment, giving KARMALINK an amazing irresistible hallucinatory feel about it.
By Gregg W. Morris

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ECHOES OF THE EMPIRE … Beyond Genghis Khan

 Screened Yesterday, June 21, for Delegates at Austrian University’s Asia Pacific Week, w/ Q&A by Creative Team and Is Now Streaming on Amazon The cinematography of Director Robert H. Lieberman’s ECHOES OF THE EMPIRE brilliantly blends panoramic landscapes and…

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Abigail Jean’s QUEEN OF THE DESERT Film Review Short

Director Mary Ann Rotond, who won Best Woman Directed Short at the Poppy Jasper International Film Festival this year, believes that the power of shared humanity, which is the essence of empathy, can overpower the centrifugal forces she believes are at the core of racism and bigotry tearing away at America.
 
She tells her visually stunning movie short through an encounter of a young woman Black and proud who is hitch hiking and the long-haul trucker, White, who gives her a lift. Once inside the cab of the trucker’s rig, the woman discovers that the truck driver is enamored with the culture and mores represented by the Confederate flag that is a banner inside his rig. And the sparks fly. – Film short review by Abigail Jean.

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Luis De Leon’s THE QUEEN OF THE DESERT Film Short Review

QUEEN OF THE DESERT is Director Mary Ann Rotondi’s creative endeavor to make a movie commentary about what she believed are the dynamic social and political forces menacing this country, writes the WORD’s Luis De Leon. Rotondi, who won Best Woman Directed Short at the 2022 Poppy Jasper International Film Festival, uses two characters of different gender, ethnicity, personal values as well as social and political mores to express her point of view that the power of people’s shared humanity can ameliorate the centrifugal forces she believes are tearing away at America.
 
In other words, people living in the United States of America need to empathize more with people who don’t appear to be like them.
 

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