Click here to listen to the interview. I had seen SEPTEMBER 5 twice by the time I spoke via Zoom with its director and co-writer, Tim Fehlbaum on January 7, 2025. I started with how skillfully he created a sense suspense ever people who knew the outcome of the Palestinian terrorists taking Israeli athletes hostage… Read More »
EMERGENCY DECLARATION (Bisang seoneon)
EMERGNCY DECLARATION wants to take you on a hyper-roller coaster ride with an airborne tale of bio-terrorism, and it does. A worthy throwback to the disaster films of a generation or so ago, it is the perfect action film for the age of COVID, and a thrill-packed time that will wring every emotion out of… Read More »
7500
7500, the code used for hijackings, takes the all-too-familiar tropes of a terrorist hijacking and reframes them with a harrowing story that unfolds in real time. By removing any hint of sensationalism from the events, filmmaker Patrick Vollrath focuses on the moment-to-moment uncertainty of people ripped in an instant from the security of their familiar… Read More »
HOTEL MUMBAI
Full of unexpected compassion and humanity, HOTEL MUMBAI is also a harrowing retelling of the 2008 takeover of the fabled Taj Hotel in Mumbai by terrorists whose zeal for religion had been twisted into something horrifying. The standard meet-and-greet of the people whose lives will shortly be forever changed is the only part of the… Read More »
THEO WHO LIVED — David Schisgall Interview
THEO WHO LIVED is a story of the remarkable empathy its subject, American journalist Theo Padnos, found for the captors who tortured him after being kidnapped in Syria in 2012. David Schisgall’s sensitive, heart-wrenching documentary about Theo, like Theo himself, finds the humanity in everyone. Preferring to see people as individuals rather than stereotypes, it’s… Read More »
LONDON HAS FALLEN
Full disclosure, I was not a fan of OLYMPUS HAS FALLEN, the previous film exploring the victim/savior relationship between President Benjamin Asher (Aaron Eckhart) and crack Secret Service agent Mike Banning (Gerard Butler). Thus, I was not hoping for much when I approached LONDON HAS FALLEN. The trick to staying sane in this business is… Read More »
Brian Sloan has A WTC VIEW
WTC VIEW was the first play from The New York International Fringe Festival to make the leap to the big screen in 2005, but playwright Brian Sloan resisted the temptation to fundamentally change the nature of his play by opening it up beyond the one apartment in which it takes place. The metaphor of a… Read More »
A MOST WANTED MAN
A MOST WANTED MAN evokes the best of the Cold War thrillers of the 1960s. Hardly a surprise, considering its based on a novel by the master of that genre, John le Carre. Directed with that genres same sense of understated, but lethal, suspense borne of uncertainty by Anton Corbijn it updates the action from… Read More »
THE WAR WITHIN
THE WAR WITHIN charts a different sort of territory in its examination of the psychology of suicide bombers. Its protagonist, Hassan(co-writer Ayad Akhtar), isn’t a refugee, isn’t psychotic, isn’t an extremist of any kind, and far from living a hopeless existence with no future and a murky past, he’s cosmopolitan, well-educated, and more western than… Read More »
THE WAR WITHIN — DVD
THE WAR WITHIN deserved a lot more attention than it got when it was released last year. This brave film took on complex issues surrounding suicide bombers and the radicalization of moderate Muslims without pandering to any special interest group. Instead, it trusted to an intelligent, compassionate script with a searing message and no easy… Read More »