‘Movie Corner’ Archives
Movie Corner: Limbo
5/5 Stars Music Box/Brainstorm Media, Compliments of the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Film Festival 43 Crime/ Mystery/Drama/Thriller By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Howard McQuitter II The outback in South Australia is photographed in spectacular black and white in the film Limbo that richly deserves wider release. Limbo is a fictional town, at one time a mining and tourist place.The film opens up with Travis Harley (Simon Baker), a weary, middle-aged detective, driving into Limbo to investigate a missing young Indigenous woman from 20 years ago, Charlotte Hayes. He stays at the town’s only motel: Limbo Motel. A good part of the motel is inside a cave. While he’s in his motel room, Travis melts down an unidentified opioid drug in a spoon and shoots up in his arm with a hypodermic needle. Heroin or fentanyl, or something else, the viewers do not know. (Director Ivan Sen’s Limbo is eerily similar to John Sturges’ 1955 Bad Day at Black Rock.)The first potential [...]
Movie Corner: One Life
Howard McQuitter II 4.5/5 Stars Bleeker Street Drama/Biography By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Saving a life (or lives) from death or injury just may be the most principled act one can do on Earth. One such concern for saving lives from certain death is the story of Nicholas “Nicky” Winton (played by Johnny Flynn as a young man and Anthony Hopkins as an old man). Nicky is a young London broker on a visit to Prague, Czechoslovakia (now known as The Czech Republic), saving children, mostly Jewish, from extermination at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Bleeker Street Mr. Winton risks his life orchestrating a way for the children to get to the United Kingdom (UK) or even beyond the Atlantic Ocean to the United States. The men, women and children are refugees from Germany and Austria who are uncertain about their destiny. Winton had arrived in Prague in December 1938, in Sudentenland, just shortly after Hitler occupied Sudentenland. Winton’s task is herculean [...]
Out of Darkness
from the series Movie Corner 4 out of 5 Stars Bleecker Street 2024Thriller/Horror/ Mystery By HOWARD MCQUITTER II Howard McQuitter II Scottish director Andrew Cumming has crafted a most unusual film. His first full feature film Out Of Darkness occurs in prehistoric times - 45,000 years ago - where survival is of the utmost importance. Yet Cumming’s clever work does not rely on survival alone but crosses the genres of horror, thriller, and mystery. The people at that time are hunter gatherers, finding land that is not barren and has enough food and water for subsistence. When the area is barren, Adem (Chuku Modu), the group’s leader, along with Heron (Luna Mwezi), his younger brother Geirr (Kit Young), and their elderly aide Odal (Arno Luning) leave for more fertile land only to find out it is just as barren as the land they left. The group is joined by a straggler, Beyah (Safia Oakley Green) and travels to another unforgiving landscape. Beyah is worried that she [...]
