Sunday 23 October 2016

'Theo Who Lived': Film Review And Rating

In this article we write a complete information hollywood 'Theo Who Lived': Film Review And Rating. In this article we write a list of horer movies missons movies civil war movies based on jungle movies batman movies superman movies Warcraft  movies based on animal movies based on biography drama comedy adventure based on full action movie based on full romance movies based on adventure action and other type of movies details are provide in this article. A good collection of all fantastic movies 2016 are here

watch movies free online



2016 Hollywood 'Theo Who Lived': Film Review And Rating:

Theo Padnos, the American journalist kidnapped by Al Qaeda affiliates in Syria, tells his survival tale.
An account of captivity and torture unlike most that have emerged from recent conflicts in the Middle East, David Schisgall's Theo Who Lived finds, in freed journalist Theo Padnos, a man with surprising empathy for those who beat and nearly killed him. Though no apologist for the Al Qaeda faction that kidnapped him in Syria in 2012, Padnos's rueful and sympathetic storytelling exhibits the kind of cultural understanding that drew him to the region in the first place. Framed thoughtfully by Schisgall, it should earn respect in a limited art house run and on video.

Padnos was a struggling freelancer living in a $20-a-month room in Turkey when he met a group of students who agreed to help him cross the border into Syria. He intended to cover the country's civil war, convinced that his intimate knowledge of local language and customs gave him an advantage over most Western reporters. But he didn't know that the interview those "students" had arranged was an ambush. He was kidnapped immediately, tortured and held hostage for nearly two years, threatened with death if he wouldn't "admit" he worked for the CIA.

(At the time of his capture, Padnos went by the name Peter Theo Curtis. The doc doesn't address the discrepancy, but news coverage indicates he had changed his name so he could work in the Muslim world despite having published a potentially controversial memoir under his birth name.)

A smart and self-aware New Englander, Padnos admits up front that he holds himself accountable for what he and loved ones endured, and for the trouble various governments went to on his behalf. "I committed suicide, but I'm still alive," he recalls thinking as sat at the mercy of the Al-Nusra Front, the Syrian branch of Al Qaeda. Beginning the film in Antakya, the Turkish city where he was based, Schisgall's crew proceeds to find or build locations that resemble each stage of his captivity in Syria, from rotting houses to the tiny cinderblock-and-steel heatbox where — with his head poking through a small portal in the door — Padnos recounts the 200 days he spent alone in just such a cell.

Schisgall worked for some time with Errol Morris (producer Amanda Branson Gill did, as well), and seems to have picked up some of the master's canniness about dramatizing a nonfiction narrative. Here, the right light and setting make staged reenactments not just unnecessary but unwanted: Padnos is too engaging a storyteller to be shunted offscreen in favor of actors, even when certain episodes — dramatic escapes and recaptures, for instance — might seem to beg for such treatment.

Padnos's mother and a cousin are the only other interviewees here, talking of the long effort to cope with ransom demands and get help from U.S. authorities bound by a directive never to negotiate with terrorists. Their personalities shed some light on the prisoner's own, and their suffering gives weight to his regret over having gotten himself in such a fix. But Padnos could easily have held the screen for an hour and a half all by himself.



Distributor: Zeitgeist Films

Director-Screenwriter: David Schisgall

Producer: Amanda Branson Gill

Executive producers: Evgenia Peretz, Dan Cogan

Director of photography: Timothy Grucza

Editor: Jane Jo

Production Designer: Knox White

Composer: Byron Estep

In English and Arabic


85 minutes

‘The Hollow’: Film Review And News

In this article we write a complete information hollywood ‘The Hollow’: Film Review And News  . In this article we write a list of horer movies missons movies civil war movies based on jungle movies batman movies superman movies Warcraft  movies based on animal movies based on biography drama comedy adventure based on full action movie based on full romance movies based on adventure action and other type of movies details are provide in this article. A good collection of all fantastic movies 2016 are here

watch movies free online


2016 New Hollywood ‘The Hollow’: Film Review And News:

Multihyphenate Miles Doleac writes, directs and stars in his second feature alongside James Callis, Christiane Seidel and William Forsythe.
Bearing a passing resemblance to a Deep South take on Twin Peaks without the Lynchian penchant for supernatural surrealism, The Hollow sets out to reveal the menace lurking within a divided small-town community. What emerges is a rather unremarkable backwoods noir lacking the distinctive characters and stylistic flourishes that might set it apart from dozens of other crime dramas popping up on VOD genre menus.

Somewhere in rural Mississippi, sheriff’s deputy Ray Everett (Miles Doleac) sits atop a drug-fueled crime syndicate, which allows him to both supply meth to local junkies and at the same time compel their cooperation in support of his illicit operation. Sheriff McKinney (William Sadler) is unable, or unwilling, to interfere and Ray’s wife Trisha (Candice Michele Barley) remains oblivious to his drug-related activities, but not his infidelities. Almost everyone of any import at all in the town seems to be on the take, including Ray’s partner Lucas (Joseph VanZandt), a weak-willed deputy and chronic complainer. After one of his underage girlfriends turns up shot dead, along with the murdered daughter of a U.S. congressman and her boyfriend, Ray faces a lot more than indifference from his family and colleagues, who attribute the tragedy to Ray’s lax law-enforcement instincts.

The triple homicide brings the FBI down on the insular town, led by agent in charge Vaughn Killinger (James Callis) and his partner, both on duty and off, Sarah Desoto (Christiane Seidel). Without any suspects or a clear motive, the agents begin interviewing anyone with even a remote connection to the murders, including John Dawson, a “country lawyer” with a grandson who may have been dating the local murder victim. As the local cops try to cover their tracks and their associates begin turning up dead, the FBI agents, under pressure from the congressman and the U.S. Attorney General’s office, begin to suspect that Dawson may be playing a critical role in the town’s crime wave from behind the scenes.

The Hollow is a far cry from Doleac’s feature debut The Historian, a drama based in academia that benefited from his background as an authority on the history of antiquity. Although his sophomore script bears certain similarities to Classical tragedy, particularly in its emphasis on themes of hubris and redemption, such high-toned ideas are mostly subsumed in the machinations of a familiar Southern crime drama. In fact, the film’s central conflicts are almost stereotypically outlined, with the flawed locals arrayed against intrusive outsiders, and Doleac’s characters don’t display much more depth either.

Ray is an irredeemable lowlife determined to hang onto a modicum of control by manipulating or betraying practically everyone he’s connected with. Doleac doesn’t provide the character with sufficient self-awareness to recognize his shortcomings and either seek forgiveness or take decisive action. Callis’ Vaughn is a washed-up alcoholic drowning in self-pity in a performance that would be practically cringe-worthy if it weren’t so silly. Determined to stand by her man, Seidel gives Sarah a professional polish lacking in her colleagues, but she’s no match for Forsythe’s slippery gentleman gangster.

With a supporting cast of local types and authentic Mississippi locations, Doleac imbues the film with a certain world-weary charm, but stylistically it’s not much more than acceptably functional.

Distributor: Uncork’d Entertainment
Production companies: Historia Films
Cast: James Callis, Miles Doleac, Christiane Seidel, William Forsythe, William Sadler, Jeff Fahey, David Warshofsky, Joseph VanZandt, Candice Michele Barley
Director-writer: Miles Doleac
Producers: Miles Doleac, Ryan H. Jackson, Mackenzie Westmoreland
Executive producer: Lisa Bruce
Director of photography: Ben McBurnett
Production designer: Sarah Sharp
Costume designer: Halley Sharp
Editor: D.J. Sing
Music: Clifton Hyde
Casting director: Adrienne Stern


Not rated, 128 minutes