Author: Ron Steury

  • Ad Astra

    Ad Astra

    I entered the film Ad Astra (or “to the stars”) not really knowing what to expect other than it was another Brad Pitt vehicle. Almost coincident to his star turn with great reviews in Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Pitt is also featured in this film. Would it be a cheap knock-off science…

  • Traverse City Film Festival 2019: Top Films

    Traverse City Film Festival 2019: Top Films

    After a leave of absence of reviews from last year’s Traverse City Film Festival (TCFF) even though I was there, I return with short reviews of the most impressive films that I saw this year. I have only reviewed films that are scheduled for distribution now or later this year. So rather than write about…

  • Lean on Pete

    Lean on Pete

    I think back on the genre of “horse movies” I have watched (some repeatedly) and loved such as My Friend Flicka, The Black Stallion, National Velvet, Sea Biscuit, and War Horse. In them, the horse was the central character or at least the co-star. Lean on Pete is not one of those. Rather, Lean on…

  • Disobedience

    Disobedience

    The death of one’s last remaining parent can be impactful beyond one’s expectations. For most of us, it signals the end of the generation from which we learned who we were and that gave us our initial values. Some of us cling to those values without exception but most of us in our teens (Erik…

  • 6 Balloons

    6 Balloons

    In these times, hardly a family is untouched in some way by the opiate epidemic. As leaders of our church’s youth group, when my wife and I told the teens they could come to us with any issues — even when older and no longer a “youth” — little did we realize we would be…

  • Red Sparrow

    Red Sparrow

    Who does not like a good spy story? The Bourne and Bond series (philosophically discussed on this website here), Bridge of Spies, Munich, The Manchurian Candidate (1962 version of course), the Jack Ryan films, the Mission: Impossible films (one is here), and my personal hidden gem that few have seen Farewell. Then there are the…

  • Loving Vincent

    Loving Vincent

    It seems like every few years there is an animated movie that knocks me off my theater seat. In my life a few of those that astounded me — due to an unusual subject, a new perspective, or an innovative methodology — are Fantasia (1940 — okay I was not alive then but I first…

  • Darkest Hour

    Darkest Hour

    In America none of us ever feared that our country would be invaded and we would be subjugated to the will of a foreign country. Even in WWII we were confident that our foreign opponents could and would be overcome, and even if they were not totally defeated, they would not invade the American continent.…

  • Mudbound

    Mudbound

    As a child, like many others, I loved to play in the mud. We had a “sandpile” next to our barn that was about 25% sand with the rest dirt, which is to say it was mud as it was in the north shadow of our big, old, red barn. I would spend hours playing…

  • First They Killed My Father

    First They Killed My Father

    Most people living today have only a vague memory of the Vietnam War, or none at all.  As a teenager growing up in a very conservative area my memories were taken from Walter Cronkite’s TV reports, my local paper, and a few radio broadcasts. We were told America was sending soldiers to Southeast Asia to…