It’s 1965 in Indonesia. Sukarno heads an ever-increasingly unstable government. That is the backdrop for this story, the story of Australian journalist Guy Hamilton and his trial by fire in his first overseas assignment. He meets the diminutive Billy Kwan, a photographer who helps him secure sources for his stories. Through Kwan, Hamilton is introduced […]
This film is phenomenal. Written, directed, and starring Charlie Chaplin, the movie satirizes Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler. He plays two roles: that of Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomainia (clearly Hitler), and a Jewish amnesiac barber who are dead ringers for each other. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/zroWIN-lS8E” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Chaplin uses humor to criticize […]
This movie doesn’t live up to its promises. It is about a U.S. army officer in 2003 who is frustrated with bad intelligence regarding locations of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It tries to be a topical thriller but never delivers. It is slow, disjointed, and somewhat tedious. Director Paul Greengrass hits the audience […]
“The unbearable past.” That is how survivor Vann Nath describes the time he was imprisoned, tortured, beaten, and almost starved to death in Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia in the late 1970s. Director Rithy Panh, who himself was held in a labor camp for four years, strips the story to its essence. [kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/8abZjVj0mu0″ width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” […]
This documentary focuses on a lesser known yet equally important part of the apartheid history of South Africa: the music it engendered. Director Lee Hirsch chronicles the time of apartheid from its inception in 1948 to its demise in the 1990s. He does so in part by showing footage of riots and demonstrations but also […]
This documentary focuses on what is probably a mostly overlooked group of people persecuted by German Nazis between 1933 and 1945: male homosexuals. The title of the film refers to the law, enacted in 1871, that was largely overlooked until the reign of Adolf Hitler. It claimed sex between two men was illegal; lesbians, however, […]
This movie is sad and, at times, hard to watch. It is about Tomas Young, a soldier who signed up for the US Army immediately following the terror attacks of September 11, 2001. Only five days into his deployment in Iraq, Young took a shot in the back, leaving him paralyzed from the chest down. […]
Forty cents a day. That’s how much it costs to supply antiretroviral (ARV) drugs to an HIV/AIDS patient in sub-Saharan Africa. That is the gist of this short (30 minute) documentary created by HBO and (RED). Set in Zambia, the film documents the lives of several people whose lives have been turned around for the […]
This movie is disappointing. Which is too bad, because its premise is intriguing: three American political consultants (i.e., spin doctors) are hired to help Russian President Boris Yeltsin with his campaign in 1996. While the comedy is fictional, it is based on a true story. The team, made up of George Gorton, Dick Dresner, and […]
The fact that people of all political stripes take issue with this movie goes a long way to revealing its even handedness. Director Bonni Cohen does a wonderful job of introducing the audience to the men and women who interact with the Guantanamo detainees all day, every day. The prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, has […]
A federal judge has allowed Chevron to subpoena filmmaker Joe Berlinger for hundreds of hours of footage not used for “Crude,” a 2009 documentary. “Crude” is about the 17-year, $27.3 billion lawsuit brought against Chevron for allegedly dumping toxic oil waste in the Amazon sector of Ecuador. The 30,000 residents of the area have filed […]
Silence = Death That anti-AIDS slogan should be heeded worldwide but perhaps even moreso in Malawi. The singer Madonna traveled to the country, one of the world’s poorest, in 2006 and wrote and produced this documentary. It is about children growing up without parents who have died from AIDS and who have AIDS themselves. Out […]
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