Civil Brand, directed by Neema Barnette, asks us to believe that twenty-five African American female inmates of a racially segregated Tennessee prison won a lawsuit against administrators to end a reign of terror. The prison is maximum security Whitehead Correctional Institute, which is managed by a corporation in the private sector that makes up rules […]
The film City of Ghosts, cowritten and directed by Matt Dillon, appears to be a remake of The Third Man (1949), with a man arriving in a strange city to pursue something lucrative with someone notorious, but Dillon’s story is far more gruesome. In the early part of the film, a hurricane has devastated many homeowners in
What is the psychological effect of being laid off permanently? Statistics show a high correlation with suicide in many countries, but Spain has a low suicide rate. Accordingly, the film Mondays in the Sun (Los lunes al sol), directed by Fernando León de Aranoa, provides more complex answers about some 200 dockworkers in Vigo, Galicia, who,
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In Merci Docteur Rey, directed and written by Andrew Litvack, two dead bodies threaten to bring reality to the fantasy lives of several narcissistic characters. The first dead body emerges quite early in the film. Twenty-three-year-old Thomas Beaumont (played by Stanislas Merhar), who has been paid 1,500 francs to hide in the closet of a Paris
The success of CNN is due not just to the vision of Ted Turner but to what Live from Baghdad identifies as the “guts and judgment” of Robert Weiner, who during the months leading up to the Gulf War of 1991 made a genuine broadcasting breakthrough which made CNN the world’s premier station for late-breaking news. Live from
When Phone Booth begins, a voiceover tells filmviewers that a particular phone booth near Times Square (53rd & 8th) will be removed the following day, presumably outmoded in the modern age of cellphones. Indeed, we next observe publicist Stewart Shepard (played by Colin Farrell) talking on his cellphone with various clients as if he were some sort
Where did all the “Valley girls” go? In the 1970s, a linguistic phenomenon emerged in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles at schools and newly opened shopping malls, when spoiled Gentile girls peppered their conversations with such words as “bitchin,” chased boys, and otherwise spent their time idly while their narcissistic parents were too
POLLS CLOSE ON NOMINATIONS FOR BEST POLITICAL FILMS OF 2001 December 31, 2001, was the last day to nominate films for Political Film Society awards. Films made outside the United States were noticeably numerous among the nominees for 2001. Two categories had more than five nominations, so the number of competing films must be reduced
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Our Lady of the Assassins (La Virgen de los Sicarios) focuses on Fernando (played by Germán Jaramillo) , who was born in Medellín, Colombia, when it was a peaceful if boring farming community. His literary talents took him to Europe, where presumably he lived a full life but we are left to infer that he contracted
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A street-smart Czech and a film-crazed Russian, the master criminals of 15 Minutes, land at JFK airport with barely a penny in their pockets, hungry to collect a payoff from a crime committed in Eastern Europe. Emil Slovak (played by Karel Roden), nevertheless, has a game plan–commit wild crimes, get a million dollars in the