Films that bring previously obscured truths about the political process to the attention of the public, showing for example how offices of public trust are used for private purposes.
BLACKKKLANSMAN IS THE FIRST ANTI-TRUMP FILM SO FAR Released to coincide with the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville weekend incident, BlacKkKlansman identifies President Donald Trump as the fulfillment of the dreams of Klansman David Duke. The film begins and ends with documentary footage. Civil War carnage is presented in the beginning. Charlottesville chaos is captured toward the end. […]
22 JULY SHOWS HOW A TERRORIST EVENT CHANGES NORWAY In 143 minutes, director Paul Greengrass gives more than enough time in 22 July to explain Norway’s version of 9/11. On that date in 2011, Anders Behring Breivik (played by Anders Danielsen Lie) set off a bomb near the prime minister’s office and then opened fire on Utøya Island,
CHAPPAQUIDDICK DROWNS MORE THAN MARY JO KOPECHNE The Kennedy curse may have accounted for the death of the first Kennedy son and the assassination of the next two Kennedys, but not for what happened to Ted Kennedy (played by Jason Clarke) on the night of July 18, 1969. At 11 p.m., after a party with a
THE YOUNG KARL MARX IS NOT BABYFOOD Those attending The Young Karl Marx might expect to see a baby become an infant, a teenager, and emerge as an adult. But Haitian-born director Raoul Peck, whose film Lumumba received a Political Film Society nomination, starts the film in 1843, when Karl Marx (played by August Diehl) was about 25 years old,
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ALL THE MONEY IN THE WORLD IS A BIOPIC OF GETTY AND HIS GRANDSON’S FATE J. Paul Getty (played by Christopher Plummer) was one of the richest persons in world history. All the Money in the World, directed by previous Political Film Society nominee Ridley Scott, demonstrates how he got his fortune (by making the first deal
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A REPORTER’S CAREER BEGINS IN THE PIRATES OF SOMALIA When Jay Bahadur (played by Evan Peters) wrote a term paper about the peaceful transfer of power in Somalia’s democracy, he was hoping for a career as a writer. But after being turned down by publishers on his first efforts, he unexpectedly ran into a famous journalist, Seymour Tolbin
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MAY 1940 IS ENGLAND’S DARKEST HOUR, BUT WAS IT CHURCHILL’S FINEST? Whereas the summertime film Churchill depicts a prime minister ignored by Allied military commander Dwight Eisenhower in 1944, and Winston Churchill: The Wilderness Years (1981) traces the decade after he was booted from a Cabinet position, Darkest Hour focuses on the days in May 1940 before and after Churchill’s rise to
TOM OF FINLAND SPANS THE ERA FROM HOMOPHOBIA TO ACCEPTANCE The biopic of Touro Laaksonen, known as Tom of Finland (played by Pekka Strang) begins by explaining why the very talented artist, born in a town in Finland during 1920, became the premier gay artist of all time. During the war with the Soviet Union, he
THE DIVINE ORDER REVEALS HOW SWISS TREATED WOMEN BEFORE THEY COULD VOTE Although not intended as a companion of The Breadwinner, the film The Divine Order provides a comparison between how women are badly treated by the Taliban today and Switzerland before 1971. Once again, a distorted interpretation of religion is the basis for mistreatment. The Divine Order is situated in
MARSHALL IS THE MOST ELOQUENT FILM OF THE YEAR From beginning to end, the dialog of Marshall is a filmviewer’s dream—a plot that might seem ordinary becomes poetry of the likes of Langston Hughes (briefly played by Jussie Smollett), a classmate of Thurgood Marshall. The protagonist is a young attorney named Thurgood Marshall (played by Chadwick Boseman), who narrates that