Films that demonstrate how governments or quasigovernmental groups have violated or promoted the values in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
PILLEGAL ALIENS EXCHANGE KIDNEYS FOR PASSPORTS IN DIRTY PRETTY THINGS “We drive your taxis, make your beds, and suck your cocks,” according to Dr. Okwe (played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) in Dirty Pretty Things, commenting on the fate of illegal aliens in London. A physician who left Nigeria to avoid arrest and prosecution for a murder […]
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THE DEATH PENALTY IS METED OUT TO MULTIPLE PERSONALITIES INSTEAD OF PSYCHIATRY IN IDENTITY Identity, directed by James Mangold, begins with a confusing fastforward prologue, consisting of newspaper clippings, including photos, about a boy who was abandoned by parents at a motel and then jumps to a second scene, where a psychiatrist (played by Alfred
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COMIC BOOK ANALOGIES TEACH TOLERANCE IN X-2: X-MEN UNITED X2: X-Men United, directed by Bryan Singer, takes many of the famous comic book characters into the White House. One of the taglines is “First, they were fighting for acceptance. Now, they’re battling for survival.” A voiceover at the beginning reminds filmviewers that evolution has produced
LILJA 4-EVER EXPOSES THE TEENAGE WHITE SLAVE TRADE Last year, the Political Film Society nominated Tricky Life as best film exposé for showing how the white slave trade operates between Uruguay and Spain. An even grimmer picture of the white slave trade, this time from Estonia to Sweden, is found in Lilja 4-Ever, directed by
THE LIFE OF DAVID GALE PLEADS FOR ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY How far will a person go to express commitment to a cause? Soldiers die in battle for their country. Socrates drank the hemlock to protest thought control. In The Life of David Gale, an opponent of the death penalty, David Gale (played by
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TWO REVIEWS SEPARATED BY 20 YEARS COSTA-GAVRAS’S AMEN DOCUMENTS THE NAZI HORRORS (February 15, 2023) Many films have emerged recently to contradict those who have denied the Holocaust. Amen, directed by Constantine Costa-Gavras has trumped them all, providing specific documentation from an unwilling participant who supplied gas to the death camps, with a story based
A SINGLE FATHER ESTABLISHES A PRECEDENT TO GET BACK HIS CHILDREN IN EVELYN When Evelyn begins, Desmond Doyle (played by Pierce Brosnan) is celebrating Christmas together with his wife and their three children in Dublin; the year is 1953. Earlier, Desmond lost his job and had been spending so much time drinking at the local
A SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION EMERGES IN TO END ALL WARS The early comment in To End All Wars by a Scottish soldier characterizing World War II as the second “war to end all wars” somehow tells us that we are to view a film that will make us think. Based on the book The Miracle on
AUSTRALIAN “HALF-CASTES” DENIED RIGHTS ALONG THE RABBIT-PROOF FENCE The longest fence in the world bisects Australia for 1,500 miles. Farmland is on one side of the fence, which thus serves to prevent rabbits from invading the crops; hence the name “rabbit-proof fence.” Building and maintaining the fence placed some European settlers into contact with the
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ARMENIAN GENOCIDE FEATURED IN ARARAT Ararat, directed by Atom Egoyan, is a film about a film. We see only a few scenes staged for the background film, entitled “Arara,” which might have been an exciting epic about the death of one million Armenians in 1915 by the government of Turkey, which forced them on a