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CLEMENCY PROVIDES MANY REASONS FOR ABOLISHING THE DEATH PENALTY Most arguments against capital punishment are based on morality—that there is a right to life. But Clemency gives many social psychological reasons—how killing one person in fact corrodes the lives of many others. Directed by Chinonye Chukwu, the focus in Clemency is on unsmiling yet composed […]

JUST MERCY HONORS THE ONE WHO GOT 140 BLACKS RELEASED FROM DEATH ROW Bryan Stevenson (played by Michael B. Jordan) decided to establish the Equal Justice Initiative in Monroe County, Alabama, in 1989. Mistreated as an African American while growing up in Delaware, he accepted an invitation from local advocate Eva Ansley (Brie Larson) to

BOMBSHELL REVEALS THE SEXIST FOXNEWS CULTURE Jay Roach directs Bombshell to demonstrate the downfall of FoxNews CEO Roger Ailes (played by John Lithgow) and Bill O’Reilly (Kevin Dorff). The film reveals that females cannot appear on the cable network unless they first show off their bodies to Ailes—and more. They accept Ailes’s prejudices to get

SEBERG TRIES TO EXPLAIN WHY A BUDDING ACTRESS DIED AT AGE 40 Iowa-born actress Jean Seberg (played by Kristen Stewart), icon of the French New Wave films, flies from Paris to Los Angeles in 1968. When Hakim Jamal (Anthony Makie) demands to sit in first class, she supports him. When she walks off the plane,

A HIDDEN LIFE SHOWS THE EFFECTS OF NAZI CONTROL OF AUSTRIA The Austrian Alps are a cinematic paradise where farmers work hard but happily. The Anschluss changed the situation, as depicted in A Hidden Life, directed by Terrence Malick. At the center is Franz Jägerstätter (played by August Diehl) and his family in St. Radegund.

RICHARD JEWELL PROVES THAT THE FBI MAKES MISTAKES—TRAGIC ONES On almost the very day when the Inspector General of the Department of Justice filed a report containing criticisms of FBI officials, Richard Jewell was released to provide vivid evidence of the same. In 1996, security guard Jewell (played by Paul Walter Hauser) spots a possible

THE TWO POPES ANSWERS WHY BENEDICT XVI RESIGNED Popes are supposed to remain at the head of the Catholic Church until death. But Benedict XVI suddenly resigned in 2013, and Francis I took his place. The Two Popes provides an explanation within what is in part a biopic of Francis I with many flashbacks. Filmviewers

DARK WATERS REVEALS HOW 99% OF THE WORLD HAS BEEN DELIBERATELY POISONED When heat under Teflon breaks the surface while cooking, small particles of Teflon enter the gastrointestinal system as a poison, a fact brought to light in Dark Waters, directed by Todd Haynes. That fact, however, was well known to DuPont, which manufactured the

THE REPORT EXPOSES HOW WASHINGTON WORKS WHEN TRUTH IS DANGEROUS The 2009 book George W. Bush, War Criminal? Identifies 269 war crimes, but the one that attracted the most attention was torture. Senator Dianne Feinstein (played by Annette Bening) was eager to expose the practice, which yielded nothing of value according to the CIA. The

THE WARRIOR QUEEN OF JHANSI IS ABOUT INDIA’S JOAN OF ARC The English East India Company (EEIC) began in 1600 to facilitate trade between the Indian subcontinent and Britain. But when the Mughal Empire (with a capital at Agra, the site of the Taj Mahal) fragmented from 1720, the company used the British army to