CONCLAVE EXPOSES HOW POPES MAY BE CHOSEN When the public sees smoke from the Vatican chimney, the inference is that the cardinals have not yet agreed upon a new pope. That’s how Conclave ends, so the drama takes place beforehand in a film that director Edward Burger assures is extremely accurate in details, though the […]
THE APPRENTICE TRIES TO EXPLAIN THE TRUMP PUZZLE Donald Trump attracts voters regardless of his dangerous policy pronouncements, so domestic and foreign pundits have been baffled, unable to explain how such a person could exist in the United States of America. The Apprentice, directed by Ali Abbasi, seeks to lay out how his life evolved
REAGAN PROVIDES AN INSIDER’S VIEW OF THE FORMER PRESIDENT Biopics tend to glorify those portrayed, and Reagan does so in spades, resulting in applause at the end of the film in a Los Angeles theater even a few days after the premier. The film’s chronology begins in his childhood, when Ronny (played by David Henrie)
KIDNAPPED: THE ABDUCTION OF EDGARDO MORTARA FEATURES ITALIAN HISTORY Director Marco Bellocchio has filmed a history of Italy in which the fate of one person—Edgardo Mortara (played at age 6 by Enea Sala, as an adult by Leonardo Maltese)—galvanized opposition to rule over parts of the country known then as the Papal States. During the
I AM GITMO TELLS THE TRUTH ABOUTTHE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S WAR CRIMES As a title at the end of the film attests, 86 percent of those at Guantánamo should not have been there. What happened is that Defense Secretary Rumsfeld had thousands of leaflets dropped in Afghanistan after 9/11, encouraging Afghans to rat on their rivals,
THE OLD OAK SHOWS HOW RELICS OF THE PAST MIGHT ENJOY THE FUTURE Director Ken Loach has a knack for depicting how forgotten people view their worlds. In his The Old Oak he focuses on a pub called The Old Oak in a small town near Durham, northeast England, during the year 2016. Once upon
ORIGIN EXPLAINS HOW ISABEL WILKERSON CONDUCTED RESEARCH Isabel Wilkerson’s book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, published in 2000, was awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Director Ava DuVernay decided to make a film to demonstrate not only the thesis of the book but how she did her field research to derive insights stated in the book.
LA SYNDICALISTE EXPOSES ONE OF CHINA’S QUESTS TO DOMINATE THE GLOBAL MARKET Directed by Jean-Paul Salomé, La Syndicaliste is a biopic with three stories. The first is how Maureen Kearney (played by Isabelle Huppert) spent twenty years as a trade union firebrand (whence the title), fighting on behalf of 50,000 union workers to relieve their
The film Napoleon has brought to the screen the rise and fall of Napoléon Bonaparte (played by Joaquin Phoenix) with particular emphasis on his military career and his love life with Empress Josephine (Vanessa Kirby). Financed by Cinémathèque Français and Netflix, the film is a modern restoration of a 1927 French film classic. His early
WAIKIKI MOURNS THE LIVES OF MANY NATIVE HAWAIIANS Christopher Kahunahana, the first Native Hawaiian to direct a film, has decided to portray how some people occupying islands for more than a thousand years now feel strangers in their own land. The focus is on Kea (played by Danielle Zalopany), who is employed as a hula