WHY ARE POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS SO ROUGH?OUR BRAND IS CRISIS TELLS WHY  Based on the 2002 election in Bolivia of Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada de Bustamante, which was first covered as a documentary with the same title in 2005, Our Brand of Crisis so loosely recreates that election that there is no “Based on True Facts” title […]

WOODLAWN PLEADS FOR CHRISTIAN LOVE TO SOLVE RACE PROBLEMS Races have been brought together through American sports at various levels, but until Woodlawn, the transformation of Birmingham, Alabama, in 1973/74 had not been told on the screen. When the film begins, documentary footage provides some context of the era. Then African American students are bussed

OLVIDADOS LINKS AMERICA’S OPERATION CONDOR WITH TORTURE OF LEFTISTS When Olvidados begins, soldiers from six dictatorships in Latin Americas are being trained at an American base in Panamá to engage in Operation Condor, which aimed to eliminate the supposed threat of Soviet communist efforts to overthrow military regimes during the 1970s and 1980s. The film

SICARIO IS TRANSLATED AS “HITMAN” The secret “drug war” is featured in Sicario. Although audiences learn how to translate “sicario” into English through opening titles, they do not learn the identity or motivation of the hitman until the end of the film. When the action begins, FBI agent Kate Macer (played by Emily Blunt)assigned to

THE KEEPING ROOM IS UNKEPT Touted at the beginning as an anti-war film, the plot reveals what happens when soldiers have guns and drink too much—violence for the hell of it. The black-and-white film is set in 1865, around the end of the Civil War. The soldiers, from the North, evidently believe that their mission

PAWN SACRIFICE REVEALS THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOBBY FISCHER From the age of 4, Bobby Fischer (played by Toby Maguire) was obsessive/compulsive about chess, which was self-taught. Pawn Sacrifice, directed by Edward Zwick, follows his career up the day when he became world champ in 1972, defeating Boris Spassky (Liev Schreiber). Sheltered by his

STONEWALL RECALLS THE BIRTH OF THE GAY RIGHTS MOVEMENT There was a time when amorous attraction to someone of the same sex was considered a mental illness, a reason for exclusion from government jobs, a basis for police persecution, and even expulsion from one’s own family and school. Even today, as a title at the

GUILT & LOVE RISE FROM PHOENIX Jews were well accepted in Protestant Germany for centuries and intermarried with Germans perhaps more than in any other country in Europe. Hitler’s purge of Jews was not easily accomplished, since offspring of mixed marriages had fractions of Jewish blood, so where was the line to be drawn? Phoenix

VIETNAM IS THE SANCTUARY FOR AMERICANS FLEEING CAMBODIA IN NO ESCAPE Most of No Escape consists of an American couple caught in a civil war in Southeast Asia, seeking to escape their execution by rebels, with little explanation why. The film begins with an assassination of the prime minister, then goes back 19 hours to

CHLOE AND THEO UPEND NEW YORK Theo (played by Theo Ikummaq) is an Intuit in the Arctic, where the landscape and icescape are receding. With a vision that some day the sun will melt all, he is sent by his community to let “elders” in the South know that something must be done. When he