Uncategorized

MICHAEL MOORE’S THE BIG ONE EXPOSES ARROGANT CEOs Although a documentary, not eligible for a Political Film Society award, Michael Moore (of Roger & Me fame) films his book tour of the United States and efforts to interview corporation heads regarding massive employment layoffs and corporate welfare in the context of megaprofits.  A highlight of

In Alain Berliner’s The Wall (Le Mur, with English subtitles), the year 2000 approaches in Belgium, a country of 10 million in a territory about the same size as Maryland. Although Belgians were ruled for nearly 1,800 years by conquerors, including Rome, the Franks, Burgundy, Spain, Austria, and France, then handed to Holland in 1815 after the

Steam: The Turkish Bath   One of the most puzzling mysteries concerns one’s sexual identity. When does a man suddenly decide that he is gay? For many men who have never had a sexual encounter with a member of the opposite sex, the realization often comes quite early, before puberty. What about the married man

The Spanish Prisoner, directed and written by David Mamet, is a film about a con. Similar to The Maltese Falcon (1931), nearly everyone involved is greedy and will stop at nothing to get their hands on something of extreme value. In The Spanish Prisoner, the thing of value is a “process,” developed by a research scientist who works

  At least one major film each year of late has been devoted to the subject of death. In almost every case, the aim has been to soften the blow. Young adults are learning to respect the elderly as never before while the average age of Americans increases, but coping with death seems difficult for

The Pentagon Wars, directed by Richard Benjamin, is an exposé based on the true story of the costly development of the Bradley Fighting Machine tank, which first emerged in 1975 as a concept of a new, super-duper high-tech weapon but awaited the large increase in the military budget under President Ronald Reagan. A committee of

  In Hurlyburly, adopted from the David Rabe’s stage play of the 1980s by director Anthony Drazan, the male characters drink, snort coke, have emotionless heterosex, or just have no emotions at all. When all is said and done, the characters seem too dissolute and the plot seems preposterous, but then the title well describes the

In Fishbelly White, a farm boy has become a teenager but still retains his pet chicken, and his favorite trick is to put the head of the chicken in his mouth for several seconds. The boy puts the chicken in the basket of his bicycle as he pedals around the countryside. Although he wants to be