BRITISH TROOPS COPE WITH THE IRA IN THE FILM ‘71 Seemingly based on a true story, the film ’71 depicts how fictional Gary Hook (played by Jack O’Donnell), a rookie British soldier, is dispatched to Belfast, receives orders to quell a riot through an amateurish operation, but is accidentally isolated from the rest of his […]
OUTCAST HAS BEEN CAST OUT BY THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT Directed by Nick Powell, the film Outcast has a lot of combat, beginning with the Crusades, when Gallain (played by Nicholas Cage) is disappointed that his military student Jacob (Hayden Christiansen) has apparently killed women and children (though Jacob did not do so). Both leave separately,
AMERICAN SNIPER REVEALS COMBAT IN IRAQ, TROUBLE AT HOME Clint Eastwood, in directing American Sniper, wants the world to know the patriotism, fog of war, difficulty of avoiding the killing of women and children, and how the war experience makes life difficult for a wife and family back home. Based on the autobiography of Chris
SELMA RECALLS THE HEROES OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE Selma is intended to show the conflicts that Martin Luther King, Jr., (played by David Oyelowo) faced before the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. One conflict was with Malcolm X (Nigel Thatch), another with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Selma led by John Lewis
THE INTERVIEW ANGERS NORTH KOREA AND EXPOSES HOLLYWOOD FOOLISHNESS Freaky behind the scenes, Dave Skylark (played by James Franco) has an interview program on television, produced by Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen). At the beginning of The Interview, rap star Eminem admits on the program that he is gay, and Rob Lowe takes off his wig
THE KILL TEAM EXPLAINS HOW SOME AMERICAN WAR CRIMES HAVE OCCURRED Patriotic Americans volunteer to serve in the army of the United States only to learn that the they are sometimes at the mercy of their commanding officers more than in jeopardy because of an enemy. In The Kill Team, a documentary directed by cinematographer
INTERSTELLAR TRIES TO SOLVE HAWKING’S PROBLEM WITH ACTION The premise for interplanetary travel is that the earth is dying: The population is far below 1 billion, dust storms signal the inability to grow food, and the last crop is corn, which is endangered. Needing a new pilot, NASA evidently jiggles the earth polarity to summon
THE BETTER ANGELS IS ABOUT A MORE HUMBLE USA In a very slow moving, black-and-white film, The Better Angels is a study of how 8-year-old Abraham Lincoln (played by Braydon Denney) is brought up in a log cabin in 1817 within the Indiana backwoods. The two angels are his first mother, who died, and his
THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING IS ABOUT HOPE A biopic about the personal life of Stephen Hawking (played by Eddie Redmayne), The Theory of Everything traces his life from 1963, when he was a brilliant Cambridge University physics student until he has an audience with the queen and turns down knighthood. He impresses his professor, Dennis
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PREJUDICE REIGNS IN DEAR WHITE PEOPLE The title is the name of a vlog operated by Samantha White (played by Tessa Thompson), a Black student at an Ivy League school (though filmed at the University of Minnesota). A candidate for the presidency of a dorm, she is annoyed by White naïveté toward her race and