LUTHER NAILS THE VATICAN’S SIMPLISTIC VIEW OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH A biopic about the life of Martin Luther is a most ambitious undertaking indeed, and director Eric Till has responded to the challenge with Luther as a study of a man whose ideas successfully challenge the ossified theology of Roman Catholicism under Leo XII as […]

IN THIS WORLD EXPOSES PEOPLE SMUGGLING In This World appears to be a documentary of a true story, but in the style of the Blair Witch Project (1999). The plot is about sixteen-year-old orphan Jamal Udin Torabi and his cousin, twentysomething Enayatullah, two Afghan refugees in the Shamshatoo refugee camp of one million Afghan refugees

WASHINGTON HEIGHTS UNMASKS THE PLIGHT OF DOMINICANS IN NEW YORK Washington Heights, directed by Alfredo de Villa, is the second film screened this year about Dominicans in New York City. Whereas Manito involves an older brother trying to help his younger brother make it in American society as the family’s first high school graduate despite

LEGALLY BLONDE 2 , UNSURPRISINGLY, TRIVIALIZES POLITICS The film Legally Blonde was a hit in 2001 because Elle Wells (played by Reese Witherspoon), an intelligent yet flamboyant girl from Bel Air, was not only admitted to Harvard Law School but also made inroads into Washington politics. In Legally Blonde 2: Red, White & Blonde she

Gun battles in the rainy Panamanian jungle bewilder the filmviewer in Basic, directed by John McTiernan. Who is fighting whom over what? Perhaps a second screening will be required to answer the puzzle over the plot, but lost is an excellent opportunity to present a contemporary version of the 1950 classic Rashomon. Instead, the ending

TWO FILMS PERSONALIZE THE “WAR ON DRUGS” When A Man Apart begins, Sean Vetter (played by Vin Diesel) informs us that the border between México and the United States is 5,000 miles long, separated by a 15 foot fence, yet an average of 20 tons of cocaine goes across monthly into the world’s largest market

THE CINEMATIC HEAD OF STATE IS AN UNDISTINGUISHED GENTLEMAN Colin Powell is undoubtedly the only African American today who can gain his party’s nomination for president; he can credibly run a campaign about real problems with commonsense solutions, and he may have an excellent chance of winning. A Hollywood screenplay in which a Black might

In Nowhere in Africa (Nirgendwo in Afrika), a German film directed by Caroline Link, a Jewish family in Breslau, Germany, wisely exits from the country in 1938. In view of the fact that immigration opportunities were closed to Jews in the Northern Hemisphere, Walter Redlich (played by Merab Ninidze) relocates in British Kenya. He then

A 21ST CENTURY RAMBO STOPS ETHNIC CLEANSING IN TEARS OF THE SUN Tears of the Sun, directed by Antoine Fuqua, is about a rescue operation in Nigeria. A news broadcast begins the film, reporting that a civil war has broken out, with the Moslem North engaging in ethnic cleansing of the Christian South, following the

THE SOUTH RISES AGAIN IN GODS AND GENERALS, WITH LINCOLN AS VILLAIN A prequel of Gettysburg (1993), the recently released film Gods and Generals, directed by Ronald F. Maxwell, is a semi-docudrama that tries to ape the novel (and film) Gone with the Wind but succeeds only in providing nearly four hours of transparent propaganda.