I.O.U.S.A. is not trying to be subtle.  It is very, very careful to be factual, politically neutral, and revelatory - but subtle, no way.  Director Patrick Creadon and advocates David Walker and Bob Bixby have a message to get out there and this! Movie! Is! It!  It seems clear that they were inspired by the […]

Rendition is the latest filmic attempt to draw attention to what’s already numbing us in the news. In this case, we have a citizen who is, um, renditioned on the way home to the US for a crime about which he is utterly ignorant, never mind culpable. Writer Kelley Sane seems to want […]

The Kingdom begins with a visually dynamic (almost TV commercial style) narrative of a brief history of 20th century US involvement in the Middle East, specifically the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia itself. It’s common knowledge, but the sort that gets swept away for being too morally ambiguous for the color coded terror system or […]

Director Pierra Rohov has the audacity to try and open a window into the mind of a suicide bomber with this documentary.  The challenge with such a thesis is that the upside-down logic of such a mind is nearly unfathomable to those outside it.  It goes against all our species’ inclinations and compulsions, and against […]

The film so controversial that it couldn’t release in U.S. theatres is now available on DVD on April 3, 2007. If you didn’t hear about it, Death of a President styles itself as a documentary about the 10/19/07 assassination of current president George W. Bush. It’s a provocative choice of subject matter no […]

This film was unavailable to me in my conservative military town, but Britt Augenfield at Special Ops Media was kind enough to provide me with a screening DVD. Thanks, Britt!
The filmmakers (Barbara Kopple and Cecelia Peck) wisely created a double movie with this documentary. On one side, it’s a detailed snapshot of America […]

I have not had the privilege of reading Alan Moore’s graphic novel response to the administration of Margaret Thatcher, but no matter. I read the news, I don’t need to imagine the fear that drove this work into being. I don’t know why Moore wanted his name taken off this film (especially […]

Munich presented me with many difficulties in the theatre and for the many weeks afterward during which I was rendered incapable of writing any of my reviews. I suppose one could say that would define the movie as “striking,” but it did not feel like the Best Picture candidate it certainly wanted to be. […]

I’m going to do it. I am going to come out and say that I did not understand a good deal of this film, and as a result, I found it nearly impossible to get engaged with the elements I did understand (fearing the rug to be pulled out) and I was unsurprised by […]

The Constant Gardener treads a fine line between being a political thriller, exposing the corruption that surrounds capitalism and victimizes the third world, and a family drama about a married couple whose differing passions drove them apart, and then together again (though too late to solve anything). It’s fascinating because it does not have […]