Month: February 2020

“For Sama”—A Letter to My Daughter

Written by Diana Paul on February 24, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. 1 Comment on “For Sama”—A Letter to My Daughter

For Sama is the most searing documentary about war that I have ever seen. Nominated this year for an Academy Award for Best International Film, For Sama presents some of the most unflinching war coverage and remarkable and courageous footage. A love letter to her infant daughter Sama, born in Aleppo, For Sama is a Syrian mother’s first-person account of the bombing of her beloved homeland over a period of five years. Aleppo, at the time, was one of the last strongholds resisting the Assad dictatorship. Waad Al-Khateab is the Syrian producer, cinematographer and hero of this...

“Clemency”–No Mercy or Absolution

Written by Diana Paul on February 17, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on “Clemency”–No Mercy or Absolution

What’s the psychological and moral cost to a society that administers the death penalty? That’s the question raised in Clemency, the winner of the Sundance drama award last year. So much more than a “death-row drama” , Clemency shifts the lens to the impact of bureaucratized human cruelty: a scathing portrait of the toll the process of administering an execution has on prison staff. We see how they are not executioners but bureaucratic cogs in a horrible machine of death. Sixty-something Bernadine (the remarkable African American actor Alfre...

The Report—An Exposé for Us All

Written by Diana Paul on February 10, 2020. Posted in movie reviews, Unhealed Wound. No Comments on The Report—An Exposé for Us All

Enhanced Interrogation Techniques (EIT)—is the focus of The Report, a provocative Amazon political thriller. A Senate staff researcher, Daniel Jones (Adam Driver) is assigned by Sen. Diane Feinstein (Annette Bening) to investigate detainees held by the CIA in “black sites”. A shameful chapter of American history unfolds , where torture was re-introduced as a legitimate tool in pursuit of national security. The Report employs flashbacks of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that are frightening and harrowing. Flashing back to 2001 immediately after 9/11, the anxiety...

1917—This Great War Is Not So Great

Written by Diana Paul on February 2, 2020. Posted in movie reviews. 2 Comments on 1917—This Great War Is Not So Great

The multiple award-winning 1917 is inspired by “American Beauty” writer-director Sam Mendes’s great grandfather’s experience during World War I. Almost everything you’ve ever seen in a war film is here in 1917. There are several homages to the classic Stanley Kubrick film, “Paths of Glory” (1957), including the technique of tracking a long take, seemingly a continuous single-shot with no cuts, of the brutal trench warfare that cost 9-12 million soldiers’ lives. (The calculus for civilian deaths would double the total.) It is as if we’re in...

Month: February 2020

“For Sama”—A Letter to My Daughter

“Clemency”–No Mercy or Absolution

The Report—An Exposé for Us All

1917—This Great War Is Not So Great

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