Hillary, an intimate and candid four-part series about former First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton– one of the most admired and vilified women in the world–features never-before-seen footage of her life from birth in a close-knit family in Chicago, Illinois. The mission of this documentary is not only to interview Hillary Clinton (for a total of thirty-five hours) and several dozen colleagues and personal friends but also to try to analyze why people found Clinton so compelling—and so polarizing. Yet Hillary is so much more than a biopic....
“Baptiste”–After The Missing
In this spinoff of the BBC popular series “The Missing”, detective Baptiste is now retired and recovering from brain surgery. The six-part crime procedural, Baptiste, is an intense crime thriller.
Baptiste (Tchéky Karyo) is called in by Amsterdam’s Chief of Police and former lover to investigate the disappearance of Natalie, a young sex worker. He meets her uncle Edward (Tom Hollander of “The Night Manager”) and soon Baptiste and Edward become involved in taking down a Romanian crime organization. The Romanians are in the business...
“Contagion”–Infects Us All
Contagion
With the tagline: “Don’t talk to anyone. Don’t touch anyone”, this B-rated movie “Contagion” (2011), directed by Stephen Soderbergh, is eerily prescient nine years later.
A pandemic–“a novel virus”– is about to create havoc, beginning with the opening scene where Beth Emhoff (Gwyneth Paltrow) is at the Hong Kong airport, waiting to catch a plane back to Chicago. Her husband Mitch (Matt Damon) will soon discover that his wife is patient zero–the original carrier of the deadly virus which begins to get...
“Little Fires Everywhere”–Incendiary at Its Best
Set in Shaker Heights, Ohio during the late 1990s, Little Fires Everywhere is based on Celeste Ng’s best-selling novel by the same name. Reese Witherspoon (Elena)and Kerry Washington (Mia) steal the show as mothers from vastly different socioeconomic backgrounds. This is a suburban saga with a painfully close lens focused on the income gap, class, and racial divide we know only so well. In the opening scene a house in Shaker Heights is engulfed in an inferno. Is it the target of arson? We will find out. The year is 1997.
Shaker...
“Blow the Man Down”–Maine Down Under
Premiering at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, Blow the Man Down is a film debut by writer-directors Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy. It opens in Easter Cove, a small parochial fishing village along the coast of Maine, in a somewhat clichéd but contemporary riff on “Murder She Wrote”.
We see a history of covering up secrets by the
small town’s residents. And we listen to
a chorus of fishermen sing “blow the man down” –referring to the
shoving of a man to the bottom of a boat, either accidentally or on purpose. ...
Last Days of Vietnam– The Best and Worst of Us
Last Days of Vietnam (2015), a PBS documentary in
the American Experience television series, is produced and directed by Rory
Kennedy, and was a 2015 Academy Award nominee for Best
Documentary Feature.
Forty-five years ago–on April 29, 1975-the US
war ceased in South Vietnam. As North Vietnamese army tanks and troops moved
into Saigon, the US ambassador fiercely resisted an evacuation. But a large number of U.S. diplomats and military operatives argued
for an orderly withdrawal. With no
congressional support, the White House ordered American...