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
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
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...
“Parasite” –Living Off Your Host
Parasite
This Korean multiple award-nominated, SAG Globe winning movie, Parasite, has captured the critics’ minds as it delves into the income gap, greed and class discrimination between the “one-percenter” wealthy Park family and the destitute, marginally employed Kim clan. The theme of the competitive, desperate search for wealth at one end of the income spectrum versus the content, oblivious upper-class entitlement at the other end permeates South Korean director, Bong Joon-ho’s films (“Snowpiercer” and “Mother” in particular.) This difficult theme...
Godfather of Harlem—Partners in Crime
Inspired
by a true story, Godfather of Harlem skillfully interweaves the combative and competing forces of the mafia with the battle for civil rights in the
mid-‘60s. In the riveting Epix limited series, Godfather of
Harlem, we see the character Bumpy Johnson (the exceptional Forest
Whitaker) re-enter the world of organized crime after being released from Alcatraz.
Drugs
have taken over many of New York’s poor communities, and the Italian mafia runs
most of them, now including the crime syndicate of Harlem which had been Bumpy
Johnson’s exclusive domain. Not...
Marriage Story (2019)-The Bonds of Love
Nominated this year for eleven Academy Awards, Marriage Story portrays two people who really care about, respect, and love each other, and yearn for a “gentle” amicable divorce resolution. They also are determined to nurture and nourish their young son, Henry, with as little wounding as possible.
Written, directed and produced by Noah
Baumbach (of “Squid and the Whale”, another excellent film about divorce), this
film eviscerates what happens in even the best-intentioned divorces,
reminiscent of the classic 1979 film
“Kramer vs Kramer”.
Charlie...