I am a little short on time so I am posting relevant portions of the press release with the news about the release of the new film FATIMA. Click HERE for my review of FATIMA at the National Catholic Reporter and Click HERE for my interview with Andrea Bocelli about his musical role in the film. ________________ ACADEMY AWARD® NOMINEE HARVEY KEITEL AND GOLDEN GLOBE® NOMINEE SÔNIA BRAGA ARE FEATURED IN THE POWERFUL AND UPLIFTING STORY INSPIRED BY MIRACULOUS... Read more
The release of HBO’s documentary On the Record could not be more timely. Directed and produced by Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering (The Hunting Ground, The Invisible War), the chilling accounts of three black women in the recording industry who alleged to have been abused by African American hip-hop music mogul Russell Simmons, coincides with the outrage at the killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd by white policemen. Why? Because men in power abuse others because they can. Plus, they often get away with it or... Read more
Eric Schaal/Life Magazine, via University of Wyoming I cry so easily these days. I am on day 33 of quarantine in this time of the Corona-19 virus. Watching movies like “Jump Shot” moved me greatly and made me sob. Maybe its because of the innocence of the story, and the humility of the man who “invented” the jump shot as a 13 year-old kid in 1933 in Wyoming, playing hoops with his much taller brother. It was a basketball... Read more
Bobby (James Le Gros) is middle-aged, divorced and a brilliant unpublished graphic novel artist. He lives alone in a trailer somewhere behind the main street of Phoenix, Oregon where he works as a bartender at a restaurant owned by his obnoxious boss Kyle (Diedrich Bader) who steals from the tip jar. When Bobby goes home at night he muses over his art and wonders if his ex-wife ever thinks of him. His old friend Carlos (Jesse Borrego) is the head... Read more
Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) is a construction worker who lives alone, works all day and drinks away his evenings at the local bar, Harold’s Place, near the port. He’s a full-fledged alcoholic and manages to hide it from all except the men in the bar who help him get home every night. He starts drinking beer as soon as he gets up. He puts hard liquor in his water bottle and coffee cup. One day, out of the blue, Father... Read more
The tragic reality depicted in this year’s Oscar-nominated documentary “The Cave” from director Feras Fayyad (previously nominated for “Last Man in Aleppo”), though filmed in 2018, is real and it is current. Dr. Amani Ballour, a pediatrician and the featured hospital manager in the bombed-out city of Al Ghouta, Syria that is the subject of the film told me in an interview last week: “This movie is the truth, I want the audience to know this. This war on Syria’s... Read more
“1917” is a relentless video game-like imagining of one day during World War I. Though it shows the horrors of war, Sam Mendes’ indulgent spectacle fails to take into account the audiences’ will or ability to sustain almost two hours of horror for a five-minute denouement. As a whole, the film fails cinematically even if some scenes are effective. It is not based on one true story, but an amalgamation of memories. Set in the trenches in France, mild-mannered British... Read more
Mark Ruffalo as attorney Rob Billot in “Dark Waters” Courtesy of (c) Focus Features The first thing you think of when you begin watching director Todd Haynes’ legal crime drama “Dark Waters” is “Erin Brockovich” – the person and the 2000 movie that won Julia Roberts an Oscar for best Actress. The next thing you think of is Steven Zaillian’s “A Civil Action,” the 1998 film where John Travolta plays attorney Jan Schlichtmann. What do the three films have in common? The... Read more
CNN’s new original series, The Redemption Project with Van Jones, premiered at Easter and concludes in June. Be sure not to miss any of the remaining episodes airing on Sunday evenings at 9 PM Et/PT. You can catch past episodes on CNN mobile apps. This series, week after week, is an adventure is restorative justice through asking, giving and receiving forgiveness, opportunities for perpetrators of crimes to take responsibility for their actions. Restorative justice is the opposite of punitive justice... Read more
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‘Non-Fiction’ shows people lost in a publishing limbo (Doubles vies)
I would like to introduce you to a film by the writer-director Richard Linklater of France: Oliver Assayas. This is so at least in his new film “Non-Fiction.” Why, you ask? Because he, the screenwriter, just cannot stop talking. After the first ten minutes of the film I thought I was listening to Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy talking and talking as they do in Linklater’s “Before” trilogy, hoping they would actually do something other than pose and re-pose at... Read more