HARRIET achieves the proper, and richly deserved, tone of reverence for its subject, Harriet Tubman. That is, alas, its greatest failing. The astonishing life of one of the most courageous Americans who has ever lived is told in a series of set pieces, vignettes with all drama sapped from them as they take on the… Read More »
LUCE
LUCE is less a film than a political dialectic on race and class in these United States, and a brilliant, exquisitely performed one at that. Told with a deliberate, sometimes maddening ambiguity, it challenges the audience at every turn about where the truth lies, and the limits of familial loyalty. By the end, not every… Read More »
THE BEST OF ENEMIES
We know going in to THE BEST OF ENEMIES that there will be soul-searching and redemption. The challenge for director Robin Bissell in adapting this true-life story from the book by Osha Gray Davidson was to frame doing the right thing in terms that truly demonstrate to the audience the temper of the times that… Read More »
BLINDSPOTTING — Daveed Diggs & Rafael Casal
Click here to listen to the interview. Click for the full review of BLINDSPOTTING. When I spoke to BLINDSPOTTING’s co-stars/co-writers Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal on July 12, 2018, I decided to start the conversation with one of the things that struck me most about their film, which was the enormous compassion it shows for… Read More »
HOSTILES
HOSTILES is a film that takes itself very seriously. It should. Taking as its themes both human nature’s capacity for violence and its overweening need for mercy, it is not something to be approached lightly, something that director Scott Cooper took to heart in his adaptation of the late Donald E. Stewart’s manuscript. Set in… Read More »
SUBURBICON
Chekov’s three sisters had their dream of a perfect life in Moscow. The increasingly desperate and frazzled denizens of SUBURBICON have Aruba, a place where the food is exotic, the golf is for couples, and the long arm of the law cannot reach them. Alas, this deliciously stylized evocation of the dark side of the… Read More »
DOLORES — Dolores Huerta and Peter Bratt Interview
Dolores Huerta is a woman who revels in the victories she has won over the years, victories too numerous to list here. She is also a woman who, at 87, has not slowed down in her fight for what still needs to be done in her fight for social justice. The legend started as young… Read More »
SAMI BLOOD — Amanda Kernell Interview
SAMI BLOOD is the first Swedish film in the South Sami language, the language of that country’s reindeer-herding indigenous people of the north. Amanda Kernell, part Sami herself, realized the enormous responsibility that comes not only with that, but also with accurately representing the racism that sent the Sami to enforced boarding schools where they… Read More »
RESISTANCE AT TULE LAKE — Konrad Aderer Interview
An interviewee in Konrad Aderer’s RESISTANCE AT TULE LAKE compares that militarized internment camp to Guantanamo. It’s a connection that I had not made before, but which is just one of the many enlightening moments in the documentary. When I spoke with Aderer on March 11, 2017, it was just before RESISTANCE’s world premiere at… Read More »
DEFENDER — Jeff Adachi Interview
Jeff Adachi has devoted his professional life to public service, serving as a public defender for 32 years, the last 15 of which in the top elected spot in the public defender’s office. Somehow he has also managed to carve out a sideline as a filmmaker, making documentaries that examine racial issues in our culture… Read More »