We are part of a fortunate and collective audience. Through films, we can go back in time and we be part of history by the recreation of our past, as dark and uncomfortable as it may be. I believe the exposure to our past — especially by younger audiences — is essential. By exploring the…
In the last few decades, films about workers and the labor movement in American cinema have been few and far between. Documentaries such as American Factory, however, can begin to shed light on the problems facing workers in the 21st century world of global capitalism. Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert (“Making Morning Star”),…
At a time when typical Hollywood fare consists of retreads and blockbusters aimed at mass markets, introspective and highly personal films have become increasingly rare. That alone is reason to celebrate Alfonso Cuarón’s (“Gravity”) Roma, an intimate journey that draws on the director’s memory of a childhood filled with domestic turmoil as well as a…
Martin Luther King’s message that people should be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character came one year too late to reach the folks encountered by black Jamaican jazz pianist Dr. Don Shirley (Mahershala Ali, “Hidden Figures”), in his 1962 concert tour of the segregated Deep South….
Somber, unrelenting and ultimately life-affirming, A Fantastic Woman is a powerful portrait of Marina Vidal, an eponymous woman and transgender character played fantastically by transgender actress Daniela Vega (“The Guest”), who must navigate institutional and individual intolerance and discrimination when her lover, Orlando (Francisco Reyes, “Neruda”), dies unexpectedly. The circumstances surrounding Orlando’s sudden death raise…
If The Post was little more than a piece of agitprop beating the drums for the value of a free press in a democracy, it would more than justify its reason for being. The fact that it is so much more is a testament to the skills of director Steven Spielberg and the talents of…
While the scientific consensus supports mankind’s role in causing or at least strongly contributing to global warming, some scientists point to increased solar activity or the natural cyclic effect of climate change as the cause. Others claim that computer models have left out “the complex interaction between warm southerly winds, variations in cloud cover, and…
