If the essence of acting is the willing suspension of disbelief, then you will find no better example than that shared by Michael Shannon and Kevin Spacey in and as, respectively, ELVIS & NIXON. Based on the improbable meeting between the two in December 1970, it is a fanciful, and at times unexpectedly moving, reimagining… Read More »
THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION — Stanley Nelson
When Stanley Nelson started working on THE BLACK PANTHERS: VANGUARD OF THE REVOLUTION, it was seven years ago and he thought the history of that movement was particularly relevant to those times. In 2015, he thinks it’s even more relevant. When I spoke to him on October 1, 2015, the echoes of the Panther movement in… Read More »
STONEWALL
STONEWALL is a sudsy, underwritten, overwrought effort that is less than the intended tribute to the unsung heroes of the eponymous riots that accelerated the gay liberation movement into the social mainstream. Instead, it is a melodrama of truly epic proportions told with every cliché of gay life as lived in less enlightened times, and with… Read More »
Rory Kennedy Investigates the LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM
I speak as someone who can remember the fall of Saigon, and the iconic images that graces magazine covers in the days and weeks that followed. Yet, when I saw Rory Kennedy’s LAST DAYS IN VIETNAM, I realized just how much we still don’t know about the events surrounding that crushing blow to American pride.… Read More »
THE BETTER ANGELS
No plaster saint, nor marble effigy of Abraham Lincoln is to be found in THE BETTER ANGELS. Based on the recollections of Lincoln’s surviving family, as spoken by his cousin about his boyhood in Indiana, this is a Lincoln before the legends had taken root, the Lincoln of great promise whose intellectual curiosity and love… Read More »
THE FOG OF WAR
For years now, Errol Morris has been turning out visually sophisticated, intellectually dexterous documentaries about life’s eccentrics. Those who not only march to the beat of a different drumming, but who also may not be using any form of percussion at all with which to keep time. With the FOG OF WAR, he turns his inquiring lens… Read More »
THE NEW WORLD
Terrence Malick, an auteur in every sense, has both written and directed just five films in his since 1969. As such each new work, staggeringly original in its scope and in its approach, is a cause for eager anticipation. Each finds new truths and new meanings in events that had seemed familiar, combat during World… Read More »
Judith Ehrlich & Rick Goldsmith Introduce You to THE MOST DANGROUS MAN IN AMERICA – DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS
When I spoke with Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith on February 4, 2010, their documentary had just been nominated for an Oscar, and so naturally that was a subject up for discussion, along with the implications for future financing and distribution of political documentaries. Politics is certainly at the center of THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN… Read More »
Q’Orianka Kilcher Discovers THE NEW WORLD
‘When I spoke to Q’Orianka Kilcher, one of the things I wanted to know from the young actress was what it was like to know that she was in a film that would be studied for decades to come. Terrence Malick, an auteur in every sense, has both written and directed just five films in… Read More »