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Ronald Reagan

Pitch People documentary review: consumerist sideshow

Mon, Jun 03, 2024
no comments yet

The goofy-90s-cheese factor is high in this look at home-shopping TV hucksters, but any nostalgia is small and cheap. The chipper vibe is distasteful in a way it perhaps wasn’t in the booming 1990s.

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Bank Job documentary review: culture jamming for fun and justice

Fri, May 28, 2021
1 comment

Brilliantly tantalizing, bursting with creative enthusiasm and bouncy energy, this cheeky work of artistic activism is out to subvert our debt-driven economy. Who says smashing injustice can’t be fun?

| 1 Comment

13th documentary review: American slavery never ended; here are the receipts

Sun, Jun 07, 2020
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Brutal, necessary watch for all who want to understand why America operates with impunity re its horrendous treatment of Black people. Incisive and shocking, moreso now than when it debuted in 2016.

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Whitney documentary review: an 80s icon contemplated, venerated, mourned

Tue, Jul 03, 2018
1 comment

Deeply moving, truly tragic; a biography with a keenly journalistic but hugely sympathetic eye. Powerful compassion and a get-up-and-dance deployment of Houston’s music may well bring her a new generation of fans.

| 1 Comment

Birthright: A War Story documentary review: how America hates women

Fri, Jul 21, 2017
4 comments

An enraging, essential documentary rundown of all the ways that women’s rights, agency, and bodily autonomy are under attack in the US. It’s not just about abortion.

| 4 Comments

The Edge of Seventeen movie review: bleed for this

Thu, Dec 01, 2016
13 comments

This pseudo-80s teen dramedy feels like the flip side of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, bursting with generosity and empathy for its forlorn drama queen.

| 13 Comments

Requiem for the American Dream and The Divide documentaries review: economic inequality for all

Wed, Apr 27, 2016
2 comments

Two powerful documentaries look at the ever-growing wealth gap, and introduce us to some of those struggling through the resultant financial insecurity.

| 2 Comments

Pride movie review: hanging together rather than hanging separately

Fri, Sep 12, 2014
4 comments

One of the rare movies that gets absolutely everything right, bursting with happy-tears emotion about solidarity, friendship, and smashing bigotry.

| 4 Comments

Lee Daniels’ The Butler (aka The Butler) review: civil-rights servant

Mon, Mar 10, 2014
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A deeply moving melodrama about a subtly subversive black butler at the heart of the White House. You will need Kleenex.

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A Fierce Green Fire (review)

Fri, Mar 01, 2013
1 comment

How, in a few short decades, we’ve gone from “Save the Whales” to “Save the Humans (as Well as the Whales, Obviously)”…

| 1 Comment
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