When the Motion Picture Academy considers nominees for 2016’s films, in order to avoid the debacle regarding the awards for 2015’s movies with the “Cloroxed," all-white Oscars for acting and Best Picture, the voters should keep in mind Don Cheadle’s performance as Miles Davis in Miles Ahead.  At times, Cheadle’s rendition of the pathfinder jazz trumpeter and composer, in terms of look and sound down to that raspy voice (due, reportedly, to a Continue Reading...

Dalton Trumbo, the jailed Hollywood Ten screenwriter who broke the Hollywood Blacklist, is making a comeback.  The ex-Communist is the subject of a new 700 page biography and depicted by “Breaking Bad’s” Emmy and Golden Globe winner Bryan Cranston in the superb biopic “Trumbo”, opening November 6.  Its anti-censorship message remains relevant, considering current efforts by policemen and rightwing media to intimidate and boycott director Quentin Continue Reading...

I enjoyed the first hour of James Ponsoldt’s The End of the Tour, which consists mostly of two 30-something men talking to each other.  As an author, interviewer and journalist I was interested in the real life premise: In 1996, staff writer David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) convinces his Rolling Stone editor (Ron Livingston in a cameo) to dispatch him from Manhattan to the Midwest to cover, all expenses paid, the latest literary phenom, David Continue Reading...

In 2013 this reporter interviewed CodePink co-founder Medea Benjamin, author of Drone Warfare, Killing by Remote Control, who asserted: “There were between 46 and 52 drone strikes under the Bush administration.  And now there are over 400 - that’s not counting Afghanistan.  So this has been tremendously increased under the Obama administration.  If you look at Afghanistan the numbers are even more astounding - the last year where have figures for Continue Reading...

April 30 marked the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the reunification of the country.  The liberation of Vietnam was the biggest military and foreign policy defeat in U.S. history.  As Washington faces more overseas debacles we must ponder the disaster of America’s imperial policies in Southeast Asia and learn the lessons re: what happens when empires stick their noses into other peoples’ business, and a great way to reflect is Continue Reading...

The Buzzcocks live and dope smoking are two activities in which one should never engage concurrently.  Particularly on the long end of 50.  While in the mosh pit, being pummeled by nubile little kamikazes in ripped fishnets and fire-engine lipstick and smirking double-takes that say "what the hell are you doing here, old man?"  But the dope surge dims the reception and you get an elbow from a little shit who clearly doesn't care about the slight Continue Reading...

April 15 is the 150th anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s death.  The cinema has been filled with assassination and conspiracy-themed plots - which seems only natural, as the Great Emancipator was shot by actor John Wilkes Booth on April 14, 1865 at Ford’s Theatre while watching the play Our American Cousin.  (Note to self: Be careful re: which actors you give bad reviews to.)  One hundred years ago D.W. Griffith directed what may be the Continue Reading...

What movie/TV program about America’s Revolution was a blockbuster?  Strangely, the Spirit of ’76 rarely struck box office gold.  Excluding remembering the Alamo, the War of 1812, Mexican-American War and Spanish-American War produced few notable screen adaptations.  But the Civil War is the conflict America fought prior to cinema’s invention that’s most recreated onscreen.  Along with productions about both World Wars, the struggle between the Continue Reading...

In the extremely enjoyable Queen & Country legendary English director John Boorman trods familiar ground we’ve seen in various films wherein recruits are in conflict not so much with the enemy du jour but the military brass.  Queen is far lighter than Fred Zinnemann’s 1953 From Here to Eternity and Stanley Kubrick’s 1987 Vietnam antiwar classic Full Metal Jacket and like Robert Altman’s 1970 MASH, it is a humorous movie set during the Korean Continue Reading...

Around the time the anti-nuclear The China Syndrome was released in 1979, the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor calamity occurred.  Similarly, just days before the opening of Universal’s hacking epic Blackhat, the U.S. Central Command’s Twitter account was hacked by ISIS.  Not to mention the recent Sony saga, wherein unflattering emails, et al, were laid bare and North Korea was blamed for this computer hacking.  Although the DPRK denied these Continue Reading...

The most racially charged movie in 25 years is set to be theatrically released around the time when the grand jury in Ferguson is expected to announce its findings regarding the shooting of a Black teenager, Michael Brown, by a white policeman.  Scheduled to open October 17, Dear White People culminates with what may be the big screen’s most intense racial confrontation in a film set in contemporary America since Do the Right Thing.  And the Continue Reading...

For Whom the Whistle Blows: “The Kill Team” Enters Afghanistan’s Heart of Darkness If Chelsea/Bradley Manning is the whistleblower best known for exposing U.S. war crimes in Iraq, another Army Specialist, Adam Winfield, is arguably the most famous truth teller who revealed American atrocities in Afghanistan.  But like Private First Class Justin Stoner, Winfield found out the hard way that not only is it tough times for those who dare to blow Continue Reading...

The 9th annual South East European Film Festival started with -- no pun intended -- a bang on May Day, with the world premiere of Sarajevo, an Austrian feature about the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.  The liquidation of the heir presumptive of the Austro-Hungarian throne at Sarajevo, the capital of the Empire’s Bosnia and Herzegovina province, took place 100 years ago on June 28, 1914.  The shooting, believed to be carried out by Continue Reading...