A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Harvey Cashore, “Brainwashed: The Secret CIA Experiments in Canada” (The Fifth Estate, December 2017) As The Fifth Estate’s website post on this documentary says, the scenario…
Ronna Syed, “A Tale of Two Traitors” (Fifth Estate, March 2018) In the wake of the recent incident in the UK concerning a suspected poisoning of…
British Films, French and French-language Films
Armando Iannucci, “The Death of Stalin” (2017) A British-made comedy satire about the death of Joseph Stalin and the struggle among his senior officials in the…
“Why is China Investing in the Balkans?” (VisualPolitik EN, 26 March 2018) VisualPolitik EN is a Youtube channel that posts short video clips on geopolitical and…
Russian Foreign Ministry Meeting with Foreign Ambassadors on Skripal poisoning case (21 March 2018) For nearly all of March 2018, the world was gripped by a…
William Oldroyd, “Lady Macbeth” (2016) Adapted from Nikolai Leskov’s 1865 novel “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District”, this character study investigates how an apparently demure young…
Vladimir Putin’s Presidential Speech to the Russian Federal Assembly (1 March 2018) Usually the Russian President gives an Annual Speech to the Russian Federal Assembly in…
Paul Thomas Anderson, “Inherent Vice” (2014) Director Paul Thomas Anderson must be commended for daring to tackle a Thomas Pynchon novel and managing to be faithful…
Latin American Films (Spanish language)
Hernando Calvo Ospina, “Venezuela, the Hidden Agenda / Venezuela, la Oscura Causa” (2017) A very informative documentary, “Venezuela …” reveals the true nature of the war…
Sam Liu, “Batman and Harley Quinn” (2017) Teaming Batman and Nightwing together with The Joker’s on-off girlfriend Harley Quinn might have seemed a good idea at…