A personal journal of film and documentary reviews, and reviews of anything else that intrigues me.
Films made with an obvious bias to serve a larger agenda or to mitigate a controversial topic and make it safe for general public consumption.
Australian and New Zealand Films
“The Power of Falun Gong” (Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 21 July 2020) Purporting to be an expose of Falun Gong’s activities as a secretive religious…
Australian and New Zealand Films, Chinese and Chinese-language Films
“The Secret Armada” (Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 14 July 2020) Despite the spine-tingling thrill of the episode title, this piece on apparent North Korean fishing…
Australian and New Zealand Films, Northern European Films
“The Swedish Model” (Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 30 June 2020) In March 2020, when the SARS-CoV-2 virus had been circulating in Europe for at least…
Nathan Su, “The Atlas of False Desires” (2016) By turns inspiring yet depressing, this 8-minute film puts forward a proposition that to save Planet Earth from…
Australian and New Zealand Films
“No Justice, No Peace” (Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 16 June 2020) Remarkable for what it fails to say and do, this episode purports to investigate…
Australian and New Zealand Films
“The Doctor vs the President” (Foreign Correspondent, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 2 June 2020) Even during the COVID-19 global pandemic, Western mainstream news media outlets can never…
Steven Soderbergh, “Contagion” (2011) Unexpectedly discovering a new lease of life and relevance in the current COVID-19 near-global shutdown environment, this film purports to be a…
Ken Loach, “Sorry We Missed You” (2019) He may be well into his 80s but Ken Loach continues to make social realist film dramas that document…
Arabic-language Films, Middle Eastern Films
Pavel Serezhkin, “Profiles in Courage: ENN Middle East reporter Gertrude Bellinger” (2019) Written and produced by The Grayzone journalist Rania Khalek who plays ENN Middle East…
Pella Kagerman, Hugo Lilja, “Aniara” (2018) An ambitious project to bring a poem by the Swedish poet / author / former sailor Harry Martinson (who co-won…