I Love Boosters: Working Class Revolution in Technicolor
Boots Riley’s new film, I Love Boosters, presents a striking critique of capitalism through a dazzling, surreal fantasy world. The movie centers on three young women who steal racks of clothing from a chain of high end fashion stores and resell them at bargain prices in their community. These “boosters” see theft as both a form […]
Project Hail Mary Review – The Fiction of Government Competence
One of the big blockbuster hits this month has been Project Hail Mary, based on the book by Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian. Like The Martian, Project Hail Mary is a sci-fi story that follows a funny, likeable narrator (played by Ryan Gosling in the movie) who finds himself far away from Earth. Also […]
Palestine ’36: An Enduring Struggle
Palestine ’36 takes us back to a lesser-known part of history, over a decade before the mass displacement of Palestinians in the Nakba (catastrophe) of 1948. Directed by Palestinian filmmaker Annemarie Jacin, the film recounts the violent oppression of British colonial rule during that period, and the subsequent mass uprising of the local people. Palestine ’36 highlights […]
A Review of Dolores, The Documentary
The 2017 Dolores documentary follows the life of organizer Dolores Huerta. Known for being the co-founder of the National Farm Worker’s Association (which would later become today’s United Farm Workers labor union), the film offers a sincere look at the great efforts she made to organize her communities and the unique struggles she faced as a Latina […]
A Common Insanity: Nuclear Weapons Documentary Review
“A Common Insanity: A Conversation with Daniel Ellsberg About Nuclear War” is a short and straight-to-the-point documentary about the unbelievable dangers of nuclear weapons. With Trump’s recent statement that the U.S. will resume nuclear testing to be on an “equal basis” with Russia and China, it is a relevant film that details what horrors even the […]
“The Encampments”: A Review
“The Encampments,” a timely documentary produced by Macklemore, follows the story of the student encampments that formed at Columbia and other universities in response to the war in Gaza. The film opens with the origin of the camps, when students’ earnest attempts to organize divestment campaigns in their universities were met with increasingly hostile responses […]
Sinners: Blues, Blood, and the Burden of Survival
Sinners is a film that, in the words of Oakland-born writer-producer-director Ryan Coogler, is “raging against the concept of genre.” Part deeply personal portrait of a Black community in 1932 Jim Crow Mississippi, part magical-realist tribute to the cultural power of Delta blues, part gory monster movie blockbuster, this movie attempts a lot and succeeds frequently […]
Mickey 17: A Sci-Fi Satire of Capitalism, Colonialism, and Cloning
Bong Joon-Ho, the visionary South Korean filmmaker behind Parasite, Snowpiercer, and Okja, is back with another sharp critique of capitalism – this time in space. His latest film, Mickey 17, is a thrilling, darkly funny sci-fi adventure that exposes the horrors of billionaire rule, unethical colonization, and the dehumanizing effects of advanced technology in the wrong hands. True to […]
Don’t Just Look Up – Get Involved
“Don’t Look Up” shows that we cannot rely on politicians and the rich to solve our problems.
Movie review: “Breaking Boundaries”
“Breaking Boundaries” is a new documentary on Netflix by David Attenborough, looking into the state of the environment.