#50 — The In-Laws (Arthur Hiller, 1979) In half-watching a recent horror film the other night, I got into a discussion about the ways the story in question ticked off a multitude of basic, commonly shared fears. That’s what good … Continue reading Top Fifty Films of the 70s — Number Fifty
Flash of Genius (Marc Abraham, 2008). Based on a New Yorker article, Marc Abraham’s directorial debut relates the story of Bob Kearns, a Detroit man whose invention of the intermittent windshield wiper was illegally appropriated by the big automakers. Dutifully tracing events from the early nineteen-sixties when Kearns drew his sizable family into the process of creating the device through the nineties when the court cases he pursued to get due credit finally reached their culmination, the film is serious, somber and sorely lacking in verve or any other enlivening spirit. It’s thankfully not overly pompous about its subject, but … Continue reading Abraham, Hiller, Lau and Mak, Lynch, Swanberg
Taxi to the Dark Side (Alex Gibney, 2007). This Oscar winner for Best Documentary Feature catalogs and condemns the harsh treatment of prisoners in the Bush administration’s zealous “war on terror.” Gibney lays out the evidence of vicious abuse and clear-cut torture perpetrated by the American military at prisons in Afghanistan, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Just as importantly–arguably even more importantly–he examines the ways in which the highest leaders created, encourages and perpetuated the environment for these horrendous practices and then casually, heartlessly blamed the enlisted men when the worst of it came to light. Like Charles Ferguson’s No … Continue reading Pivotal Film Selling Out Your Monkey
Coffee for Two 