?For God, for country, and for Yale.? The First World War is often seen as the end of the romantic view of war. Many people entered the war with visions of honor and glory, only to find the reality very different. The Millionaire?s Unit, a documentary by Darroch Greer...
The Oscar nominees for Best Documentary (Short Subject) show us some of the real life struggles that people face. Through these films we get a chance to examine issues of race, aging, drugs, mental illness, and chances for former prisoners to find new lives. Some of...
When I was young, there would always be a cartoon that was part of the program of going to the movies. (Of course, those were also the days when you always saw a double feature.) ?Those cartoons were always comical, often with cartoon characters we knew from TV...
Each year, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognizes the best of filmmaking with the Academy Awards, aka the Oscars. Among the films honored each year are three categories of short films. These are films that few people get to see (unless you go to...
?I must follow this wherever it goes, even if it leads me to the darkest pit of hell.? We?re used to police procedural TV shows that include forensic science (including fingerprints and autopsies) and psychological profiling. But there was a time when such things were...
?When we lay our heads down out here, we?re all prisoners.? In Scott Cooper?s new western Hostiles, the cowboy-and-Indian genre is used to consider the power that prejudices hold over us. But it also gives a glimpse of the possibility of reconciliation that can...
It?s time to come up with my favorite films of 2017. As usual, I expect I?ll name things you?ve never heard of (except from my reviews), and unless you live in a town with a good art house may never have been able to see. (One you would have needed to see at a...
?In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers gave the free press the protection it must have to fulfill its essential role in our democracy. The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government's power to censor the press was abolished so that the...
?This isn?t a hospital; it?s an insane asylum!? I was in college, of prime draft age, when M*A*S*H hit the theaters in 1970. That probably says a lot about what I found so appealing about that film when I first saw it. It also explains why when it played at AFI Fest...