Female Film Critics 24/375
Last October, Nature set loose a terrible disease. It was named, in the scientific fashion, Covid 19, for the year it started and for “corona,” describing the virus. Alex Gibney, along with Ophelia Harutyunyan, and Suzanne Hillinger, has directed a fiery documentary blast at the handling of the pandemic in America by the Trump Administration.
Read more
Deciding to adapt former FBI director James Comey’s 2018 memoir A Higher Loyalty for Showtime’s series The Comey Rule, writer/director Billy Ray faced a daunting task. He needed to present extensively reported well-known recent events accurately and dramatically, while also adding insightful information. Ray meets this challenge by finding the heart of the story not in added details but in the conflict of an ethical individual handling political dynamite.
Read more
As FBI Director, James Comey was placed in an untenable position during the final days of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential campaign against Donald Trump, as he struggled to be an apolitical public servant in today’s America. Adapted and directed by Billy Ray, this two-part mini-series is based on Comey’s memoir A Higher Loyalty: Truth, Lies and Leadership, with Jeff Daniels playing Comey and Brendan Gleeson as Donald Trump, interspersed with actual TV news reports.
Read more
In this documentary, filmmaker Ivy Meeropol never loses track of the connection between Roy Cohn and his mentee, Donald J. Trump, strengthening the link in the chain between the two as she films another chapter in Trump’s origin story. Bully. Coward. Villain. has the advantage of compassion, but it is still righteously damning.
Read more
Ava DuVernay’s incisive and shocking documentary 13th hit like a body blow when she first unveiled it in the autumn 2016 film festivals. Donald Trump had not yet been “elected” President of the United States, but already, the shock of him ascending to the status of Republican nominee was unsettling. Fast forward to *checks watch* now, and this is a brutal and necessary watch.
Read more
If you’re trying to understand today’s amoral political landscape, Matt Tyrnauer’s documentary about dirty trickster Roy Cohn explains a great deal. In 1973, when brash young real estate mogul Donald Trump met Roy Cohn, one of New York’s most ruthless and powerful power broker, Trump was completing the Grand Hyatt Hotel near Grand Central Terminal.
Read more
Where’s My Roy Cohn? presents Trump’s origin story. Most people have heard of Roy Cohn. Most people know to link his name with Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s. Most people even know to modify Cohn’s name with “evil” and “mendacious” as well as “arrogant” and “Satanic.” But few know now why those adjectives apply to Donald Trump’s role model.
Read more
Actually, unless your head has been buried in sand for the past decades, you probably won’t find the information revealed in Kevin Keating’s 2005 documentary particularly surprising, but the film certainly provides a credible summation of news reports and pointed analysis of the legacy of New York City’s former mayor. And, it is particularly relevant at this moment in our American history.
Read more
The Brink — a documentary portrait of Donald Trump’s propagandist and chief strategist Steve Bannon — is an essential chronicle of one piece of the mess that got us here, a cautionary tale of one kind of vile bastard to keep an eye out for next time… and perhaps a last-gasp attempt by its subject to demonstrate his relevance and importance.
Read more
Documentarian Michael Moore has been called a muckraker, prankster and populist prophet for his political propaganda films (“Roger & Me,” “Bowling for Columbine,” “Where to Invade Next”), designed to elicit an emotional response. “Fahrenheit 11/9” references the date on which Donald Trump became 45th President of the United States.
Read more