An attack on Vietnam veterans – I suddenly felt like I was back at UCLA in 1971. Beyond Courage: Surviving Vietnam as a POW brought back questions, controversies, and anger from a war which was the model for the Chinese Communist vision of the peasants in the countryside rising up and overcoming the city. Empire State Divide brought viewers into the world of today and a war by the city on the countryside.
(First published on blogcritics.org) Two sci-fi films with different twists on dystopian futures made the Anthem Film Festival a scary place. The Pilgrim, winner of the festival’s Audience Choice Award, by filmmaker Sean Buttimer, creates a global-warming-freaks-gone-wild world dominated by EPA bureaucrats. Silver Circle, by Pasha Roberts, takes us into a world where individual rights are crushed by an out-of-control […]