Change Your Image
cflpeace
Reviews
Mission to Moscow (1943)
Mission to Moscow: A needed alternative view
I saw "Mission to Moscow" tonight and was amazed that Warner Brothers made it. What a welcome relief! Like most of my generation, I was raised under McCarthyism, which made everything about the U.S.A. to be saintly and everything from the U.S.S.R. to be the devil itself. I learned the word "propaganda" was anything the Communists put out; I would be an adult before it would occur to me that everything I heard about "Communism" and "Socialism" was all Capitalist propaganda, taught to me by the Capitalist press in an era in which anyone saying anything to the contrary suffered grave consequences.
Much independent reading and traveling later, I came to see that the land that I had been taught to blindly pledge my allegiance to was accurately described by Dr. Martin Luther King as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world, my own government." The Capitalists lied to me! So how do I know all they told me about Stalin and the Soviet Union was true? I have friends who've been there, but I've never have.
Ah! But I have been Nicaragua six times and found it to be the opposite of what I've been told by the Capitalist press. Later, I've visited Cuba eight times and it definitely doesn't resemble anything we're told about it. I spent two and a half decades teaching in innercity and found the lives I shared in there have been slandered by the same Capitalist press. So why should I believe them about the Soviet Union? I know that Communism is not at all what we're told it's about. It's about trying to free the 99% from the 1% while the 1% is using the power of the military, the media, and all the politicians they own to crush it in any way possible.
Does that mean that Stalin was a saint? No, it doesn't. But he also certainly wasn't Hitler.
I don't know how much the film glosses over, but I think it is really important that we who were raised in the propaganda of the Capitalist regime see films like this that show the opposite viewpoint - and see them with an open mind.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of the reviewers I just read weren't able to do that.
Women Behind the Camera (2007)
A look at our sisters behind the camera and what they're doing
As one of those who are the last to leave the theatre after a movie, I sit and watch all the credits, looking for names of women, as well as those of different cultures. Rarely do I see a woman's name in the director of photography, but this film shows we've been steadily breaking in.
It is a fascinating celebration of that struggle. And it's not just about US women, though that history would be exciting in itself. But discovering women filmmakers from Afghanistan to México, seeing a woman document Mao's regular trips to the Chinese countryside to be with the peasants, meeting a woman in India who became a cinematographer after first seeing pictures moving "in a box," seeing women cover wars, hearing one woman's unique way of stopping sexual harassment - this is a well-rounded and remarkably universal study.
Un paraíso bajo las estrellas (2000)
One of the great comedies of all times
This delightful movie has so many twists of plot as it gets the characters mixed into seemingly unresolvable conflicts.
But in the meantime, it raises issues that, for some, just might be difficult to endure having raised, particularly the examination of prejudice. Racial prejudice gets in there, but just general prejudices and superstitions get laid out there to be challenged.
It's a Cuban movie in which Cuban artists raise these issues for Cuban audiences - but it's also universal. It comes from the people that Nelson Mandela praised as "unparalleled" for their "consistent commitment to the systematic eradication of racism;" almost a decade later they created this film to encourage us - there and throughout the world - to look even deeper into ourselves.
And to have fun at the same time. Fun story, great acting and directing. Enjoy!
American Playhouse: The Ballad of Gregorio Cortez (1982)
ordinary good man becomes outlaw
This was by far my favorite Olmos movie; he made the entire movie without (except for his last line) saying a word in English and yet tapped into our emotions, making us feel deeply for his character and know his thoughts; this was pure acting genius. The scene where he's talking with his wife and watching their kids play captivated me: I didn't need to understand a word they were saying to see he was a loving family man. Later, as he's alone for so much of the story, he had me sharing his fear and anguish.
It is both an intensely dramatic and a monumentally important film. As with "Salt of the Earth," "Burn," "Fast Food Nation," and such, it is disappointing to see such great films fail to reach a wider audience. I only found this film because it was in a video rental place that I frequented.
Incidentally, when I had the honor of meeting this by-then academy-nominated actor, I told him how impressed I had been with him as Cortez; he gave all the credit to the director. I appreciated his modesty, but I had to insist, his acting was also great!
Sweet 15 (1990)
A girl goes from being selfish and materialistic to socially responsible.
I loved it. It told of a girl's who life centered around material things, like having the most fancy Quincenía (fifteenth birthday party). Fortunately, the priest at her church tells the girls that turning fifteen isn't about parties, but about becoming more responsible, and he encourages them to volunteer for a good cause. Since the amnesty law was just passed, she volunteers there in an office where undocumented workers apply for amnesty. This girl who had thought that it was fun to stand on a crowded street and yell "migra!" learns that the people she had enjoyed making run away were good people whom she had caused terror to. The show was also great because of the dynamic between Marta and her dad (played well by Tony Plana.) This is the story of a child learning that when someone - in this case a father - doesn't do what you want them to, and seems to make "bad" decisions, it might be because of a terrible injustice he's facing. Great film! Pleace, teachers, keep showing this movie. i used to show it to my fifth graders and they got a lot out of it.
Welkkeom tu Dongmakgol (2005)
Enemy? What enemy?
The tragedy of this film is that it's not playing in every theatre in the U.S. so it can be seen by the people who most need to see it. Thank you, Korean American friend of a friend who shared it with us.
See this film if you or someone care about is thinking about signing up to go into the military. See it if have been, or if you've ever known anyone who was, in a war. See it if you have ever seen a peace march - live or on television - and asked,"What's it all about?" See it if you love life.
Don't worry; it's not propaganda or any kind. It just takes us to the scene of the action, sets us down, then lets us get to know some very real people and watch what happens.
Carolfrances
Miel para Oshún (2001)
a great story in a forbidden setting
Like all Cuban movies, this is made for Cubans with the knowledge that internationalists will be watching too; they're not made with the idea of instructing outsiders as to what's happening there. They do share with us, however, some of the daily realities of this remarkable people.
We get a lot of that in "Honey for Oshun" because it's a road movie.
Roberto also takes a road trip through his past, through the reality that his father kept from him. That - along with the trip through parts of a nation that our government forbids us to travel through in person - make for great viewing.
It's a fun movie.
So put aside all the preconceived ideas you might have about Cuba; this is not a propaganda film. Cuban filmmakers know they get their people discussing their problems and outsiders thinking about their stereotypes of Cuba, but they also know how to make entertaining movies.
"Honey for Oshun" is living proof of that.
Munich (2005)
This is an important, courageous, and powerful film.
Three adjectives come to me in describing the film I saw last night: important, courageous, and powerful.
I consider it to be among the most important films -- and certainly the most important of Spielberg's -- because it has us look at one historical event in order to understand a crucial parallel reality: namely the direction our nation is going in places like Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria. When Avner asked if Israel was actually going after the Palestinian leadership as opposed to the terrorist leadership, he asked what we all need to ask: is the U.S. government's "response" to 9-11 -- bombing the people of Afghanistan, bombing and occupying Iraq, threatening Syria -- actually an attempt to stop resistance movements to U.S. imperialism as opposed to stopping terrorism?
And the whole film asks us to reevaluate violence in "response" to terrorism: whether it's the U.S. government's support of Israeli terrorism in Palestine or its own terrorism in Afghanistan and Iraq, we need to ask Avner's questions about whether violence solves anything -- whether or not we understand that our government is simply using 9-11 as an excuse to carry out a pre-developed plan to take control of the region for their corporate agenda.
The fact that our government is stirring up these tensions in a region where three governments (including Israel's) are nuclear-armed and hate each other makes this film even more important to the survival of the planet.
Secondly, I consider this, by far, Spielberg's most courageous film. It's always important to make films that expose racism (Amistad) and anti-Semitism (Schindler's List), but those are pretty safe topics. But to question Israel, even letting Palestinians voice their anguish at the occupation? In a world where non- Jews who do so are branded "anti-Semitic" (really ironic since Arabs are also Semitic) and Jews who do so are called "self-hating," this takes guts -- even if you are Steven Spielberg.
Now, I've read angry critiques of the film for not going into the horrendous attacks of Israel on Palestinians before and after Munich, as well as of the film's portrayal of remorse in their agents while the reality is that Israeli soldiers do often kill children with impunity. While justified, these critiques don't take into consideration that the film does go as far as it does, and in the political climate that we have. The film does, after all, have an Israeli character ask something like, "How do you think we got our homeland? By being nice?"
Finally, I believe this is Spielberg's most powerful film, simply because he's so skilled at doing what he sets out to do with issues that are so important. I have long thought that he is an extraordinarily powerful person; after all he can get strong men and women to ache and even cry over a character played by a thing made in his prop department or over an African American woman entering into a lesbian relationship. I've long asked, "What if Spielberg were to ever take on a truly controversial and important subject, like challenging Zionism, imperialism, or war?" I believe he's begun to rise to the occasion with this film.
I wish I could personally encourage him to do so more. There are so many other subjects he could take up: the refuseniks (the courageous Israeli soldiers who, in growing number, are refusing to fight in occupied Palestine), or Mordechai Venunu (the Israeli imprisoned for revealing that his government was secretly building nuclear arms), or Palestinians and Jews who are today participating in nonviolent actions against the occupation, or even stories of Palestinian Arabs and Palestinian Jews whose friendships were shattered by the forming of Israel in 1948.
Thank you, Mr. Spielberg. May you continue on this path of exercising your immense power for the lifting of humanity.