Vietnam

Film Commentary: Looking Sharp, Leatherface! “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” Turns Fifty

July 23, 2024
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No 4k DVD, Blu-ray, theatrical digital, or streaming version of the movie improves on the visceral electricity of the original “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre”.

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Film Review: “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell” — Shell Shocked

March 26, 2024
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Faith is a very elusive thing in the transcendent “Inside the Yellow Cocoon Shell.”

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Book Review: “Back to the Dirt” — An American Apocalypse in Progress

May 11, 2023
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All of the characters in Back to the Dirt are, in a sense, survivalists, people clinging onto what’s long gone, stockpiling karma for an apocalypse that is already upon them.

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Book Review: Éric Vuillard’s “An Honorable Exit” — A Brilliant Chronicle of a Tragedy Foretold

April 27, 2023
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Éric Vuillard’s method is to create an ironic rapport with the powerful: his vignettes dramatize how France’s elite delude themselves into thinking the colonial world order can be kept intact after World War Two.

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Film Review: “The Wake Up Call” — A New and Important Feature Documentary

April 12, 2022
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Eric Neudel and Alison Gilkey found a tremendous subject for a documentary, and have told his tale with urgency and compassion.

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Book Review: Cowboys and the Wild East — “In the Dragon’s Shadow: Southeast Asia in the Chinese Century”

October 25, 2021
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Proceeding largely country by country, Sebastian Strangio penetratingly explores Southeast Asia’s multifaceted struggle with its behemoth Chinese neighbor.

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Film Review: “F.T.A.” — An Anti-War Gem, Rediscovered

March 6, 2021
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Exuding a guerilla theater, agitprop vibe (with touches here and there of vaudeville and live sketch comedy), F.T.A. is a thrilling expression of pacifism and accountability directed at the military.

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Film Review: Beware of “Last Days in Vietnam” — A Whitewash of the War

September 26, 2014
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Contextualizing is everything. And that’s particularly true of Last Days in Vietnam, where the odious things Americans did there weigh down the ostensible heroics shown in our exiting the country.

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Film Review: “Far From Vietnam” — A Remarkable Anti-War Film

September 25, 2013
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Far From Vietnam dared say what no American documentary, even the most radical, would insinuate for fear of being accused of treason: in Vietnam, the Americans were the new Germans.

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Movie Review: Black Power Mixtape 1967–1975 — Scattered, Skewed, But Engaging

October 17, 2011
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This intriguing documentary, made up of first-hand footage about the Black Power movement, will air on WGBH’s Independent Lens this Thursday @ 10 p.m.

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