Portside

The outcry over the nomination of 20 white actors, and no black ones, for the Academy Awards gained momentum Monday — Martin Luther King’s Birthday — as director Spike Lee and actress Jada Pinkett Smith announced they would not be attending the ceremony on Feb. 28.

Past Moore movies have proven that huge audiences can be found for political documentaries. Oscar-winning Bowling for Columbine was the highest-grossing documentary until Fahrenheit 9/11 snagged that record, and Sicko is in the top 10 for the genre. But all those films aimed their fire squarely at the United States, while Where to Invade Next aims a meandering Hi-Liter at a smattering of countries. And we all know that outrage is an easier sell than optimism.

The politics of The Hunger Games series aren’t as revolutionary as they’ve been hyped to be. Far from helping us reveal our most pressing contemporary problems, the liberal ideological message of The Hunger Games is that the major problems facing society today are state domination, dictatorships, and the restriction of individual liberties — in short, everything except for exploitation and capitalism.

We deserve to know, and we are obligated to know, the cost of America’s love for football.

'In desperation and insanity, you call for a ban on all Muslims entering this country. I was raised to believe that we are all each other's brother and sister, regardless of race, creed or color. That means if you want to ban Muslims, you are first going to have to ban me. And everyone else.'

Based on actual events and characters, Short focuses on the fall of the housing market, leavening what many might find extremely dry, complicated subject matter with humor. While the so-called business press completely missed the story until this 'shit' hit the fan, the film tells how a few investment outsiders stumbled upon the unfolding crisis and bet against it. ('Short' is Wall Street-ese for 'bet').

The movie is also a Hollywood rarity - a boxing movie with a black hero. It is bizarre, though hardly surprising, that a sport dominated for decades by African-American and Latino athletes looks more like ice hockey on screen. And Creed, embeds its drama in the perils and pleasures of black life in America. Adonis is a complex character with a complex fate. He is at once a rich kid and a street kid, the proud carrier of an illustrious heritage and an invisible man.

Chi-Raq begins with a devastating overture, Pray 4 My City, with the lyrics printed directly on the screen, impossible to ignore. 'I don’t live in Chicago, I live in Chi-Raq,' it concludes, using the controversial nickname given to the city where gun deaths outnumber those in America’s foreign wars. Narrator Dolmedes, Samuel L Jackson, explains that communities under siege aren’t a new phenomenon, and explains how previous authors wrote about such tales.

'So I’m not going to write a review about 'Suffragette', because I’m no longer going to legitimize films that refuse to acknowledge the existence of people of color. And neither should you'.

Prior to the Boston Globe’s investigation, the sexual abuse of minors by priests was one of the Catholic Church’s worst-kept secrets. Spotlight's telling of the Church’s sex abuses reminds viewers how good, honest journalism has the power to transform a community.