Portside

The films that opened and closed the Human Rights Watch Film Festival - Marc Silver’s 3 ½ Minutes, Ten Bullets, and Stanley Nelson’s The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution - tell interlocking stories. Although more than four decades separate the events they trace, there is a connection between what happened in the 1960s, when cities exploded in the wake of the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kiing and discord today.

Looking for a decent, memorable biopic about a black woman is like waiting for Haley’s Comet. To find one, you’d have to jump all the way back to Halle Berry’s Emmy-winning turn in Introducing Dorothy Dandridge in 1999, and before that, Angela Bassett as Tina Turner in 1993’s What’s Love Got to Do With It, and before that, Diana Ross as Billie Holiday. Dee Rees’ feature about blues legend Bessie Smith on HBO joins the ranks of those aforementioned films.

In Andrew Niccol's 'Good Kill', fresh from his Oscar-nominated role in Boyhood, Ethan Hawke portrays pilot Major Tom Egan, who, after repeat combat tours flying over the Iraq and Afghan theaters of conflict, is now stationed outside Las Vegas, where he is deeply conflicted by his role in the UAV liquidation-by-remote-control project.

Clouds of Sils Maria is a prolonged debate about the passage of time and the ceaseless rivalry of generations.

The Third Reich produced 1,200 films, 300 of which were banned after WWII as dangerous propaganda. Forbidden Films examines the 40 that remain effectively banned to this day, locked inside a German federal film archive and only made availavle to researchers. Are they historical evidence, incitements to murder, fascist pornography, evergreen entertainments, toxic waste or passé kitsch? Are these films better shown and discussed rather than repressed and forgotten?

Each term my film students watch Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (1989). And each term they react similarly to the scene in which Mookie (Spike Lee) throws a trash can, igniting a neighborhood riot by breaking the window of the pizzeria where he works. Most students of color feel Lee’s character did the right thing while the majority of white students cannot understand why Mookie would do such a thing to his boss. Why this reaction—term after term, year after year?

However, skillful propagandist that Kennedy is, in her effort to whitewash history and try to ferret out something positive in a colossal debacle, there’s something even she can’t hide. Look closely at the newsreel clips as the NVA tanks roll into what was renamed Ho Chi Minh City. Not only are the soldiers jubilant, but look at the smiling faces of the Vietnamese masses as they are being liberated from decades of Japanese, French and Yankee occupation and imperialism.

Adam Sandler's The Ridiculous Six is said to be a spoof on The Magnificent Seven. Examples of the disrespect that triggered the walk off included Native women’s names such as Beaver’s Breath and No Bra, an actress portraying an Apache woman squatting and urinating while smoking a peace pipe, and a severely negligent portrayal of the Apache. The movie will star Sandler, Nick Nolte, Steve Buscemi, Dan Aykroyd, Jon Lovitz and Vanilla Ice.

Ava, the robot star of Ex Machina, the dazzling sic-fi thriller, could easily be seen as an addition to the list of subservient bots in the tradition of Siri and Samantha—a machine that exists to tend every man's need, and read him driving directions without challenging masculinity. But if you push past that frustration, the film brings to the fore the idea that technology is as imperfect as its creators, and its mirror can provide a useful reflexion.

Director Ashgar Farhadi achieved international recognition with the complex and brilliant film A Separation. About Elly was made earlier, won Best Picture at Tribeca in 2009, and has taken six years to work its way back to the U.S. If possible, and now in the midst of the nuclear deal, this devastating film is better and more relevant. Farhadi depicts the strains between strict Islamic traditions and modernism within Iran's affluent, sophisticated middle classss.