Category Archives: Politics

Drama, Family Issues, Movie Movie, Politics, Sci-Fi, Social Satire

If you really must pry: Top 10 Films of 2025

December 15, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on December 13, 2025)

Yes, it’s that special season…for those obligatory “top 10” lists. Keep in mind, I can’t see ’em all; these picks are culled from the first-run features that I reviewed this year. Alphabetically:

Birthright – As Queen Eleanor muses in The Lion in Winter: “What family doesn’t have its ups and downs?” Writer-director Zoe Pepper’s twisted dark comedy thriller is like a 21st-Century take on James Goldman’s classic tale of family dysfunction. In this case, the prodigal son has not returned to the manor for a brief visit, but for an indeterminate stay.

Cory (Travis Jeffrey) and his very pregnant wife Jasmine (Maria Angelico) have been hit with a double whammy: Cory has been laid off and the couple have been evicted. Broke and desperate, Cory shows up on the doorstep of his upper middle-class parents’ estate and asks if it’s okay that they stay a few days . His judgemental father (Michael Hurst) and ice-queen mother (Linda Cropper) seem wary at best. They agree, but with some “tough love” caveats. As temporary lodging morphs into “taking up residence”, family tensions mount, old wounds reopen and an epic battle between father and son for the title of King of the Castle ensues. This is the most trenchant Australian social satire I’ve seen since Don’s Party.

Color Book -Everyone processes grief differently. In the case of recently widowed Lucky (William Catlett) and his 9 year-old son Mason (Jeremiah Daniels) there lies an additional complication in the healing process: Mason is developmentally disabled and doesn’t appear to understand why his mother is no longer with them.

Now more than ever, Lucky’s paternal instinct drives him to bond with his son; and even if Mason isn’t registering the same emotional pain over their mutual loss, he wants to do everything in his power to be a comforting and reassuring presence for him. But Mason’s chief concerns remain steadfast: drawing in his coloring book and watching televised ball games.

Lucky hits on an idea to break the impasse: he’ll take his son to his first pro baseball game. It’s perfect…a father and son bonding experience that will make Mason happy and get both of them out of the house for a day. What ensues is a veritable Homeric journey across the Atlanta metro area, driven by Lucky’s determination to get his son to the ball park on time to catch the game, regardless of any number of obstacles.

They say there is beauty in simplicity, and this is a simple story, beautifully told. It’s an astonishingly assured debut for writer-director David Fortune, shot in black and white by cinematographer Nikolaus Summerer. A truly compassionate drama that keeps it real at all turns, capped off by two outstanding lead performances. Color Book is a must-see.

Four Mothers -SIFF’s 2025 Opening Night Gala selection is the latest from writer-director Darren Thornton (A Date For Mad Mary). James McArdle stars as a gay novelist about to embark on an important American book tour. While he is excited about the prospect, he is torn about what to do about his mother while he is away (he’s her caregiver).

Adding to his stress level, he is unexpectedly saddled with taking care of three additional elderly women when several of his friends drop their mams off with him before heading off to a Pride festival for a weekend (he’s too nice a fellow to say no).

A delightful dramedy inspired by the Italian film Mid-August Lunch (my 2009 SIFF review). Bolstered by crackling dialog (co-written by the director and Colin Thornton) and endearing performances all round (particularly by Fionnula Flanagan as the writer’s mother, who steals all her scenes without uttering a word). (Streaming on Apple TV)

Nouvelle Vague – A heady and freewheeling backstage drama/fan fiction from Richard Linklater about the making of Breathless, the film that ushered in the French New Wave. Linklater not only offers a “fly on the wall” perspective with an uncanny recreation of the original production (right down to the camera work, film stock and screen ratio), but renews your faith in a medium that has become more about bombast, box office, and back end than characters, concept, and conflict. Full review (Streaming on Netflix)

One Battle After Another – It’s tempting to call Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling action-thriller/sociopolitical satire “one chase after another”, as it doesn’t pause often for a breather. Upon a second viewing (which I enjoyed more than the first) I detected more nuance. While the chase scenes are expertly choreographed, breathtakingly filmed (in vintage VistaVision) and genuinely exciting, it’s the little details I loved. The populous cast is uniformly excellent, but stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Sean Penn are at the peak of their powers here. Certain elements evoke the anarchic political spirit of late 60s/early 70s films like Punishment Park, The Strawberry Statement, Zabriskie Point, and Getting Straight, but One Battle After Another can simply be enjoyed as pure, exhilarating film making for grownups. Full review (In theaters and streaming on PPV)

Sorry, Baby – Mumblecore is alive and well, as evidenced by SIFF’s 2025 Closing Night Gala selection. Written, directed and starring Eva Victor (who you may recognize from Showtime’s Billions) this dramedy is a sometimes meandering but generally affable portrait of an independent young woman’s long recovery in the aftermath of a traumatic betrayal of trust. Victor slowly reveals her character’s arc in episodic fashion, using a non-linear timeline. Solid performances all around in a story that chugs along at the speed of life. The film left me thinking about something Mr. Rogers once said…“Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” He was right, you know. (Streaming on HBO/MAX)

U Are the Universe -As Elton John sang, it’s lonely out in space. Especially if there’s no Earth to come home to. Andriy (Volodymyr Kravchuk) is the pilot on a garbage scow loaded with nuclear waste destined for disposal on one of Jupiter’s moons (it’s just his job, 5 days a week). When he gleans that the world’s entire population has been wiped out by a cataclysmic event, he’s saddled by the realization he may be the last living human in the universe.

Considering that there is an ample yet finite supply of food on the ship, Andriy has calculated he can survive for a while, but obviously not as long as he would have expected, had the Earth not been destroyed. His growing sense of existential despair is kept somewhat in check by the presence of his onboard AI technical assistant/personality-enhanced companion Maxim, which at least gives him “someone” to interact with.

Then, one day, out of the vacuum, a glimmer of hope. He receives a voice-only communication from a Frenchwoman named Catherine, who tells him she’s the sole occupant of a space station on a collision course with Saturn (she figures she only has a couple weeks before there’s an earth-shattering kaboom). Andriy now has a raison d’être; he immediately sets course for a rescue mission (despite Maxim’s dire warnings about his ship’s limited power reserves).

While this may be familiar territory (with shades of 2001, Solaris, Silent Running, and Miracle Mile), Ukrainian director Pavlo Ostrikov’s film (which was in the midst of wrapping production in Kyiv in 2022 as Putin began sending salvos of missiles into the city) is armed with a smart script, tight direction, a nuanced performance by Kravchuk, and a beautiful statement on love, compassion and self-sacrifice-adding up to one of the best genre entries I’ve seen in some time.

Vermiglio – Once I got pulled into writer-director Maura Velpero’s intimate World War 2 family drama Vermiglio (winner of the Silver Lion at the 2024 Venice Film Festival and Italy’s Official Selection for the 2025 Academy Awards), I didn’t want it to end. Imbued with shades of The Leopard, The Last Valley, and Little Women, this is a simple, yet universal tale that transcends the era it is set in (which is captured with great verisimilitude). It works as both an elegy to the final vestiges of Old World traditionalism and as a harbinger of post-war mores. Naturalistic performances all around. Lovely cinematography by Mikhail Krichman (that lush Alpine scenery paints itself). An honest, raw, and emotionally resonant film. Full review (Streaming on Prime Video, Apple TV, Fandango at Home, and other platforms)

Waves – While it is set on the eve of the 1968 Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, in some respects writer-director Jiří Mádl’s riveting political thriller could have been ripped from today’s headlines.

In 1967 Prague, a young man named Tomás (Vojtěch Vodochodský) lives in a cramped apartment with his younger brother Paja (Ondřej Stupka). Tomás is Paja’s legal guardian. The conservative and apolitical Tomás is concerned about rebellious Paja’s increasing involvement with an anti-regime activist group. One day, he is chagrined to learn that Paja has sneaked off to an open audition for a job as an assistant to a popular but controversial radio journalist. Tomás rushes down to the station to intervene, but stumbles into landing the gig himself.

While he cannot foresee it, Tomás is about to get swept up into the vortex of tumultuous political upheaval in his country, culminating in the August 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces (the film is based in part on the rousing story of how Czech Radio managed to keep broadcasting, even after Soviet troops forced their way in and seized control of the main studios).

Waves plays like a mashup of Three Days of the Condor and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, and is a welcome throwback to films that hit that sweet spot between historical sweep and intimate drama. Oh, and don’t forget to support your favorite independent journalists, because democracy dies in…well, you know. Full review

Yanuni – Tribeca’s 2025 closing night selection is a riveting eco-doc that profiles Indigenous rights activist Juma Xipaia (the first female Indigenous chief of her people in the Middle Xingu) and her husband Hugo, who heads up a government special ops team that locates and shuts down illegal mining operations in Brazil’s Amazon region.

Richard Ladkani’s doc unfolds like a Costa-Gavras political thriller; early on in the film we see harrowing footage of Juma participating in a protest outside of the National Congress Palace in Brasilia where riot police suddenly fire a fusillade of live rounds into the crowd. A distraught Juma kneels beside a tribal activist who appears to be gravely wounded, pleading for him to respond (he doesn’t) until fellow demonstrators pull her away, out of the line of fire.

Juma, we learn, is no stranger to the threat of violence; she has survived a number of assassination attempts over the years and continues to be under threat. Yet she soldiers on, fighting outside and (eventually) inside of Brazil’s political system for her people…as does her husband (Juma and Hugo form an eco-warrior power couple).

Ladkani follows Hugo and his team on several missions; these scenes play like they are straight out of an action film, but instilled with an all-too-real sense of danger (the illegal miners are frequently armed and rarely happy to see the government commandos). Mining has been prohibited since Brazil’s Federal Constitution of 1988, as it not only wreaks havoc on the Amazonian ecosystem, but has a number of negative health effects on the Indigenous peoples of the region.

Ladkani’s film is slickly made and lushly photographed, but doesn’t pull any punches regarding its heavy subject matter. When you consider 10,000 acres of the Amazon rainforest are destroyed every day, the sense of urgency here becomes all the more palpable. (Streaming on eventive and Apple TV)

…and just for giggles

Holy Krampus…have I really been writing reviews here for 19 years?! I was but a child of 50 when I began in November of 2006 (I was much older then, but I’m younger than that now). Here are my “top 10” picks for each year since I began writing for Hullabaloo.

(You may want to bookmark this post as a handy reference for movie night).

[Click on title for full review]

2007

Eastern Promises, The Hoax, In the Shadow of the Moon, Kurt Cobain: About a Son, Michael Clayton, My Best Friend, No Country for Old Men, Pan’s Labyrinth, Paprika, Zodiac

2008

Burn After Reading, The Dark Knight, The Gits, Happy Go Lucky, Honeydripper, Man on Wire, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, The Visitor

2009

The Baader Meinhof Complex, Inglourious Basterds, In the Loop, The Limits of Control, The Messenger, A Serious Man, Sin Nombre, Star Trek, Where the Wild Things Are, The Yes Men Fix the World

2010

Creation, Inside Job, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, Little Big Soldier, A Matter of Size, My Dog Tulip, Nowhere Boy, Oceans, The Runaways, Son of Babylon

2011

Another Earth, Certified Copy, The Descendants, Drei, Drive, The First Grader, Midnight in Paris, Summer Wars, Tinker/Tailor/Soldier/Spy, The Trip

2012

Applause, Dark Horse, Killer Joe, The Master, Paul Williams: Still Alive, Rampart, Samsara, Skyfall, The Story of Film: an Odyssey, Your Sister’s Sister

2013

The Act of Killing, Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me, Computer Chess, 56 Up, The Hunt, Mud, The Rocket, The Silence, The Sweeney, Upstream Color

2014

Birdman, Child’s Pose, A Coffee in Berlin, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Kill the Messenger, The Last Days of Vietnam, Life Itself, A Summer’s Tale, The Wind Rises, The Theory of Everything

2015

Chappie, Fassbinder: Love Without Demands, An Italian Name, Liza the Fox Fairy, Love and Mercy, A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, Song of the Sea, Tangerines, Trumbo, When Marnie Was There

2016

The Curve, Eat That Question, Hail, Caesar!, Home Care, Jackie, Mekko, Older Than Ireland, Snowden, The Tunnel, Weiner

2017

After the Storm, Bad Black, Becoming Who I Was, Blade Runner 2049, A Date for Mad Mary, Endless Poetry, I Am Not Your Negro, Loving Vincent, The Women’s Balcony, Your Name

2018

Big Sonia, BlacKkKlansman, Fahrenheit 11/9, The Guilty, Let the Sunshine In, Little Tito and the Aliens, Outside In, Ryuichi Sakamoto: Coda, Wild Wild Country, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?

2019

David Crosby: Remember My Name, Dolemite is My Name, Driveways, The Edge of Democracy, The Irishman, Monos, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Putin’s Witnesses, This is Not Berlin, Wild Rose

2020

Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, Desert One, Love Spreads, Never, Rarely, Sometimes, Always, Pacified, 76 Days, Tommaso, The Trial of the Chicago 7, Weathering With You

2021

Brian Wilson: Long Promised Road, Fire Music, Heist of the Century, Kurt Vonnegut: Unstuck in Time, The Last Film Show, The Paper Tigers, The Pebble and the Boy, Surge, Waikiki, Whelm

2022

Day by Day, Drunken Birds, Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song, The Integrity of Joseph Chambers, The Man in the Basement, Moonage Daydream, My Love Affair With Marriage, Nude Tuesday, Sweetheart Deal, Polystyrene: I Am a Cliche

2023

Adolfo, Downtown Owl, Hey, Viktor!, I Like Movies, L’immensità, The Mojo Manifesto, Next Sohee, Once Within a Time, One Night With Adela, Ride On

2024

Bonjour Switzerland, The Dog Thief, Hacking Hate, In Our Day, Linda Perry: Let it Die Here, The Old Oak, Rainier: A Beer Odyssey, Restless, Solitude, Under the Grey Sky

Action, Politics, Social Satire, Up the Workers

Snap, crackle, pop: One Battle After Another (****)

November 24, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on November 22, 2025)

Laureen Hobbs: The Ecumenical Liberation Army is an ultra left sect, creating political confusion with wildcat violence and pseudo-insurrectionary acts – which the Communist Party does not endorse. The American masses are not yet ready for open revolt. We would not want to produce a television show celebrating historically deviational terrorism.

Diana Christensen: Miss Hobbs, I’m offering you an hour of prime time television every week, into which you can stick whatever propaganda that you want.

– from Network (1976), written by Paddy Chayefsky

I suppose one could describe The French 75, a likewise fictional radical group that figures prominently in Paul Thomas Anderson’s sprawling action-thriller/sociopolitical satire One Battle After Another as “an ultra left sect, creating political confusion with wildcat violence and pseudo-insurrectionary acts”.

In an audacious, pulse-pounding opening sequence, the group, led by charismatic firebrand Perfida Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor, in a fearless performance) conducts a pre-dawn raid on San Diego’s Otey Mesa Detention Center, with the intention of freeing the immigrant detainees. Here we are also introduced to Perfida’s decidedly less disciplined compatriot and lover “Ghetto” Pat Calhoun (Leonardo DiCaprio), the group’s explosives specialist.

As a parting shot, Perfida humiliates the facility’s steely-eyed, reactionary military commander, Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn) ordering him to “get it up” while holding him at gunpoint. Final insult: she confiscates his service weapon and his hat. Palpably seething from the emasculation (despite being oddly aroused by the experience), he fixes her with a hateful stare and vows (like countless screen villains before him) that (in so many words) “we shall meet again”.

When they do meet again, Lockjaw (who is now heading up a special unit tasked with taking the French 75 down) literally gets her cornered as she is planting an explosive device in a bathroom stall. However, instead of arresting her, he tells her she can carry on with her group’s activities…as long she agrees to meet him for a motel room rendezvous. A dedicated revolutionary to the core, Perfida fights her rising gorge and appears to shrug it off as the cost of doing business.

Perfida’s steadfast commitment to the cause over all else is further evidenced after she gives birth to a daughter (at one point while she’s still with child, Pat confides to a group member that “it’s almost like she doesn’t even know she’s pregnant”). Pat (who also goes by the nickname “Rocketman”) is beginning to favor the pull of the nesting instinct over participating in the couple’s ever more risky political actions. He tries to gently persuade Perfida to do same, but to no avail.

And so Perfida abandons Pat and baby Charlene to continue the fight. Her streak ends when a bank robbery goes sideways and she fatally shoots a guard. To avoid spoilers, I’ll just say she exits the narrative at this point.

Flash-forward to present-day. Pat and his now (precocious) 16 year-old daughter (Chase Infiniti) have gone underground, living off-the-grid in a rural California burg with the assumed names “Bob” and “Willa”, respectively. Perhaps understandably, Bob lives in a constant state of anxiety and paranoia. He self-medicates by staying baked most of the time.

Inevitably, that day every ex-radical in hiding dreads comes to pass-The Man is at the door, and Bob has to get his ass out of Dodge, posthaste. The Man, in this case, is the family’s old nemesis, Steven J. Lockjaw (now a full colonel). Unfortunately, this happens while Willa is out with her friends. Bob reluctantly has to leave without her. With help from his “sensei” Sergio St. Carlos (Benicio del Toro) Bob is eventually able to escape Lockjaw’s clutches and hits the road to find his daughter.

It’s tempting to call Anderson’s film “one chase after another”, as it doesn’t seem to pause very often for a breather in the course of its substantial 162-minute running time. Upon a second viewing (which I enjoyed even more than the first) I detected more nuance. After all, Anderson isn’t exactly revered as a premier “action director”.

While the chase scenes are expertly choreographed, breathtakingly filmed (in vintage VistaVision, no less) and genuinely exciting, it’s the little details that I love; e.g. DiCaprio toking up and reciting along with the dialog as he watches The Battle of Algiers (I also found myself laughing a lot more during the second viewing).

That’s not the only cinematic touchstone here; Anderson’s film evokes the anarchic political spirit of late 60s/early 70s films like Punishment Park, The Strawberry Statement, Zabriskie Point, and Getting Straight. The third act strongly recalls “long chase” classics like Vanishing Point and The Sugarland Express (especially with DP Michael Baumen’s expansive framing).

Anderson adapted his screenplay from Thomas Pynchon’s 1990 novel Vineland, but he has obviously updated a number of elements to reflect America in 2025 (even viewers who only casually follow politics will pick up on that right out of the gate). I referenced Sidney Lumet’s Network at the top of my review; Anderson’s film has a very similar streak of dark satire at its core. There’s also a whiff of Dr. Strangelove; “Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw” feels like a nod to “Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper”.

The cast is uniformly excellent, but DiCaprio and Penn are truly at the peak of their powers here. Penn, in particular has created one of the most unique heavies in recent memory; an amalgam of Colonel Kilgore and every jumped-up, overcompensating Greg Bovino with Little Man Syndrome currently prowling America’s cities whilst invested with the power of the state.

Even if you choose to eschew any political subtext, One Battle After Another can certainly be enjoyed as a piece of pure, exhilarating film making for grownups, and is the best film I’ve seen in 2025.

(Currently in theaters and available for PPV rental).

Culture Clash, Eco-doc, Politics, The Environment

Tribeca 2025: Yanuni (***1/2)

June 18, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

Tribeca’s closing night selection this year is a riveting eco-doc that profiles Indigenous rights activist Juma Xipaia (the first female Indigenous chief of her people in the Middle Xingu) and her husband Hugo, who heads up a government special ops team that locates and shuts down illegal mining operations in Brazil’s Amazon region.

Drama, Family Issues, Politics, Troubled Teens

Tribeca 2025: Cuerpo Celesete (***)

June 8, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on June 7, 2025)

Adolescence can be an emotional roller coaster; likewise the grief process. Dealing with both at once is a daunting test of anyone’s mettle. Chilean writer-director Nayra Ilic Garcia’s meditative family drama opens on New Year’s Eve, 1990. Vivacious 15 year-old Celeste (Helen Mrugalski) is enjoying a beach holiday with her loving family and closest friends (I had to remind myself that Chile is below the equator).

This is not only a happy time for Celeste and her entourage, but for Chileans in general. General Pinochet’s brutal Junta is over for good, with democratically-elected Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin set to take office in March of the new year.

However, just when everything’s looking up, Fate intervenes with a sudden death in the family. Celeste’s double-whammy of having to cope with growing pains along with an emotionally traumatic personal loss gives impetus to this moving and sensitively acted coming-of-age story. Garcia subtly weaves political analogy in the narrative; using the specter of Chile’s “missing” to mirror a nation coming to terms with collective grief, and the growing pains of a revived democracy that has lain dormant for far too long.

Journalism, Politics, Radio Biz, Thriller

SIFF 2025: Waves (***1/2)

May 24, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

While it is set on the eve of the 1968 Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, in some respects writer-director Jiří Mádl’s riveting political thriller could have been ripped from today’s headlines:

The administration of Donald Trump has terminated nearly 600 contractors at Voice of America (VOA), the US-funded international news network known for delivering independent journalism to countries with restricted press freedom.

The firings, announced on [May 15], appeared to defy a recent court order requiring the government to preserve strong news operations at VOA. The US president has criticized the news network and accused it of spreading “radical” content.

The cuts, announced on Thursday, affected mostly journalists along with some administrative staff and represented more than one-third of VOA’s workforce.

Among those dismissed are journalists from authoritarian countries who now face deportation, as their visas are linked to their jobs at VOA. […]

Kari Lake, a Trump ally and senior adviser at the US Agency for Global Media, which oversees VOA, defended the decision as legally permissible. Lake had previously denounced the agency as “unsalvageable” and accused it of corruption without presenting evidence. […]

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, ranking member of the Senate foreign relations committee, issued a statement in response to the firings:

“The Trump administration’s gutting of Voice of America threatens access to independent media in places where it is needed most,” the statement reads. “It deeply weakens a critical and cost-effective tool of American influence and soft power. If Voice of America is silenced, PRC and Russian propaganda and lies will fill the void. To add more fuel to the fire, Kari Lake’s recent announcement that the Voice of America will now become a conduit for One America News Network is a gift to Russia and propagandists everywhere.”

Reminds me of a funny story (well…not “ha-ha” funny). In 1967 Prague, a young man named Tomás (Vojtěch Vodochodský) lives in a cramped apartment with his younger brother Paja (Ondřej Stupka). Tomás is Paja’s legal guardian. The conservative and apolitical Tomás is concerned about rebellious Paja’s increasing involvement with an anti-regime activist group. One day, he is chagrined to learn that Paja has sneaked off to an open audition for a job as an assistant to a popular but controversial radio journalist. Tomás rushes down to the station to intervene, but stumbles into landing the gig himself.

Conspiracy a-go-go, Documentary, Politics, True Crime

SIFF 2025: Suburban Fury (***)

May 23, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

Within a 17-day period in the early fall of 1975, President Gerald R. Ford survived two attempts on his life-both taking place in California. One could argue that the first would-be assassin, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme is the only one people remember, by virtue of her well-known association with the Manson Family.

The second shooter, Sara Jane Moore, has remained a relative cypher. For one thing, she wasn’t a member of a high-profile death cult, and in stark contrast to Fromme’s psycho daisy couture, Moore looked for all the world like a buttoned-down housewife who had strolled straight out of a John Cheever story (although in this case, a buttoned-down housewife armed with a .38 Special).

Not that she didn’t have a screw loose…which became apparent (to me) as Robinson Devor’s documentary unfolded. Mixing archival materials and a present-day interview with an evasive and truculent Moore (now in her 90s), Devor tries to piece together the jigsaw of her bizarre journey from suburban mother of four to FBI informant, self-proclaimed revolutionary and would-be presidential assassin.

Moore (released from prison in 2007, after serving 32 years) is too cagey to drop any real bombshells here, so her motivations remain foggy. What I found even more interesting than Moore’s story was the adjacent retrospective on a politically tumultuous period in San Francisco (e.g. Moore has a tie-in with the Patty Hearst debacle). Despite leaving a number of questions unanswered, Suburban Fury is nonetheless a worthwhile watch for political junkies and the curious.

Con Game, Culture Clash, Drama, Politics

SIFF 2025: Souleymane’s Story (***)

May 22, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

Every minute of the next 48 hours of Souleymane’s life counts, because it will determine whether or not he will be granted the asylum he has been seeking in France. He’s barely scraping by, and has to bike around Paris day and night delivering food just to remain flush with his creditors. He has no legal papers, so he has to pay to work, forking over a fee to a fellow Guinean delivery man so he can “borrow” his identity.

Most importantly, he has a looming deadline to pay off the shady fixer who is selling him a new “story” he claims will be more likely to convince the authorities that Souleymane warrants asylum. Adding to his stress level, Soueymane has to memorize the extremely detailed narrative to a tee, or he’ll risk raising red flags for the well-seasoned bureaucrat he has been scheduled to meet with in just two days time.

Driven by a realistic lead performance by non-professional actor Abou Sangaré and imbued with a kinetic energy and sense of urgency recalling Run Lola Run, writer-director Boris Lokjine’s Souleymane’s Story is really the story of millions of émigrés all over the world who dream and strive for a better life.

Dramedy, Politics

SIFF 2025: The Safe House (**1/2)

May 19, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

Lionel Baier’s dramedy (adapted from Christophe Boltanski’s novel La Cache) is a child’s-eye view of the political tumult that permeated Paris in May of 1968.

A nine-year-old boy lives in a comically cramped apartment with his parents, his grandparents, a pair of uncles, and his great-grandmother. Everyone in the family is quirky, colorful, and whimsical (despite the near-revolution raging in the streets outside).

If you can get past the initial Wes Anderson vibe (with a zest of Jacques Tati), Baier does occasionally turn down the twee enough to fold in the sociopolitical realities of the era; leading to some profound moments (e.g. the film’s best scene is completely absurd, yet unexpectedly moving).

Documentary, Politics

SIFF 2025: Transfers (***)

May 18, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

(Originally posted on Digby’s Hullabaloo on May 17, 2025)

There were many horrors endured by the citizens of Argentina in the course of that country’s “Dirty War” period (1974-1983). Nicolás Gil Lavedra’s documentary primarily focuses on just one them: the methodical, State-sponsored extermination of dissidents (or those accused of being such) wherein people were kidnapped, tortured, drugged, and thrown to their deaths from airplanes.

These “death flights” included the kidnapping and murder of the “twelve of Santa Cruz,” a group of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, human rights activists and two French nuns captured in December 1977, which Lavedra covers in detail, mixing archival and present-day testimonials from former detainees, eyewitnesses, and journalists.

There is some redemption when you learn how a few (if not enough) of the perpetrators were eventually brought to justice. Interestingly, this was precipitated by the fact that, not unlike the Nazis, they kept meticulous records of their crimes (in this case, vis a vis dated flight logs that notated passenger counts).

Chilling and moving, this relatively understated film brings the human cost to the fore; making it a good companion piece to Luis Puenzo’s 1985 political drama The Official Story.

This is also a cautionary tale. When you consider that the term “Dirty War” was coined by the military junta, which one would assume was its way of self-justifying its atrocities, recent statements by government officials in our own country suggesting that habeas corpus “may” be suspended under the umbrella of “war powers” (what ‘war’?) should raise a red flag.

Culture Clash, Documentary, Politics, True Crime

SIFF 2025: Free Leonard Peltier ***1/2

May 17, 2025 Dennis Hartley Leave a comment

By Dennis Hartley

“Free Leonard Peltier!” has been a rallying cry by Native American rights activists for decades; in fact so many years have passed since his trial, conviction and sentence for the murder of two FBI agents that the circumstances surrounding his case have become obfuscated to the general public. Even those who have lobbied 50 years for his release (predicated on the government’s arguably flimsy evidence and dubious witness testimonies) didn’t see Joe Biden’s January 2025 commutation of Peltier’s life sentence coming. It wasn’t the full pardon his advocates had wished for, but they certainly welcomed it with joy and relief.

It’s been a long road for Peltier (now 80), with many twists and turns, but co-directors Jesse Short Bull (Oglala Sioux) and David France do a yeoman’s job of telling not only his story, but putting it in context with the activities of the American Indian Movement that flourished in the 1970s.

The filmmakers recount the Mt. Rushmore, Alcatraz, and Wounded Knee occupations, takeover of the BIA headquarters in Washington D.C., the Trail of Broken Treaties march, et.al., culminating with the 1975 incident at Pine Ridge Reservation involving the execution-style murders of the two FBI agents.

This is the most comprehensive study I’ve seen on Peltier’s case and the history of the A.I.M. movement. What you learn from this film is by turns enlightening and maddening, but ultimately inspiring and moving.