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Louis Proyect

"Noah Cross: See, Mr. Gitts, most people never have to face the fact that, at the right time and the right place, they're capable of... anything! (Chinatown) --- Harry Lime: Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly. (The Third Man) --- Michael Corleone: I saw a strange thing today. Some rebels were being arrested. One of them pulled the pin on a grenade. He took himself and the captain of the command with him. Now, soldiers are paid to fight; the rebels aren't. (Godfather part 2)"

Agrees with the Tomatometer 80% of the time.

Biography:: I am a long-time socialist with a an interest in the problems of developing countries. Therefore, films made in Latin America, Africa and Asia are of great interest to me. I am also the moderator of a Marxism mailing list at www.marxmail.org.
Favorites:: 1. Burn 2. Strawberry and Chocolate 3. Battle of Algiers 4. Moolaade 5. Sargeant Shakespeare
Publications:: rec.arts.movies.reviews
Critics' Group:: New York Film Critics Online

Total Reviews:: 658
Total QuickRatings:: 1

Location:: NYC

Listing Of All Reviews & Articles

Showing 1 - 50 of 658

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T-Meter	Title \| Year	Add Date
——	Hannah Arendt (2013)	" Riveting biopic about the first target of the Israel lobby." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted May 21, 2013
75%	Bidder 70 (2013)	" Gripping documentary about a young man who risked a stiff prison sentence for doing something to stop global warming, a crisis that could lead to the deaths of 100 million people." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted May 18, 2013
——	Three Sisters (2013)	" Wang Bing is the cinematic bard of the Chinese working class and peasantry. The film is must viewing for those who want to understand the grim realities behind China's highly touted "economic miracle". In other words, their 99 percent." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted May 10, 2013
75%	Desperate Acts Of Magic (2013)	" Does for the world of magic what "The Wrestler" did for another profession based on illusion. Much better than "The Prestige" even though with a more modest provenance." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted May 3, 2013
78%	Juan of the Dead (2012)	" Not only is this movie funnier than "Shawn of the Dead", its obvious inspiration, it is proof that Cuba is not a totalitarian dungeon." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Apr 26, 2013
98%	Mud (2013)	" Not quite as good as "Take Shelter" but still an intriguing story with a strong performance by Matthew McConaughey." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Apr 26, 2013
88%	Herman's House (2013)	" Reminiscent in some ways of the Damien Nichols story but more about a father-daughter relationship. It also shows what a gifted conceptual artist can do, making the Whitney Biennial look like a bit of a joke." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Apr 19, 2013
83%	The Revolutionary (2013)	" This aptly titled documentary draws upon the sharp memory and deep insights of a rueful nonagenarian. It might be of most interest to political people. If that describes you, DO NOT MISS IT." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Apr 12, 2013
60%	American Meat (2013)	" Very informative documentary even if it allows the filthy Steve Ells of Chipotle's a platform." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Apr 12, 2013
——	Smyrna: The Destruction of a Cosmopolitan City - 1900-1922 (2013)	" As an object lesson in the reactionary possibilities of a nationalist revolution, this documentary is most instructive. It is also a reminder that people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds can live together." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Apr 5, 2013
55%	The Company You Keep (2013)	" The Way We Never Were (The Weather Underground never took part in armed robberies.)" — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Mar 29, 2013
50%	You Don't Need Feet to Dance (2013)	" A great story about a great man and a reminder of why NYC remains one of the world's thriving metropolises. Hint: it makes it possible for someone like the film's subject to make a life for himself." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Mar 22, 2013
100%	Lost Angels: Skid Row Is My Home (2012)	" Both social history and a cry for social justice, this is the best documentary on society's lower depths since "Dark Days"." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Mar 19, 2013
100%	Cuchillo de palo (108) (2013)	" A landmark documentary on gay people that will become a classic like "Before Stonewall" or "The Celluloid Closet". At once a great family drama and detective story." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Mar 19, 2013
30%	Gut Renovation (2013)	" An all out assault on NY real estate developers and their nonstop drive to turn one of the world's great cities into a Tower of Mammon." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Mar 7, 2013
71%	Greedy Lying Bastards (2013)	" Next time NY won't be so lucky. A really big storm might kill thousands and leave us under water for months. This film shows us what forces are operating to make that more likely and what must be done to overcome them--starting with the Kochs." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Mar 1, 2013
65%	A Fierce Green Fire (2013)	" Funny to see the rotten reviews of this film as if it were supposed to be entertaining as a romantic comedy. We are in deep shit, brothers and sisters, and this movie gives you and idea of how good people are trying to pull us out of it." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Mar 1, 2013
92%	11 Flowers (2013)	" This brilliant coming-of-age story should demonstrate that Americans should be hacking Chinese computers to steal intellectual property and not the other way around--especially Hollywood." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Feb 23, 2013
64%	Ferlinghetti A Rebirth of Wonder (2013)	" A loving tribute to a man who taught my generation to worship art rather than mammon." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Feb 8, 2013
93%	Lore (2013)	" A strikingly accomplished film about worthless people." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Feb 8, 2013
92%	The Gatekeepers (2013)	" Self-serving baloney reminiscent of Errol Morris's Robert McNamara documentary" — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Jan 31, 2013
87%	Happy People: A Year in the Taiga (2013)	" The latest installment in an auteur's thematic: the outsider who rejects bourgeois civilization's empty pleasures. Siberia has never looked so beautiful." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Jan 25, 2013
85%	The Pirogue (2013)	" Politically powerful neorealist treatment on Senegalese "boat people" done with a poet's touch. " — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Jan 18, 2013
38%	Hyde Park on Hudson (2012)	" Critics expecting something along the lines of Spielberg's dreadful "Lincoln" were bound to be disappointed but if you are looking for something more like Woody Allen (but funnier) you will love this." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Dec 6, 2012
89%	Lincoln (2012)	" A paternalistic Lincoln who freed the slaves? Bad movie and worse politics..." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 30, 2012
94%	The Central Park Five (2012)	" A passionate and even radical case for racial justice coming from Ken Burns, all the remarkably so given his "feel good" aesthetic so resonant of Steven Spielberg's narrative films." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 23, 2012
100%	The Loving Story (2012)	" Brilliant debut film about a landmark case on miscegenation, reminiscent in many ways of the struggle for gay marriage today." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 23, 2012
73%	Generation P (2012)	" Like last year's adaptation of Shakespeare's "Coriolanus", a film very much limited by the source material--Victor Pelevin's cult novel--that reminds me of why I try to stay away from people who want to talk about their acid trips." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 15, 2012
96%	In the Family (2012)	" Despite its length and deliberate pacing, this is a film that is cathartic like no other film I have seen in a long time. An eloquent but non-propagandistic plea for gay rights." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 15, 2012
86%	The Law In These Parts (2012)	" A film that allows Israeli military judges to hang themselves on their own petards, men who might have sent a shiver down the spine of the Nazi architects of the Nuremberg Laws." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 15, 2012
100%	Burn (2012)	" If Black America is an internal colony, then Detroit is its epicenter. Hence, the more than coincidental ties between this powerful documentary and Pontecorvo's masterpiece." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 10, 2012
——	The Return of Lencho (2012)	" A raw and pulsating take on the brute facts of repression in Guatemala that lives on after the dictatorship of the 1980s was dismantled from the point of view of a young artist--both the main character and the identity of the director." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 9, 2012
57%	Here and There (2013)	" An understated but effective study of the problems faced by an "illegal" returning to his village in Mexico and an implicit argument against the brutality of North American nativism, under both Bush and Obama." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Nov 9, 2012
71%	We Are Legion: The Story of the Hacktivists (2012)	" Both a scholarly and entertaining look at the good people who brought the "one percent" to its feet through what amounted to the electronic version of sit-in's at segregated lunch counters in the 1960s." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Oct 21, 2012
94%	Photographic Memory (2012)	" Like Harvey Pekar and Spalding Gray, Ross McElwee makes art out of the often sad and desperate moments of his life. And like them, he is damned good at it." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Oct 12, 2012
26%	2016: Obama's America (2012)	" So Obama is bringing socialism to America by 2016? That would explain why Bain Capital is making bigger donations to him than to its founder Mitt Romney." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 28, 2012
32%	Won't Back Down (2012)	" A marriage made in hell between bad politics and bad art." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 28, 2012
——	Dear Mandela (2012)	" A powerful, timely and brilliant examination of the new economic apartheid that has beset South Africa and the inspiring struggle against it." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 26, 2012
100%	They Call It Myanmar: Lifting The Curtain (2012)	" Although owing a bit too much to a Travel Channel episode, this is a valuable look at a country undergoing important and necessary changes." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 22, 2012
88%	Head Games (2012)	" A timely exploration of the damage done to people in spectator sports just one step above what took place in the coliseums of another Empire in its decline." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 22, 2012
100%	In My Mother's Arms (2012)	" Deeply moving although simply made documentary about 32 Iraqi orphans looked after by a man who symbolizes the sad nation's best hopes." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 20, 2012
88%	Tears of Gaza (2012)	" Searing, Guernica-like evocation of the brutal war against Palestinian civilians by a rogue state." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 20, 2012
100%	Radio Unnameable (2012)	" Gimlet-eyed view of a legendary pioneer of "free form" radio as well as a probing examination of the Balkanization of the left." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 17, 2012
84%	Detropia (2012)	" A powerful documentary on the demise of the auto industry without Michael Moore's mawkish Capraesque pieties about how Barack Obama will institute a new New Deal and return the working class to its gloried past." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Sep 8, 2012
92%	The Bullet Vanishes (2012)	" Forget about your local Cineplex. This is genuine summer entertainment." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Aug 31, 2012
95%	Side by Side (2012)	" Absolutely mind-expanding look at the borderlines/tension between analog and digital in the movie world with an amazing who's who of directors involved with the transition." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Aug 29, 2012
94%	Neighbouring Sounds (2012)	" Brilliant dissection of class divisions in contemporary Brazil. The condo-dwelling rich both rely on and fear the subservient. Karl Marx mixed with Ionesco." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Aug 23, 2012
20%	Brother, Can You Spare a Dollar (2012)	" A film in the spirit of Michael Moore's "Capitalism, a Love Story" but more attractive through its nod to the Occupy Movement rather than re-electing Obama, today's Herbert Hoover." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Aug 20, 2012
89%	Red Cliff (Chi Bi) (2009)	" Thank god that Woo left Hollywood. This is the masterpiece he was destined to make." — rec.arts.movies.reviews Posted Jul 27, 2012

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