“Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger – Official Trailer”>Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger” from director Joe Berlinger, who also explored our legal system with the Memphis Three trilogy and “Crude.”
“Glen Campbell: I’ll Be Me” follows the Rhinestone Cowboy on his last concert tour, as he struggles with dementia. It is a powerful, touching, heartbreaking, but inspiring story as we see him become increasingly impaired, but also see how much he is sustained by music and by the support of his remarkable family.
A wedding videographer revisits couples from some of the “112 Weddings” he has filmed to find out what happened to them.
AFI Docs: Three Great Documentaries About Failures of Law Enforcement
Posted on June 20, 2014 at 8:34 am
We had a great first day at AFI Docs, the most important documentary film festival in the country. I am very proud to be a sponsor. Yesterday, we saw three of the films featuring one of this year’s key themes, failure, abuse, and over-intrusiveness of law enforcement, all followed by panel discussions with the filmmakers and those featured in the film.
“1971” is the story of a group of young anti-war protesters who broke into a field office of the FBI in Media, Pennsylvania and stole all of the documents filed there. Before Daniel Ellsberg, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, these eight people, anonymous until they came forward four decades later, sent files to newspapers that revealed shocking and illegal activity at the FBI. What they uncovered led to the first-ever oversight hearings and guidelines for FBI activities. Reporter Betty Medsger, who covered the story for the Washington Post, wrote a book about it last year: The Burglary: The Discovery of J. Edgar Hoover’s Secret FBI.
“The Newburgh Sting” is the story of four men who were arrested for planning a terrorist attack on a plane and two synagogues. But the movie reveals that the man who planned and financed the operation was an FBI informant.
“The Internet’s Own Boy” is about Aaron Swartz, a brilliant, passionate young man, the co-founder of Reddit and one of the leaders of the anti-SOPA campaign, who killed himself at age 26 because he was being prosecuted for downloading scholarly journals. He was facing a 13-count indictment with the prospect of a 35 year sentence.
Neil deGrasse Tyson’s marvelous “Cosmos” reboot comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray this week and it is well worth adding to every family and classroom library. It is a very worthy successor to Carl Sagan’s classic PBS series of the 80’s, updated to make use of the latest technology and to present the most exciting discoveries about our world and the worlds beyond.
Dazzling graphics, mind-blowing outer space images, and clear, frank presentation of core principles of the scientific method not only cover what we know but why we know it. We also learn about the fearless men and women who made these discoveries, with nothing but passionate curiosity and fierce intellectual integrity to guide them. We learn that answers are important but that it is questions that drive knowledge forward.
On this 70th anniversary, we are grateful for the dedication of the troops who defended our freedom.
In The Longest Day, an all-star cast appears in the story of Allied forces preparing for a massive D-Day assault upon the beaches of Normandy during World War II. For documentary footage, check out D-Day: 70th Anniversary Collection.
The 2010 Supreme Court decision in the Citizens United case opened the door — no, opened the floodgates — to unlimited and unaccountable political spending by corporations and wealthy individuals. The case itself rose from a film about Hillary Clinton that was funded by a group opposing her candidacy for President. And now this film, “Citizen Koch” takes on Charles and David Koch, the wealthiest, most powerful, most influential, and least known of the individuals who have taken advantage of the Citizens United ruling and the corrupting, distorting, and toxic effect on democracy.
The filmmakers make it clear from the beginning whose side they are on, opening with a racist quote from Koch paterfamilias and c0-founder of the John Birch Society Fred Koch, then cutting to Sarah Palin, shouting “Game on!” to Barack Obama at an Americans for Prosperity rally. Americans for Prosperity is just one of the more than 30 organizations known to be funded by the Kochs. It then goes back two and a half years earlier to examine the impact the Kochs have had in just a small but representative sample of issues and events, focusing in detail on Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, kept in office despite a recall vote, thanks to enormous amounts of money for an “end the recall madness campaign,” none of which was disclosed until after the vote, when it was too late to affect the outcome.
The unexpected hero of the film turns out to be Buddy Roemer, former Governor and Congressman from Louisiana who has served or run as Democrat, Republican, and independent. His fresh, frank outlook and good cheer despite being ignored by contributors, voters, and the other candidates is a bracing antidote to the despair and animosity surrounding him. One Rove/Koch operative refuses to answer questions about the benefits to their business interests that the policies the Koch brothers are promoting and another insists, outside of a Koch-funded bus filled with get-out-the-vote callers representing themselves as “volunteers for Americans for Prosperity,” that his group is not “election advocacy,” just “issue” education. By contrast, Roemer’s candor — and his inability to get any support — are telling.
But the inescapable conclusion from the film is that there is something even more distressing than the impact of near-unfathomable individual wealth on politics: the impact on public understanding of the issues. As sort of Gresham’s Law of information, the availability of outlets for unlimited sources with their own spins and agendas. A group of people take in the anti-Semitic-fueled rant of a John Birch Society leader (he actually comes down on Hitler’s side regarding the threat posed by Jews), and one of them gratefully says it is good to be able to get information from those who are knowledgeable. Another man, told that the money the Kochs spent on elections is vastly greater than that spent by the unions (as much a target of the Kochs as government regulations and the social safety net), simply refuses to believe it. That same attitude — and the power of the Kochs to keep this film from being aired on New York’s PBS station to get this story told — is the real problem.
Parents should know that this film includes some disturbing language and bigotry.
Family discussion: How do other countries handle this problem? What is the best way to evaluate the impact of political spending by all sides?
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, an all-star cast appears in the story of Allied forces preparing for a massive D-Day assault upon the beaches of Normandy during World War II. For documentary footage, check out 
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