It has now been ten years since Wolfgang Petersen’s old-fashionedly classic film on the Trojan War was released. In hindsight, some of the controversy that roiled round the film at the time now seems rather silly. But then much of the criticism the film took was much worse than silly.
In my memory, I have always falsely grouped Sleeping Beauty with Disney's animated features from the 1940s: Pinnochio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi.
Nobody in No God, No Master actually utters the phrase "those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it," but that sentiment is the subtext of nearly line of dialogue in this historical drama about the Palmer Raids.
It is a good movie, certainly, and it is not writer/director Steven Knight's fault that we live in an age that appears only to recognize two critical verdicts: awesome or awful. There is less room in the conversation for the good, modest movie.
Somewhere in my list of cinephile pet peeves is the notion, loosely held, that direction doesn't matter much in documentaries--that a filmmaker need only find an interesting subject and turn on the camera. Direction does matter.
Bright Days Ahead is a notch better than both Le Week-end and The Face of Love.
My complaints are two, and they are both the more frustrating for obscuring the occasional relevant and important pieces (such as claims that the Bush administration had decided they wanted to "do something" about Iraq prior to the 9/11 attacks).
Moms' Night Out is the first (and so far only) "Christian" movie that I could maybe, sort of, imagine a non-Christian enjoying. Not every non-Christian, certainly, Maybe not most. But some...and that's progress after a fashion.
Few events in history have been the subject of as many books and films as the Holocaust, yet paradoxically each new narrative serves to remind us that we can only ever scratch the surface of tragedies composed of the loss of human lives.
If 2014 is, as has been rumored, the final year of Film Fest DC, the selection of films proved a fitting microcosm of both why regional film festivals will continue to struggle and why this one will be missed.
