Yikes! I’m running a day behind! In the interest of time I shall decline
an introduction to today’s topic other than the following warning: If you are a
devout Republican and like yourself that way, you may not wish to read any
further! You will find no sand below in which to bury your head.
59. Thirteen Days (2000, USA)
Kevin Costner, Bruce Greenwood,
Steven Culp, Dylan Baker, Shawn Driscoll
This is a hugely engaging dramatization of the Cuban Missile Crisis
based on book The Kennedy Tapes
(1997) by Ernest May and Philip Zelikow, and, to clarify, not on the book Thirteen Days by Attorney General Robert
F. Kennedy (played here by Culp), which spawned a previous Missile Crisis docudrama
called The Missiles of October (1974)
which lacked the benefit of declassification of materials over the intervening
decades.
Forgivable liberties are apparently taken in order to give Costner’s
character (O’Donnell) key access so that he may serve as narrator in essence.
While potentially awkward, I think it works well to provide the viewer with an
edge-of-the-seat vantage to one of the most frightening and potentially
impactful events in human history including a very privileged look into the
troubling inner politics of politics and then the added human perspective via
the Costner character’s somewhat Cleaverish
family.
Excellent performance by Greenwood as JFK. Intensely suspenseful and
highly re-watchable.
Writers: David Self (Road to Perdition), Ernest R. May
Director: Roger Donaldson (The Recruit)
Budget: $80,000,000
IMDB rating: 7.3
60. Fair Game (2010, USA/UAE)
Naomi Watts, Sean Penn, Sonya
Davidson
This is the theatrical version of the well-documented story of CIA
agent Valerie Plame whose life was nearly forfeited, intentionally so, along
with many of her associates in the field, when the Bush government leaked her
identity out of spite when her husband outed Bush’s treachery in the New York
Times with regards to the Iraq oil invasion and the twisted fairy tale of
weapons of mass destruction which we should all know by now were never remotely
possible.
The tone is perhaps a bit light given the outrageousness and maliciousness
of the conspiracy for which none of Bush’s creepy pals ever suffered a shred of
judicial accountability. Another heap of evidence on the mountain of it which
damns the white house for its increasingly untouchable deviousness,
elite-serving agenda and their devout enmity with the American public who
suffers their tyranny under the threadbare guise of public service.
Writer: Jez Butterworth (Spectre), John-Henry Butterworth (Edge of
Tomorrow)
Director: Doug Liman (The Bourne Identity)
Budget: $22,000,000
IMDB rating: 6.8
61. Borat: Cultural Learnings of
America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006, USA/UK)
Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian
Master troll Sacha Baron Cohen endeavors to take a page from
documentarian Michael Moore’s playbook, offering interviewees the chance to
hang themselves with their own words, but not through Moore’s ambiguous
approach but rather through deliberate masquerade, creating utterly ridiculous
scenes which are falling-down hilarious and absurdly incriminating in terms of
the barely-veiled tribal insanities and narcissism present in some of the
American victims he targets. That said, it is rarely clear in each case, to
what degree these subjects are being authentically outed or to what degree they
are playing along.
This project was an all-out comedic riot the first viewing and still
wildly funny on subsequent views but increasingly disturbing.
Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen and Anthony Hines (Bruno)
Director: Larry Charles (The Dictator)
Budget: $18,000,000
IMDB rating: 7.3
62. The Corporation (2003, Canada)
Documentary
Is the insipid and illegitimate nature of the corporation construct now
common knowledge in today’s society, and thus it is for some blend of fear,
paralysis and guilt that we allow it to go on existing, to our terminal
detriment? Or is this only a perception within specific social circles
including my own? Back in 2003 I was still relatively clueless about many
things and this film was a startling wake-up call.
This is a valuable tool in terms of understanding both the genesis of
the corporation structure and its all-pervasive role in defining our society,
and makes a good start in terms of its troubling implications for the future.
This is a deep, highly-regarded documentary, nominated for dozens of
awards internationally and featuring eminent scholar Noam Chomsky whose every
word always compels. It piles a lot of information into a small space. Highly
re-watchable.
Writers: Joel Bakan, Harold Cooke (Surviving Progress), Mark Achbar
Directors: Mark Achbar (Manufacturing Consent), Jennifer Abbott (A Cow
at My Table)
Budget: unknown
IMDB rating: 8.2
63. Farenheit 911 (2004, USA)
Documentary by Michael Moore
Here’s a documentary film, undisguisedly opinionated but factual,
concerning the Bush administration; apparently one of the singular horrors of
the modern age, largely examined in the context of the 9-11 attacks and the
subsequent, very lucrative “War on Terror” enterprise. Perversely entertaining,
darkly funny and even heart-wrenching at times.
It was the most commercially successful documentary of the decade if
not all-time, receiving the longest standing ovation in memory at the Cannes Film
Festival where it took home the coveted Palme d’Or. And precisely as Moore
predicted, corporate American news, where freedom
of speech routinely means freedom of
ignorance, jumped all over that, claiming, “What do you expect from the
French?” despite the panel of nine containing one single French juror and four
Americans! Yeah. Business as usual.
Writer/Director: Michael Moore (Bowling for Columbine)
Budget: $6,000,000
IMDB rating: 7.5
Short List:
Food Inc. (2008, USA) documentary
with Michael Pollan, Eric Schlosser
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1998,
USA) Johnny Depp, Benicio Del Toro, Tobey Maguire
Not Without My Daughter (1991, USA)
Sally Field
The Pelican Brief (1993, USA) Julia
Roberts, Denzel Washington
If a Tree Falls: The Story of the E.L.F. (2011, USA/UK) documentary with Daniel McGowan
Fast Food Nation (2006, UK/USA)
Greg Kinnear, Bruce Willis
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