The Intercept
August 10, 2019
If you had to sum up decades of financial dystopia in America, you could go with the phrase “Money wins.” The accumulation of insane amounts of wealth by the 1 percent has flattened in its path everything else: the interests of ordinary people and the ...
Category: Film Criticism
What the Horror of “Chernobyl” Reveals About the Deceit of the Trump Era
The Intercept
June 5, 2019
IMAGINE THIS SCENE: A guilt-stricken official who worked for President Donald Trump sits down late at night to confess his agony. “What is the cost of lies?” the weary official says into a tape recorder, sitting in his dark kitchen. “It’s not that we’ll ...
It’s Time to Wage War Against War Movies That Glorify Outdated Models of Masculinity
The Intercept
January 27, 2018
The Hollywood Reporter published a surprising story earlier this month about film studios turning away from movies about sex. A biopic about Hugh Hefner is stalled, gone for the moment is a James Franco film about a 15-year-old Russian prostitute, and a ...
Brad Pitt’s “War Machine” Offers an Absurd and Scathing Critique of America’s Generals
The Intercept
June 17, 2017
How do military leaders persuade their soldiers to fight an insane war?
Here’s one way. The setting is a bitter outpost of the American war in Afghanistan. The years-long nightmare has no prospect of ending so long as American troops stay in a country that has a nearly unblemished ...
’13 Hours’ Splashes Blood Across the Screen and Misses the Real Story of Benghazi
The Intercept
January 14, 2016
Would you give the story of Benghazi to the producer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? Someone did. The result is the new film directed by Michael Bay, 13 Hours, which makes Rambo look like War and Peace.
In 13 Hours, Bay displays a fetish for fake blood and heads ...
Homeland Goes Rogue Against the Espionage Act
The Intercept
November 10, 2015
On Sunday evening, at around 9:30, a senior CIA official committed an egregious violation of the Espionage Act, leaking a cache of secret cables to someone who did not have clearance to receive them. The official now stands in breach of a draconian law ...
How the Makers of ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ Seduced the CIA with Fake Earrings
The Intercept
September 9, 2015
The plot behind the plot of Zero Dark Thirty just gets better and better.
From the moment it premiered in 2012, the film by Kathryn Bigelow and Mark Boal about the hunt for Osama bin Laden has been criticized as pro-torture propaganda. According to its many detractors, ...
Benghazi Film by Michael Bay Could Be Next ‘American Sniper’ but Let’s Hope Not
The Intercept
July 30, 2015
Hollywood surprised itself earlier this year by producing an Iraq war movie that was a blockbuster—American Sniper has earned more than half a billion dollars so far, starring Bradley Cooper in the role of Navy SEAL Chris Kyle. The film also produced intense ...
The CIA and the Myths of the Bin Laden Raid
The Intercept
May 19, 2015
If you read the sketchy New York Times article on the Delta Force raid into Syria ...
Oscars Make History, So Hollywood’s War Stories Need To Be True
The Intercept
February 13, 2015
When the Academy Awards are handed out, history will be made.
I’m not referring to the Oscars that particular films might win, but our embrace of their narratives of history. If “American Sniper” gathers a fistful of statues, even more people will see a film that ...