9/11: Inside the President’s War Room is a candid documentary meant to commemorate the events of September 11th, 2001 and serve as essential viewing for its 20th anniversary. While the film delivers on its candid nature, featuring exclusive photographs and interviews with past White House officials including former president George W. Bush, Adam Wishart’s doc is not as considerate as it could be.
By: Trevor Chartrand Based on a true story, 398 Days: Hostage is the harrowing account of a Danish photographer captured, tortured and held hostage in Syria for over a year. Young and ambitious, our protagonist Daniel Rye Ottosen (Esben Smed) is an Olympic contender with the Danish gymnastics team, until a knee injury shatters his dreams of pursuing the gold medal. Short on prospects and in need of work, Daniel starts his career over with…
Much of Prisoner X’s scenery is dark and grey, which describes my experience watching Gaurav Seth’s movie. It’s not very stimulating and I was left feeling cold.
In 2013, audiences were treated to two movies involving hostage situations in the White House: Antoine Fuqua’s Olympus Has Fallen and Roland Emmerich’s White House Down. The former performed well enough at the box office to merit a sequel, while the other languished in obscurity, likely due to its director’s notorious incompetence. And yet, much like its predecessor, London Has Fallen shows that in terms of quality, White House Down triumphed where Olympus had fallen.
I remember watching Hany Abu-Assad’s terrorism drama Paradise Now, and feeling genuinely moved by it. I was on edge and even heartbroken at times. Even though I can’t recall the 2005 Oscar contender beat-for-beat, I can still recognize those emotions years later as if I saw the movie last week.
By: Addison Wylie The September 11th attacks struck fear into our society, providing a sensitive feeling of having our nerves wracked and having a newfound definition to defensiveness. But, sometimes precautions towards the “war on terror” are taken too far and end up doing additional harm to innocent people. Five Muslim men were selected and arrested for having links to terrorism with some of those individuals having a loose relationship to Osama Bin Laden. At…
By: Addison Wylie Jason Osder has taken on an anti-talking heads format with his striking documentary Let the Fire Burn and it pays off big time. The filmmaker chronicles the societal shakes that took place in Philadelphia during the late seventies through to the mid-eighties initiated by MOVE. Members of MOVE would call the collective an organization inhabiting a peaceful, non-violent state-of-mind. Others wouldn’t hesitate to call MOVE a cult with harassing methods bordering on…