“Who’s Afraid of the Bogeyman?,” 1988, East Germany, Helke Misselwitz. As the GDR wanes, a Berlin coal company hums along, and we meet the laborers who haul, shovel and jibe, meanwhile raising families and looking ahead. “This is how we survive,” one says “in quiet desperation.”
Piranhas, Italy, 2019, Claudio Giovannesi. An Italian youth and his teenage friends, plagued by restlessness, are captivated by the sparkling spoils of life in organized crime in Naples. But Nicola, like Icarus, learned the hard way what happens when you fly too close to the sun.
Sunshine Superman, 2014, Marah Strauch. Pretty good documentary about the history and origins of BASE jumping and one of its iconic figures, Carl Boenish, as he pushed the boundaries of human limits with every jump.
The Nile Hilton Incident, 2017. In pre-Arab Spring Egypt, as social foment occurs, a cop tries to do good by a murdered woman and faces the reality of a system run by powerful men who only want to cover up the worst of crimes, even as it begs, at every turn, to be solved.
Person to Person, 2017. Beautiful in its everydayness, this film by Dustin Guy Defa follows the disparate lives of a newspaper runner, a young feminist, a record collector, a watch repairman and two aggravated brothers as they find meaning in the ordinary (and not so).
Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, 2011, Nuri Bilge Ceylan. A doctor, a police chief, an accused murder and a prosecutor all journey to find a supposedly-buried body in the Turkish countryside, in the process unearthing the things inside themselves that were long dead and buried.
The Third Murder, Hirokazu Koreeda, 2018, Japanese. A defense attorney does what he can to defend a confessed murderer, even as his culpability becomes less certain with every moment. A central question: what is truth and how does it relate to memory and our institutions of justice? Recommend.
John Adams, 2008, HBO. I really enjoyed this miniseries, which follows the life of John Adams in the first days of the state delegations to the Continental Congress up to the 50th anniversary of the nation. Paul Giamatti stars, and Laura Linney plays a great Abigail Adams. John is shown to be a stubborn but principled statesman, hardboiled and hard to defer. A great watch if you’re interested in colonial history and the various theories that went into the drafting of our Constitution, which play out still today.
Bearer of Pity 