Movie reviews

Hollywood is a branch of the military industrial complex. Its films are a strategic weapon for shaping public opinion on nearly every topic. Watching simulated slaughter is a critical part of desensitizing people to actual violence. Movies are the cultural narrative of our civilization.

There are a few films that have intelligent perspectives, discuss forbidden truths or otherwise have redeeming qualities. Most of them are obscure (because they are good). Here is a list of my favorites. It's an incomplete list of worthy films but I have watched all of them.

Perhaps it is not a coincidence that Hollywood is nestled in the middle of Los Angeles, an extremely unsustainable megalopolis where water is piped in from distant rivers across desert mountains and active earthquake faults. While no place in the US - or industrial civilization elsewhere on the planet - is "sustainable," LA is especially notable for dependence on extracting distant resources. Maybe this precarious state is part of the explanation for movies that reinforce the idea of looming apocalypse, competition for scarce resources, downplaying of efforts to repair the damage.

It would be nice to see a Hollywood depiction of how civilization shifted course toward our collective survival. Ecotopia, the movie?

 

911: Press For Truth

The best documentary about how the 9/11 attacks were allowed to happen, mercifully free of the disinformation that infests most films on this forbidden topic. The filmmakers released an excellent book "The Watchdogs Didn't Bark: The CIA, NSA and the Crimes of the War on Terror" in 2018.

 

1984

George Orwell's dystopian novel, condensed to fit into a movie format but true to the original.

 

Air America

Mel Gibson's best film. The real "Air America" was a CIA front company that ran opium out of Laos in the 1960s. A surprising depiction of covert operations disguised as a comedy and "buddy" film.

 

All Governments Lie

 

American Blackout

A documentary on election fraud in the 2004 Presidential "election" featuring Representative Cynthia McKinney.

 

Anthropocene

 

Arid Lands

A documentary about the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in eastern Washington State, which was built to make plutonium for the Manhattan Project. (The Nagasaki bomb used Hanford plutonium.) But this film isn't just about Hanford's history, it also touches upon the original First Nations, the towns bulldozed to make Hanford, the nuclear pollution problems, sprawl development fueled by Hanford bomb making and the never ending "cleanup" of the waste, and water policy in the desert. www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/arid.html

 

Baraka

beautiful visual and audio portrayal of cultures and landscapes around the world. If you like Koyaanisqatsi you'll like Baraka.

 

The Battle of Algiers

set in the Algerian revolution against the French occupation, features clandestine organizing, terrorism, colonial repression. It's not a literal documentary but it looks like one. Every student of anti-colonialism revolutions of the 20th century should see this film.

 

Being There

Peter Sellers in his finest role: Chance the gardener, a simple man who only learned about the outside world through television. Through improbable circumstances he rose to the pinnacle of American society by uttering simplistic thoughts that most thought were profound. The movie was released shortly before actor Ronald Reagan had the greatest role of his career. Sublime humor.

 

Bob Roberts

Tim Robbins is Bob Roberts, a right wing folksinger running for Senate in Pennsylvania. His Democratic opponent is played by Gore Vidal, a hapless politician in public but in private understands the country became an Empire. An Iran-Contra theme is the backdrop in this biting political satire. The film has an amazing satire of Saturday Night Live, too. Bob Roberts is especially recommended for Bob Dylan fans.

 

Bombies

A documentary about the legacy of land mines and unexploded ordnance in Laos, the most heavily bombed country in history. The Nixon regime bombed Laos more severely than the bombing of Nazi Germany (in terms of tonnage) yet Laos had little industry. A generation later Laos is littered with live, unexploded bombs that continue to maim and kill. After three decades of reading voraciously about the USA empire (and other empires) it takes a lot to shock me, but "Bombies" was a new level of shock. Martin Luther King recommended reparations to the Vietnamese in 1967 as a mitigation for the crimes our country committed. The US owes a lot of reparations to Laos, including technical assistance in removing these dangers from farmland.

It's one of the many legacies of the removal of President Kennedy from office, he had pushed for a neutrality agreement in Laos to prevent war (a bigger priority in 1961 than Vietnam) and the war on Laos accelerated after his removal from office (this latter point not included in "Bombies").

 

Brazil

Brazil should be subtitled "Monty Python and the Department of Homeland Security." Released in 1985, it presaged the dysfunctional surveillance society we are entering. A blend of 1984 and Brave New World with a side of the Marx Brothers. A future where nothing works, everything is monitored and most are distracted with mindless consumerism. Two of the Monty Python comedy troupe members are part of Brazil: Terry Gilliam was the director and Michael Palin plays the torturer at the Ministry of Information Retrieval. Gilliam had to battle the studio to get them to release his film because it did not have a stereotypical "happy ending" and the satire of bureaucracy made the studio bureaucrats uncomfortable. Detailed reviews at www.oilempire.us/brazil.html

A personal note: Many people said their first impression of the 9/11 attacks was that it looked like a Hollywood disaster movie. Brazil was the film that I thought of. "here comes the police state."

 

Burn!

Marlon Brando stars in this drama about imperialism and the sugar trade. It didn't get much attention despite having a top Hollywood actor in the lead role. Burn! was made by Gillo Pontecorvo, the director of The Battle of Algiers.

 

The Century of the Self

A masterful profile of psychology and politics from BBC journalist Adam Curtis. Topics include advertising, PR specialist Edward Bernays, and the new age movement as a reaction to the failure of politics in the 1960s.

 

The China Syndrome

A candidate for the "best timed" film, this drama about problems with a nuclear power station was released just before the Three Mile Island partial meltdown (1979). This author saw the film twice, once before it was released, and again shortly after the TMI crisis. The movie theater audience laughed at the line that a meltdown could make "an area the size of Pennsylvania" uninhabitable (taken from an actual Nuclear Regulatory Commission report on this danger).

 

Citizenfour

Laura Poitras profiles the whistleblowing of Ed Snowden, including footage from the hotel room in Hong Kong where Snowden initially became world famous for leaking NSA secrets. A good introduction to the story of the global surveillance system we all live under.

One surprising omission from the film is President Obama claiming that he was not going to send up the Air Force to intercept some hacker (when Snowden was in Moscow and trying to figure out how to travel to Latin America without interception by the USA). Shortly after, the President of Bolivia, who was on a previously scheduled trip to Russia, was denied the right to travel through several European countries and forced to land in Switzerland, presumably to search his plane to see if Snowden was on board (he was not). This was a blatant breach of diplomatic protocol and showed that grabbing Snowden was more important to the Obama administration than diplomatic relations with alleged allies (Bolivia, Ecuador, NATO countries forced by the USA to close their airspace to the Bolivian plane).

https://consortiumnews.com/2014/11/23/filling-the-blanks-in-snowdens-citizenfour-tale/
Filling the Blanks in Snowden’s ‘Citizenfour’
November 23, 2014
Exclusive: To grasp the full story of Citizenfour, the documentary on Edward Snowden’s decision to expose NSA spying, you must go back four decades to see how the reality slowly dawned on Americans that their privacy and freedoms were at risk, writes James DiEugenio.

 

Conspiracy

Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh portrays Reinhard Heydrich, a key architect of the Nazi Holocaust. Conspiracy is a re-enactment of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting of top Nazis in early 1942 to plan the logistics of the Holocaust.

 

The Conversation

1974 film about paranoia and surveillance starring Gene Hackman, directed by Francis Ford Coppola. The film benefitted from being released at the height of the Watergate scandal.

 

Corporate Coup d'Etat

 

 

The Corporation

Exceptional examination of the role of modern transnational corporations. Asks the question: if a corporation legally is considered to have the rights of human beings, what sort of a person would it be? The Corporation compares the medical diagnosis of psychopathy with corporate abuses. www.thecorporation.tv

 

The Counterfeiters

Jewish prisoners with expertise in printing are forced to work in a Nazi concentration camp to counterfeit British pounds and US dollars. Based on a true story. The film won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

 

The Crisis of Civilization

A companion to a book of the same name by Nafeez Ahmed, it shows the interconnections between climate change, peak oil, war in the Middle East and terrorism. Cute graphics, clever animation and a quirky soundtrack make the harsh message much more accessible.

 

The Day the Earth Nearly Died

BBC science documentary about the mass extinction of life 252 million years ago, worse than the extinction that included the dinosaurs (65 million years ago). Unlike the end of the dinosaurs, this extinction seems to have happened over tens of thousands of years, not from a sudden impact. Current thinking is the cause was a combination of volcanism warming up the Earth that subsequently melted the frozen methane at the bottom of the oceans. Could something similar be in place for the climate shifts we have set into motion?

 

Die Wannseekonferenz

German re-enactment of the Wannsee Conference. A different style of dramatization than "Conspiracy."

 

Doctor Strangelove

Stanley Kubrick's satire of the nuclear arms race. Peter Sellers plays three roles - a timid British Captain who is an assistant to General Jack D. Rippert (a cross between the John Birch Society and General Curtis LeMay), President Merkin Muffley (who resembles Adlai Stevenson) and Doctor Strangelove.

Daniel Ellsberg, the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, said in his book "The Doomsday Machine" that he saw the film in the theater when he was a nuclear war planner for the Rand corporation. Ellsberg said he thought Doctor Strangelove was a documentary since the military can start nuclear war without Presidential authorization.

 

Duck Soup

Groucho Marx is Rufus T. Firefly, the dictator of the republic of Freedonia. Duck Soup is the origin of the comedy industrial complex.

 

The End of Suburbia: Oil Depletion and the Collapse of The American Dream

2004 documentary about Peak Oil that is the best introduction to the topic. www.endofsuburbia.com

 

Escape From Sobibor

Alan Arkin plays one of the leaders of the Jewish prisoner revolt at the Sobibor Extermination Camp (1943). Several Sobibor survivors advised the production. No dramatization can come close to the ghastly reality of a death camp. How people brutalized beyond imagination summoned up the courage to escape and live to tell the tale is of world class importance - not merely Jewish history, but a warning for all humanity.

 

Fail Safe

A serious film about nuclear war that came out at the same time as Doctor Strangelove. Both the book and the film portray the military command as less militaristic than the "civilian" advisors lost in their theories about how a nuclear war could supposedly be managed.

 

The Falcon and the Snowman

A story that seems too surreal to be true. Chris Boyce was a college dropout who was hired by TRW to work as a code clerk for their "Black Vault." The vault was part of a global CIA and NSA communications system and Boyce became privy to scandals, including US interference in Australian politics, which culminated in a bloodless coup against the elected Prime Minister. He grew disillusioned with what he saw there and ultimately sold its secrets to the Soviet Union, using his drug dealer friend Daulton Lee as the courier to the Russian Embassy in Mexico City. The film is excellent but the book (of the same name) fills in details that could not be squeezed into a two hour presentation. One of the best "spy films" ever made, without the usual "made for Hollywood" distortion of facts.

 

Fear Not the Path of Truth

Ross Caputi, a veteran of the war against Iraq, made this documentary about his experiences, especially the destruction of the city of Faluja. You can watch the film at http://vimeo.com/80051615 I originally learned about it through a review at http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2013/11/fear-not-path-of-truth.html

 

The Garden

 

The Great Deception

The Great Conspiracy

www.oilempire.us/great-deception.html has a review and transcript.

 

The Great Dictator

Charlie Chaplin has two roles: Adenoid Hynkel, the dictator of Tomainia, and a Jewish barber who suffers from Hynkel's persecution. The scene of Hynkel dancing with a giant globe in his office is timeless, a great parody of megalomania.

 

Growthbusters

 

Half-Life (a parable for the nuclear age)

A 1985 film about USA nuclear testing experiments in the Marshall Islands, specifically focused on the 1954 "Castle Bravo" test. This was the largest USA nuclear test ever done - 15 megatons, roughly a thousand times the force of the Hiroshima bomb. People on downwind islands received tremendous amounts of fallout, which was explained by the Atomic Energy Commission as the unfortunate consequence of a shift in the wind, but really was a medical experiment to determine the impact of radiation on exposed populations. The bomb had a higher than expected yield, and the downwinders got more exposure than planned, forcing their evacuation. A very difficult film to find, the only on-line copy is a version dubbed into Italian.

Toward the end of the film, a Marshallese woman summarizes their experience with the United States as "they are very smart at doing stupid things." This is my all time favorite description of what happened to our country.

 

A Hidden Life

The story of conscientious objector Franz Jagerstatter, an Austrian peasant farmer who refused to serve Hitler's army and paid the ultimate sacrifice. Set against spectacular scenery (the Alps), it is a meditation on conscience, acquiescence, ostracism and acceptance. It is a magnificent portrayal, beautiful on every level, full of love of family and nature. It is also a bit long, but worth it.

The lead actor was a supporting actor in The Counterfeiters (also set during the Third Reich) and the lead actor in that film is a supporting actor in this one. Most of the dialogue in A Hidden Life is in English. Interestingly, it is the antagonists of our hero who get the German dialogue (untranslated, no subtitles in this film). Nazi guards. Neighbors angry that Franz isn't going along to get along. It is as if the German shouting is not really of consequence for telling the story. Franz's inner dialogue (rendered to the audience in English) is more important than yelling in a language that the American audience is unlikely to understand (unless they studied German in school). Mercifully, the violence in the film is not gratuitous nor graphic. There is a lot of symbolic imagery that speaks through juxtaposition as much as dialogue. Definitely not a documentary, it is on a deeper archetypical level.

Joseph Ratzinger, who became Pope Benedict, beatified him. (Ratzinger had his own wartime skeletons of complicity, although as a teen, not an adult.) Franz's widow lived long enough to see the honor.

detailed reviews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hidden_Life_(2019_film)

www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-hidden-life-movie-review-2019

www.abc.net.au/news/2020-01-29/a-hidden-life-review-terrence-malick-nazi-germany-masterpiece/11905642

background on the true story:

Franz Jägerstätter's widow, 'a warm, gentle soul,' dies at 100 | National Catholic Reporter.html
www.ncronline.org/news/people/franz-j-gerst-tters-widow-warm-gentle-soul-dies-100

Franz Jägerstätter/ a solitary witness – Jim and Nancy Forest
www.jimandnancyforest.com/2008/09/jagerstatter/

Franziska and Franz J‰gerst‰tter | National Catholic Reporter.html
https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/franziska-and-franz-j-gerst-tter

ExecutedToday.com » 1943/ Blessed Franz Jagerstatter, conscientious objector.html
www.executedtoday.com/2009/08/09/1943-blessed-franz-jagerstatter-conscientious-objector/

 

Hidden Wars of Desert Storm

 

Hitler: The Rise of Evil

2003 made for TV movie that shows how Hitler rose to power (with the actors playing Hitler and Hindenberg speaking in a British accent). It's most notable for its depiction of the Reichstag Fire. The film got some controversy for suggesting an obvious parallel to current events. The characters in the film are actual people who helped (or resisted) the Nazi takeover.

 

Holocaust

1978 TV miniseries on the Nazi Holocaust. It was one of the first dramatic depictions of the Holocaust, featuring enough characters to show different aspects of the genocide. Meryl Streep plays a non-Jewish wife of a persecuted Jewish artist and she later was in another Holocaust film, Sophie's Choice.

 

House of Cards, To Play the King, The Final Cut

Ian Richardson plays Francis Urquhart, the Conservative Party's Chief Whip in Parliament. Passed over for promotion by the newly re-elected Prime Minister, he schemes to bring down his government so he can take his place. Viciously funny, a political thriller that is more intelligent and cynical than any drama that could be made on this side of "the pond." To Play the King is a sequel, set after Urquhart becomes Prime Minster and his chief political opponent is the King, a loose portrayal of the current Prince Charles. The Final Cut is the final episode, where Urquhart takes Britain to war to boost his public approval. FU's wife, a modern version of Lady Macbeth, calls the conflict "our Falklands," but it ends up ruining his administration. Richardson only agreed to the third episode if FU's regime fell, and it does, spectacularly.

Note: there is an American drama also called House of Cards loosely based on the original British series.

 

I Am Not Your Negro

A profile of radical author and civil rights activist James Baldwin.

 


JFK films

Executive Action

A dramatized account of the conspiracy to remove President Kennedy from office, made two decades before Oliver Stone's JFK. Executive Action was a much lower budget version than JFK and also has far fewer details, but it holds up well despite the passage of time. Jim Garrison's efforts to investigate and prosecute the perpetrators is not part of the story but there's a character among the plotters who looks like Allen Dulles.

 

JFK, Thirteen Days, Virtual JFK and The Fog of War

JFK is probably the only Hollywood film to receive a massive media attack long before it was released in theaters. Some political writers claim that talking about cutting Social Security benefits is the "third rail of politics" (touch that and you are politically dead). In reality, discussing covert operations of government is the real "third rail." JFK compresses an enormous amount of material into a three hour film. A few minor characters are composites but a full telling of the story would be far too long for a movie. The conclusion of the film -- the military industrial complex removed Kennedy from office because he wanted to end permanent war -- is correct and the reason the media from The Washington Post to the television networks to The Nation and Noam Chomsky united to defend the official lie of the Warren Commission.

JFK is best seen in combination with Thirteen Days, Kevin Costner's "pre-quel" to JFK (he plays the lead role in both films although neither film explicitly mentions the other). Thirteen Days is a reenactment of the Cuban Missile Crisis that shows some of the motivation for the removal of President Kennedy -- he refused to attack Cuba and worked out a back channel deal with the Soviet Union to defuse the crisis. His behavior was partly reckless but he refused to let the generals wage full scale war, and they got their revenge in Dallas. A similar, much lower budget, depiction The Missiles of October aired on television in the 1970s.

The Fog of War is a profile of Robert McNamara, the Secretary of "Defense" for JFK and LBJ. McNamara admits they did not know the Cuban military had been given short range nuclear weapons by the Soviets. If the US had invaded in October, 1962, the Cubans would have nuked the invading soldiers, which would have triggered a full scale nuclear war.

Virtual JFK is an examination of the evidence that President Kennedy had ordered the withdrawal of US troops from Viet Nam. Unfortunately, it does not connect the dots to November 22, 1963.

 

JFK: Destiny Betrayed (due in 2020)

https://variety.com/2019/tv/global/agc-television-picks-up-worldwide-oliver-stones-jfk-destiny-betrayed-1203368818/

OCTOBER 12, 2019 11:00PM PT AGC Television Picks up Worldwide on Oliver Stone's 'JFK: Destiny Betrayed' By JOHN HOPEWELL
John Hopewell

CANNES — AGC Television, the TV production-distribution division of Stuart Ford's still fast expanding independent content studio AGC Studios, has landed worldwide rights to another high-profile doc-series which it describes as "probing" and "explosive": Oliver Stone's "JFK: Destiny Betrayed."

The acquisition was announced early Monday by AGC Television president Lourdes Diaz.

The acquisition continues AGC Television substantial investment in non-fiction which is in high-demand in the streaming and premium cable space, allowing operators to reach diverse audience segments with high-profile original content at relatively modest cost.

Few filmmakers are as high-profile as Oliver Stone and"JFK" has proved the most controversial of his films. In the new doc-series, Stone and writer James DiEugenio, author of "Destiny Betrayed: JFK, Cuba, and the Garrison Case," place now declassified files related to President Kennedy's assassination in a far larger context, aiming to shine more light on what really happened in 1963.

Coming in on the assassination from the angle of Kennedy's far-reaching policy speeches that threatened the status-quo, Stone will "reveal that Kennedy's foreign policy actions were revolutionary in many ways and were a conscious decision he had been contemplating for a decade before taking office," said an AGC Television statement.

It went on: "Stone will put Kennedy's assassination in context politically, and present interviews, documents, and forensics reports that will change forever how Kennedy's life, political career, and assassination will be considered."

Those interviewed in the series include John Tunheim, chairman of the Assassination Records Review Board, criminologist Henry Lee, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., James Galbraith, and Salon founder David Talbot.

"It's not an exaggeration to state that this series features the most distinguished collection of talent and knowledge on the JFK case ever assembled," said the AGC Television press release.

Diaz added: "We have long admired Oliver Stone and his work, and the revelatory information his new documentary brings forward not only sheds a new light on JFK's presidency and his assassination, it informs us about our contemporary world,"

"This documentary film represents an important bookend to my 1991 film. It ties up many loose threads, and hopefully repudiates much of the ignorance around the case and the movie," Stone wrote.

"JFK: Destiny Betrayed" reunites Stone with ace cinematographer Robert Richardson ("Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood," "Nixon," "The Aviator"), who won the first of his three Academy Awards for "JFK."

Rob Wilson behind Showtime's "The Untold History of the United States," produces with Ingenious Media.

AGC's Stuart Ford and Diaz, Ingenious Media's Andrea Scarso, Amit Pandya, and Peter Touche, and Angela Ceccio and Fernando Sulichin serve as executive producers.

"JFK: Destiny Betrayed" joins an AGC non-fiction slate which already features Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 11/9," "Ask Dr. Ruth," a big hit at Sundance, and the upcoming "Scandalous," on the rise of the National Enquirer; "Good Trouble: John Lewis," described as an inspiring look at the firebrand legislator, and "Lady Boss: the Jackie Collins story."

 

JFK: A President Betrayed

"the best screen depiction of Kennedy's foreign policy that I know of"
www.ctka.net/2014_reviews/A%20President%20Betrayed.html
JFK: A President Betrayed
Reviewed by James DiEugenio
Posted November 4, 2014.

Black Op Radio
Show #774
Original airdate: March 17, 2016
Guests: Cory Taylor / Jim DiEugenio
Topics: JFK: A President Betrayed / Assassination research

Play Cory Taylor (1:14:41) MP3 download

JFK: A President Betrayed, Agora Productions
Cory's dad was an RFK campaign chairman in California
Oliver Stone and James Douglass had deep impacts on Cory
What could we establish in the record for there to be a motive?
Len is very impressed with the story telling of the film
Two years research prior to production, over 60 books read
The challenge, what to leave out, so much material
A synopsis, not a script, but a blueprint
Include leading questions in your interviews
Kennedy staff, eye witnesses, historians, academics, authors
The film is narrated by Morgan Freeman
Len appreciates the scope and accuracy of the film
The generation that won the Second World War
Kennedy's style was so contradictory
LeMay's war hawk mentality was born out of real experience
Surprising, how much credit that Nikita Khrushchev deserves
Some of the other Joint Chiefs were just as bad if not worse
Dean Acheson personifies a looking down on Kennedy
Kennedy's commitment to peace using back channels
Senator Kennedy understood Vietnam was not going to be successful
Averell Harriman, John Galbraith, a Vietnam cable not sent
Norman Cousins was to meet with Khrushchev
Kennedy message, no more serious partner in pursuit of peace
The Improbable Triumvirate: (Cousins 1972)
Cousins daughters are in the film, and original photos
Vienna Summit translators Viktor Sukhodrev and Alexander Akalovsky
A majority of interviewees do not indulge a conspiracy
Each American has to decide for themselves
LBJ choices, Cuba, Intelligence/Military conspiracy, or whitewash
Astounding the amount of information researchers have uncovered
1953 footage of Senator Kennedy talking about Vietnam
Kennedy was pursuing a dialogue with Fidel Castro, Jean Daniel
A lot of DVD extras, more details on Vietnam
The film affirms that John Kennedy had certain qualities of leadership
A peaceful world, really inspiring, what he was trying to do
People working for the greater good develop enemies
Cory is working on the early period of the Nazi party
www.jfkapresidentbetrayed.org, info@agoraproductions.org

 

https://deadline.com/2019/06/jfk-documentary-martin-sheen-narrator-lee-harvey-oswald-investigator-1202633581/

Rush to Judgment II

Martin Sheen To Narrate Documentary On JFK Death Probe From Original Oswald Investigator 
By Amanda N'Duka June 17, 2019 

EXCLUSIVE: Martin Sheen to is on board to narrate Rush to Judgment II, an update to the 1967 version, Rush to Judgment, which is being executive produced by Stephen S. Jaffe. He is a former staff investigator and last surviving member of the legal team run by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison who led a probe into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. 

The original Emile de Antonio-directed documentary was based on the New York Times best-selling novel Rush to Judgment by attorney Mark Lane, in which he takes issue with the Kennedy investigation and exposes serious flaws in the conclusions made by the Warren Commission. Lane, died in 2016, will be credited posthumously as an executive producer. 

The contemporary documentary, which will be produced by Dylan Howard via his Topixly label, aims to uncover the conspiracy of powerful men that resulted in the assassination of President Kennedy and a carefully planned incriminating trail leading to frame the self-described "patsy," Lee Harvey Oswald. 

It will feature interviews from associates of John and Robert Kennedy, as well as comments from recorded phone conversations by President Lyndon Johnson, in addition to former FBI, Secret Service, military intelligence and congressional personnel, who provided firsthand information. Oliver Stone, who directed the 1991 political thriller JFK about Garrison´s probe, also is set to appear. 

Jaffe served an associate producer and technical consultant for the 1973 film Executive Action, starring Burt Lancaster and Robert Ryan, and was an associate producer/technical consultant on John Barbour´s documentaries, including, The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes. Howard also created An American Murder Mystery on Investigation Discovery. 

Sheen has lent his voice as a narrator to a number of documentaries and films including Stone´s JFK pic that starred Kevin Costner as Garrison.. 

Show #945 
blackopradio........19.html 

Original airdate: Jun 27, 2019 

Guests: Steve Jaffe, Lee Shepherd 

Topics: JFK Assassination Research 

Play Steve Jaffe (40:50) MP3 download 
www.blackopradio.....45a.mp3 

 

Stephen Jaffe is a former staff investigator for New Orleans DA Jim Garrison 
A forensics analyst exclusively assigned to JFK case, 1967-1968 
Technical consultant to the movie Executive Action (1973) starring Burt Lancester; watch full movie 
Mark Lane's friend and last surviving member of Jim Garrison's team 
Previous appearances on BOR; episodes 783, 853, 855, 860 
Episode 783 (2016) dedicated to Mark Lane (5 hours and 40 minutes) 
Steve is currently working on a book 
Documentary on Mark Lane by Pauley Perrette; watch online for free 
ALL books by Mark Lane 
New documentary on the JFK assassination to be narrated by Martin Sheen 
Video: Oswald stunned to learn that he's charged with killing JFK (press conference) 
The Washington Post Article: Who killed Bobby Kennedy? RFK Jr. doesn´t believe it was Sirhan 
Trump postponed the release of the last batch of JFK documents to 2021 
CE 399: The bullet doesn't match the rifle 
DCI John McCone's memo to James Rowley, Chief of the Secret Service 
"Oswald subject was trained by this agency, under cover of the Office of Naval Intelligence" 
The Warrent Report is laughable 
Video: Warren Report was ruled to be inadmissible in preliminary hearing 
Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History 
Jim DiEugenio takes apart Bugliosi's Reclaiming History; 25 shows for just $10 
John Barbour's two great documentaries: The JFK Assassination: The Jim Garrison Tapes 
And The American Media & The 2nd Assassination Of President John F. Kennedy: Amazon Prime, Vimeo 
Steve met with the then President of France Charles de Gaulle in Paris 
Steve also possesses a copy of the unaltered Zapruder film 
The new documentary talks about the kinds of people that hated Kennedy and wanted him out of the way 
Kennedy's political foreign policy decisions are also explored 
JFK created enemies out of those who specialized in regime change 
Also in the upcoming film, a conversation between Mark Lane, Oliver Stone and Robert Tanenbaum 
Article: The Intra-Administration War in Vietnam by Arthur Krock, Oct 3, 1963 in the NYT 
The cover-up was far more sophisticated than the plot to kill Kennedy 
The documentary is expected to be released in 2020

 


 

Judgment at Nuremberg

Hollywood dramatization of the Nazi war crime trials in Nuremberg.

 

Kill the Messenger

Kill the Messenger is about reporter Gary Webb, who made the career ending mistake of investigating the CIA's complicity with the cocaine trade in Central America in the 1980s. Profits from drug smuggling were used to fund the "Contra" terror war against Nicaragua, and the social consequences included the crack epidemic in the USA. The film showed how mainstream media forced his newspaper to backpeddle and Webb was made persona non grata in the media industry.

consortiumnews.com/2014/10/16/kill-the-messenger-rare-truth-telling/
‘Kill the Messenger’: Rare Truth-telling
October 16, 2014
Exclusive: Much of modern American filmmaking is escapist and vapid, but not “Kill the Messenger,” the new movie recounting the brave Contra-cocaine reporting by Gary Webb and his subsequent destruction at the hands of the mainstream media, writes James DiEugenio.

 

King Corn

Two college friends move to Iowa to grow an acre of corn and follow its path from harvest to dinner table. They learn about industrial agriculture and how high fructose corn syrup is made (one ingredient is sulfuric acid). Very light hearted take on the destruction of the quality of the American food system. Grab some organic popcorn and enjoy.

 

Koyaanisqatsi

"Life out of balance" (from the Hopi language). Beautiful images of the desert Southwest, the megamachine of industrial destruction, giant cities and dehumanized technology, set to a haunting score from Phillip Glass. The film is profoundly shocking the first time it is seen, it is a fundamental reinterpretation of the way modern society functions. Koyaanisqatsi is part of a trilogy, the second and third films in the series are Powaqqatsi (Life in Transformation) and Naqoyqatsi (Life as War).

 

Last Days in Vietnam

Rory Kennedy, one of Robert F. Kennedy's daughters, made this film about the American withdrawal from South Vietnam in 1975. It has amazing footage of the chaos as the USA suddenly realized the war was ending faster than expected and the rush to evacuate the military and spies in the final days. The story of the betrayal of the South Vietnamese who had helped the Americans gets special focus, most were left to fend for themselves as the North Vietnamese army took over the South, many fled to sea in small boats hoping to be rescued by the Americans.

Two things that were conspicuously missing in the film: the interviews with Henry Kissinger (who was Secretary of State in 1975) and Richard Armitage (a special forces operative) failed to ask probing questions about their roles in the violence, and there was no hint that this might have been avoided if Rory's uncle (President Kennedy) had been allowed to stay in office and implement his plan to withdraw from Vietnam.

 

The Life of Brian

Monty Python's parable about Brian of Nazareth, born next door to a more famous resident of that town. Brian gets involved with the People's Front of Judea (or is it the People's Judean Front?), which is trying to kick the Roman imperialists out of their country, except for those concerned with drainage, public health, the aqueduct and wine. Religion, politics, and other sacred cows are skillfully skewered.

 

The Lives of Others

In East Germany, the Stasi - secret police - spies on all forms of dissent and unconformity. It won an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. Several veterans of the Stasi have expressed astonishment that the electronic surveillance system of the "Five Eyes" (USA, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand) dwarfs the intrusiveness that they had before 1989.

 

The Lone Gunmen

Fox Television aired this "conspiracy" show in March, 2001 that was a sequel to the X-Files (a television show I never watched). The Lone Gunmen, a name that parodies skepticism about alleged lone gunmen supposedly responsible for political assassinations, depicted a group of computer hackers who tried to thwart nefarious government actions. Six months before 9/11, this show had as a plot a small government faction who electronically hijacked a commercial plane under the cover of a war game exercise to crash it into the World Trade Center to increase military spending. Was a form of inoculation, a psychological campaign to associate the ideas of a conspiracy with the meme of a poorly acted television show. 9/11 was a covert operation? That's just a bad conspiracy film, it could never happen in real life.

 

The Maltese Double Cross

Allan Francovich's investigation into the framing of Libya for the Lockerbie terrorist attack and how the perpetrators reportedly infiltrated an officially tolerated drug smuggling network to bomb Pan Am 103.

 

Miami Vice "Stone's War"

Miami Vice was a TV show focused on ridiculously overpriced cars and speedboats, pretentious fashion and chase scenes with lots of stunt doubles. Stone's War was a 1985 episode with an Iran-Contra theme. One of the characters is a TV journalist in Central America and inadvertantly films mercenaries killing a US citizen. Upon his arrival back to the States, covert forces try to get his film to keep it from becoming public. The episode is also notable for convicted criminal G. Gordon Liddy playing a role of one of the organizers of the secret war on Central America. It was probably the only mainstream TV show to suggest the US government secretly armed the "Contra" terrorist army and probably the only time a major network aired Jackson Browne's song "Lives in the Balance."

 

Mindwalk

 

 

Mirage Men

Excellent profile of military disinformation campaigns to persuade citizens of the alleged reality of extraterrestrial visitation that distracts from the reality of secret military warplane research. (Stealth planes look vaguely saucer shaped when seen from their front.) Detailed reviews at www.oilempire.us/ufo.html

 

Missing

Charles Horman, a US citizen living in Chile, inadvertently stumbled onto plans for the military coup of September 11, 1973 and was killed by the Chilean military during the coup. The USA government covered up the crime and lied to his relatives. Directed by Costa-Gravas, who also directed State of Siege and Z.

 

Monty Python and the Holy Grail

King Arthur wanders the British countryside in search of the Holy Grail and encounters a French castle, a witch trial, anarchist peasants, the Castle Anthrax, the Knights Who Say "Ni!," and the killer rabbit. Especially recommended for anyone who suffered through Medieval history in school.

 

Network

"I'm mad as hell and won't take it any more!"

NETWORK, Ned Beatty speech

You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear?! Do you think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and sub-atomic and galactic structure of things today! And you have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and You Will Atone!

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and ITT and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state - Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable by- laws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.

Beale: "Why me?"

Because you're on television, dummy. Sixty million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.

Beale: "I have seen the face of God."

 

The Oil Factor

 

 

On Company Business

Excellent documentary on the history of the Central Intelligence Agency and its covert operations in Latin America, Congo, Iran and other parts of the planet. Features several whistleblowers including Philip Agee, the first CIA employee to write a memoir that did not undergo pre-publication censorship. A copy is archived at archive.org

 

The Overview Effect

 

 

Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang

summary from the distributor:

Paul Jacobs and the Nuclear Gang (1980)
A poignant and potent political documentary that exposes the government's suppression of the health hazards of low-level radiation. Paul Jacobs is himself a victim of lung cancer, that would kill him before this picture was finished and which his doctors believe he contracted while he was investigating nuclear policies in 1957. He interviews civilians and soldiers, survivors of nuclear experiments in the 50s and 60s, testing the effects of radiation. By the time this film was made, a lot of them had died from the radiation. The footage of an atomic test explosion in Nevada is still of nightmarish beaty. There are also interviews with people who live near and work in several government facilities around the nation, as well as with government scientists, some of whom were fired when their research indicated the dangers of low-level radiation. This film won the 1980 EMMY Award for best TV program, the George F. Polk Award for investigative journalism on TV, the Hugh Hefner First Amendment Award for journalism, and the Mannheim Film Festival first critics' prize. Color. 60 minutes.
http://roundworldproductions.com/Site/Paul_Jacobs_and_the_Nuclear_Gang.html

 

Planet of the Humans

A film by Jeff Gibbs, an associate of Michael Moore, about limitations of so-called alternative, renewable energy. Wind turbines, solar panels, electric cars and other high tech alleged solutions come with their own toxic problems. Sure, it's free and non-polluting to capture sunlight and wind (a derivative of solar power, the sun's heat is the source of wind) but making the collection systems is not fossil free. Rare minerals are also required for aspects of these capture systems.

As of January 2020, the film has premiered at a film festival in Moore's town of Traverse City, Michigan but has yet to reach national distribution.

The main thing this writer has learned from using solar electric panels since 1990 is they are great but cannot replace our current consumption (pun intended). Instead of hoping for solar powered Boeing airplanes, electric trucks transporting stuff across the country, and green growth that continues until we build colonies on Mars, it would be more realistic to recognize there are physical limits to growth. Better trains, relocalization of food production, and accepting the Earth is round (it's not getting bigger) are prerequisites for authentic sustainability.

https://planetofthehumans.com

www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/08/08/michael-moore-backed-doc-planet-of-the-humans-explores-alternative-energy

 

Powaqqatsi

"Life that feeds off of other forms of life" (from the Hopi language). The sequel to Koyaanisqatsi.

 

The Power of Nightmares

Part I: Baby It's Cold Outside
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

Part II: The Phantom Victory
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3951615.stm

Part III: The Shadows in the Cave
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3970901.stm

available for free viewing at www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmares

In the past our politicians offered us dreams of a better world. Now they promise to protect us from nightmares.
The most frightening of these is the threat of an international terror network. But just as the dreams were not true, neither are these nightmares.
In a new series, the Power of Nightmares explores how the idea that we are threatened by a hidden and organised terrorist network is an illusion.
It is a myth that has spread unquestioned through politics, the security services and the international media.
At the heart of the story are two groups: the American neo-conservatives and the radical Islamists.
Both were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world.


www.politics.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1327904,00.html
The making of the terror myth
Friday October 15, 2004 The Guardian
Since September 11 Britain has been warned of the 'inevitability' of catastrophic terrorist attack. But has the danger been exaggerated? A major new TV documentary claims that the perceived threat is a politically driven fantasy - and al-Qaida a dark illusion. Andy Beckett reports

www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml/The_Power_of_Nightmares

 

The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil

Produced by The Community Solution of Yellow Springs, Ohio, it profiles how Cuba coped with a sudden reduction of oil availability after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The film looks at the relocalization of food into cities, public transportation and other efforts to mitigate economic contraction.

 

Rollerball

"In the film, the world of 2018 is a global corporate state, containing entities such as the Energy Corporation, a global energy monopoly based in Houston which deals with nominally-peer corporations controlling access to all Transport, Luxury, Housing, Communication, and Food on a global basis." en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film)

 

Salvador

Oliver Stone's depiction of the rise of death squad government in El Salvador in the 1970s.

 

The Searchers

Film in production about the JFK research community and their efforts for truth and accountability. Website: thesearchersfilm.com An initial draft was screened in Dallas in November 2013 (the 50th anniversary) at the Coalition on Political Assassinations conference.

 

Seed: the untold story

https://www.seedthemovie.com/
"Few things on Earth are as miraculous and vital as seeds. Worshipped and treasured since the dawn of humankind. In the last century, 94% of our seed varieties have disappeared. SEED: The Untold Story follows passionate seed keepers protecting our 12,000 year-old food legacy. As biotech chemical companies control the majority of our seeds, farmers, scientists, lawyers, and indigenous seed keepers fight a David and Goliath battle to defend the future of our food. In a harrowing and heartening story, these heroes rekindle a lost connection to our most treasured resource and revive a culture connected to seeds. SEED features Vandana Shiva, Dr. Jane Goodall, Andrew Kimbrell, Winona Laduke and Raj Patel."

 

Seven Days in May

The novel was about a military plot to topple a young President negotiating an unpopular peace treaty with the Soviet Union. President Kennedy read the book and urged his allies in Hollywood to rush this into a film production, since he realized the threat to his presidency -- and to democracy in America. Unfortunately, the film was finished after the coup against JFK.

 

Silkwood

Meryl Streep plays Karen Silkwood, nuclear worker at the Kerr-McGee plutonium fuel processing factory in Oklahoma. She discovered that the company was falsifying safety assurances about fuel rod welds and contacts a reporter for the New York Times. She was run off the road and killed while driving to meet the reporter and her documentation was never found.

In 1985, I asked Kitty Tucker, who co-founded Supporters of Silkwood, what she thought of the movie. She replied it made Kerr McGee seem not as bad as they were. The company, of course, was the "bad guy" in the film!

Two books document the Silkwood story in more detail than the movie: Who Killed Karen Silkwood? by Howard Kohn and The Killing of Karen Silkwood by Richard Rashke. Kohn's book suggests there may have been nuclear materials pilfered from the factory and Silkwood may have stumbled across this in her efforts to prove safety violations.

The faulty fuel rods were made for the "Fast Flux" reactor that operated at the Hanford reservation in Washington State for a few years and is closed. The radioactive waste it created will be dangerous long after industrial civilization is over.

 

Sir No Sir!

Resistance to the war on Vietnam within the US military. Includes footage of the Fuck the Army (FTA) tour, celebrities including Jane Fonda entertaining the troops.

 

Snowden

Oliver Stone's dramatization of Edward Snowden's whistleblowing. It makes a good double feature with Citizenfour.

 

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

Re-enactment of the White Rose resistance group in Munich, Germany in 1942.

The actress who portrayed Scholl in an earlier film about the White Rose (1982) was the lead in The Nasty Girl, set after the war, about a German who did a high school project on her town during The Third Reich. She discovers that the town was not full of resisters and the former Nazis still run the town, which is not a popular revelation for her fellow citizens.

The "White Rose Society" claims "The Final Days" has factual errors -- the general story is true but the details have distortions.

 

Soylent Green

The conclusion to the film has become part of popular culture -- "Soylent Green is people!" The film is set in the near future after overpopulation has choked the cities and people survive on food handouts from the Soylent corporation. The acting is fantastically bad and unintentionally hilarious at times, but here's a sobering thought -- world population has almost doubled since the film was released four decades ago. Unfortunately, Hollywood was not interested in telling a story of how people shifted course to mitigate the ecological crisis. "Ecotopia" and similar novels are unlikely to ever become a major motion picture.

 

State of Siege

Based on the true story of Daniel Mitrione, US Agency for International Development "police advisor" who was sent to Brazil and Uruguay. Mitrione taught torture techniques to those countries secret police (Brazil had a USA assisted military coup in 1964, shortly after President Kennedy was removed from office). In Uruguay, left wing guerrillas of the Tupamaros movement kidnapped Mitrione and ultimately killed him when their demands to free political prisoners were ignored. The film changed the name but the facts are essentially intact. State of Siege was directed by Costa-Gravas, who also made Z and Missing, among other politically charged films. Ironically, State of Siege was filmed in Chile just before the coup against democracy in that country, so many of the local actors involved with the film likely got to experience the fascism they portrayed in the movie. As of 2012, a former Tupamaros member is President of Uruguay. "State of Exile" is a documentary about the Tuparamos, their rise, their persecution, the dictatorship that followed and the aftermath. http://vimeo.com/42346149

 

Syriana

Probably the closest Hollywood will ever get to a film about Peak Oil. George Clooney plays a CIA agent who rebels against his employer's manipulation of an oil sheikdom.

 

Three Days of the Condor

Robert Redford plays a CIA agent caught in intrigue about the Middle East. The final dialogue is the most relevant for those concerned about resource depletion.

Turner (Robert Redford): "Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?"

Higgins (Cliff Robertson): "Are you crazy?"

Turner: "Am I?"

Higgins: "Look, Turner"

Turner: "Do we have plans?"

Higgins: "No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do."

Turner: "Go on. So Atwood just took the game too seriously. He was really going to do it, wasn't he?"

Higgins: "It was a renegade operation. Atwood knew 54-12 would never authorize it. There was no way, not with the heat on the Company."

Turner: "What if there hadn't been any heat? Supposing I hadn't stumbled on a plan? Say nobody had?"

Higgins: "Different ball game. The fact is there was nothing wrong with the plan. Oh, the plan was alright. The plan would have worked."

Turner: "Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?"

Higgins: "No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In 10 or 15 years - food, Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?

Turner: "Ask them."

Higgins: "Not now - then. Ask them when they're running out. Ask them when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask them when their engines stop. Ask them when people who've never known hunger start going hungry. Do you want to know something? They won't want us to ask them. They'll just want us to get it for them."

 

THX-1138

George Lucas's first film, a dystopia set in an underground city where love is forbidden and mind numbing drugs are mandatory.

 

A Very British Coup

The best film I have seen on television (it aired on PBS Masterpiece Theater in the late 1980s). Harry Perkins, a third generation socialist, steelworker, trade unionist has been elected as the Labor Prime Minister in Britain. Perkins won because he campaigned against financial corruption and for for nuclear disarmament, including the removal of US military bases in his country. The tabloid press, the aristocratic Security Service and the American embassy conspire to topple his government. Perkins was a more attractive Labor leader than the politicians the real Labor Party offered in its elections. It is perhaps the best fictional depiction of the "deep state" of the Anglo-American alliance.

MI-5 chief: Some day, Mr. Fiennes, you will have the entire population under permanent 24 hour surveillance. Will you be happy then?
Fiennes (his assistant): Happy? Satisfied.

 

Prime Minister: So a deliberate conspiracy involving all these people?
His assistant: Yes.
PM: but no real evidence
Assistant: Of course not, that's the whole point. These people don't sit in committee and plan the downfall of elected government. They don't keep any minutes, you can't actually prove it. You just have to know how it's done.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACg6IuFfMJE
episode 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oANMGT0IK-A
episode 2

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhVsUAmBQqo
episode 3

 

CHRIS MULLIN
A Very British Coup
Coronet, London, 1983
http://www.trashfiction.co.uk/very_british_coup.html

Written in 1982, the novel posits the election at the end of the decade of a genuinely socialist Labour government and the means adopted by right-thinking people to neutralize their policies. Currency crises, withdrawal of investments, smear stories, personal blackmail are amongst the tactics employed, together with the mobilization of all the sleeper agents that the establishment has placed in the labour movement.
Now you're not stupid, and you'll have noticed a couple of flaws in this plot. Flaws such as the idea that socialism was capable of taking over the Labour Party, or the idea that socialists would be allowed to win a General Election. Suspend disbelief on these issues, however, and you're in for a fantastic read: a crucial text in understanding the British left during the first Thatcher government, and a still-relevant analysis of society.
At its core are two ideas that remain of profound significance if we're ever going to make something of this country. The first is that Britain is governed by an unelected para-state. The civil service, the military, the media, the police and the judiciary are far more powerful than Parliament, and all owe allegiance not to the elected Prime Minister, but to the Monarch. Secondly, and more controversially, Britain is an occupied country. The presence of American armed forces on British soil is (a) deeply embarrassing (how impotent is a country that doesn't even feel able to defend itself?), and (b) deeply undemocratic.
The Labour government described by Mullin decides it wants to be independent in the Cold War - hasn't done Switzerland or Sweden any harm - and is elected on exactly that promise; it is prevented from implementing the policy by American power. And that's the policy that proves the sticking point: an alternative approach to the economy was one thing, but withdrawal from NATO and the dismantling of the US defence infrastructure on British soil proves one step too far.
The craven attitude of Little Tony Blair to Washington demonstrates that Mullin's analysis continues to carry some conviction.

 

www.screenonline.org.uk/tv/id/485767/index.html

Very British Coup, A (1988)

Political victory for Labour in the first episode is followed by personal tragedy in the second, as Foreign Secretary Newsome's (Jim Carter) affair is discovered, and nuclear skulduggery in the third, as Perkins attempts to remove US bases from UK soil. Finally, as Perkins raises the stakes, the hidden state is forced to reveal its true face. McAnally's performance was so powerful that many would have preferred him to what Labour had to offer at the time.
In the end, A Very British Coup is perhaps best seen not as a conspiracy thriller, but as a political fantasy: a story of politicians, not plotting amongst themselves, but trying to do the best for their country and its working-class population, in a world increasingly hostile to the will of the people.

 

A Very British Coup
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0094576/

Very fine underrated british drama released in 1988 and now sadly passed into oblivion. ... The story focuses on one Harry Perkins. Former coal miner and popular left wing leader of the british parliamentary labour party. Following a landslide election he is soon to be sworn in as prime minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, first lord of the treasury and the Kings first minister, with whom he appears to get along fine. Others however take more convincing. His arrival to say the least causes consternation amongst the mandarins of the civil service and their underlings, a few media barons not to mention the white house, britains NATO allies, the head of the BBC and a few others besides. It is not an auspicious beginning. Their main concern of course is how far left the Kings new first minister is going to take them. Old Harry has a few radical policy changes in mind which is sure to rattle a few established institutions and practises of whom he is quite prepared to ignore. He has a manifesto to follow, promises to keep his electorate and more important matters to ponder over. It is then that a few partisan members of his own intelligence service together with a powerful media baron(shades of R.Murdoch) decide to take matters into their own hands and initiate measures to ensure that Harry Perkins is brought back into line. They do this in the most unsubtle ways. Like opening his mail, prying into his past life and even manipulating his bank accounts to show unaccounted deposits. To a wider degree and on a more machiavellian scale they also manipulate the head of one powerful union and there is suspicion about their involvement in the unexpected death of the PM's chief scientific adviser on the eve of an important meeting. Most of this is accomplished through the old boy network within the civil service and other organs of the government where the 'old school tie' comes into prominence. It is the start of a very british coup...! Harry of course is not entirely ignorant of this skullduggery behind his back and pretty much knows who is behind it. He bides his time and with only a few trustworthy helpers in his inner circle including the blunt spoken chief of his security detail, he ponders over how to foil their plans and pinpoint the traitors in their midst. Enough said.

This is an amazingly good drama as only the brits can produce these days. Ray McAnally shines in his portrayal of the politically savvy and down to earth Harry Perkins. It is one of his best roles and sadly one of his last. Alan McNaughton stands out also as Sir Percy Browne the treasonous MI5 chief and Tim McInerney as his able but weasley paranoid assistant Fiennes. It is a story of excessive political manipulation at its worst and written by Chris Mullin at the height of the Thatcher years when despite the economic upturn only a few people were actually benefiting from it. It was also a time when Great Britain had never actually been so close to the USA in their foreign, defence and economic policies. Thatchers close working relationship with Reagan outlined all that very clearly. Hopefully the drama will be released in video form so that others can also appreciate this low budget but very canny political tale.

 

Wag the Dog

The President's re-election campaign is hit by a sex scandal and political operative Robert DeNiro is brought in to distract the public. He creates a fake war using the show biz talents of Hollywood producer Dustin Hoffman.

The timing was fortuitous, Wag the Dog was released just before Monica Lewinsky became famous.

 

Wall-E

700 years in the future, Earth has become too full of trash for people to live on. The sole remaining life is "Wall-E," a trash compacting robot and his pet cockroach. The humans fled to live in a shopping mall in space where they live monotonous lives of consumerism, too distracted to notice they lost their planet. Through a series of adventures too preposterous to recount the humans eventually realize they have to return home and learn to grow food again so they can eat pizza. Wall-E is a production of Pixar, part of the Disney empire. It is the first Disney film I've paid money to see as an adult.

 

Weapons of the Spirit

synopsis from https://holocaust.oregonstate.edu/event/weapons-spirit-film

A superb documentary which recounts how in one small corner of Occupied France, 5,000 Jews were sheltered by an equal number of Christians despite Nazi threats of punishment for doing so. Interviews of villagers and peasants and archived news reel footage recreate the history of Le Chambon -- the town with a tradition for helping "guests in need" in the midst of terror and death.

 

Who Bombed Judi Bari?

A 2012 documentary about labor organizer and environmental activist Judi Bari and the campaign to protect the last ancient redwood forests in northern California. In 1990, as she co-organized the "Redwood Summer" campaign, a pipe bomb was placed in her car under the driver's seat in Oakland, CA. The bomb nearly killed her and injured her colleague (and passenger) Darryl Cherney (who produced the film). Just before this attack, there was a practice car bombing on land owned by one of the timber companies targetted by these protests, the FBI was part of this exercise. The story is a great example of collusion between corporations (Louisiana Pacific, Maxxam-Pacific Lumber, et al), the overt part of government (local elected officials in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties) and the covert part of government (FBI Counter Intelligence Program - "Cointelpro"). Bari and Cherney sued the FBI and Oakland, CA police for civil rights violations. Bari died of cancer in 2007. Her estate and Cherney won a four million dollar judgement in Federal court in 2002, one of the most significant civil rights verdicts in the history of police and intelligence abuses against USA citizens.

 

Wrong is Right

Sean Connery stars in this surreal comedy about the media, Mideast oil wars, nuclear terrorism and political incompetence. The film was released in 1982 but despite Connery's star status it received little attention. Oh, there's a World Trade Center theme, two decades before 9/11.

 

The Yes Men

Political pranksters impersonate World Bank officials and other scoundrels, showing that farce is still less surreal than reality.

 

Z

Costa-Gravas's first film about fascism, set in Greece at the time of the 1967 military coup.