How had I never seen... "Z" (1969)

by Mark Brinkerhoff

After finally having gotten around to seeing 1931’s M, it seemed only fitting to round it out with 1969’s Z, co-record-holder of the shortest movie title ever. Who knew that these two would have more in common than their one-word titles? 

Bracingly directed by Greek-born Costa-Gavras, the Algeria-set, French-language Z is a thinly veiled version of the circumstances around the 1963 assassination of a reformist Greek politician by right-wing zealots. Both the fictional and actual events stoked social upheaval and prompted a political crisis. Factor in a shady government coverup, eventually exposed by a dogged team of investigators and journalists, and you have the makings of a thriller that is as timeless as it is unnerving...

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Yes No Maybe So: "Bombshell"

On the heels of Showtime’s unheralded miniseries The Loudest Voice, Lionsgate and director Jay Roach are diving into the zeitgeist with Bombshell (formerly titled Fair and Balanced). The film details the #MeToo fallout at Fox News and stars three of today’s greatest working actresses. For whatever reason, Bombshell is being mostly ignored by many early Oscar prognosticators.

This despite, well...let’s dive into that teaser shall we?

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No Time to Link

• Variety cultural conversations about a TV show lift its Emmy prospects
• The Guardian on Leonard Bernstein's 10 year affair with a Japanese fan
• /Film Bond 25 has a title No Time to Die
• Daily Xtra Joey Moser remembers seeing movies with his father on the weekend - lovely

After the jump Love Simon, Spider-Man divorce, cool film festivals, and Marvel Comics avoiding anti-fascist "politics" in a genre built on just that...

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"Kathy Griffin: One Hell of a Story" and "The Great Hack"

by Eurocheese

Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story’s one night only theatrical event (Wednesday, July 31st) and Netflix’s disturbing expose on digital exploitation The Great Hack couldn’t be more different in tone, but they would make an interesting double feature. I couldn’t have imagined either film would exist just a few years ago. In a decade, I wonder what we’ll be saying about both of them...

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The New Classics - In the Loop

Michael Cusumano here to mark the 10th anniversary of one of the great political satires.

 

Scene: The Meditation Room 
The political operators of Armando Iannucci’s In the Loop live in a world where issues don’t matter and the halls of power are filled with bureaucrats who would gleefully sell out their principles were they not held back by their own incompetence. In this universe, those sad few officials who do manage to take a moral stand are not merely defeated but negated entirely, their feeble protests turned into absurd jokes and swept away in a sea of media noise.

I should add that In the Loop is one of the funniest movies of the 21st Century, but then it would have to be to get away with painting a picture so grim...

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