“The Fifth Estate” is Too Ambitious for its Own Good

Since he previously reviewed “We Steal Secrets,” a documentary about Wikileaks and Julian Assange, I invited Reel Change guest critic Anthony Flores back to tackle “The Fifth Estate,” which opened last Friday. Here is his review. From the name alone, The Fifth Estate makes a big claim about its subject, the Wikileaks website.  The name…

We Tell Secrets: A Story of Two Documentaries

This is a guest review from Anthony Flores. With revelations about the National Security Agency’s surveillance, government secrecy has been in the news.  Two recent documentaries, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks by Alex Gibney and Dirty Wars by Rick Rowley, happen to tackle this subject.  It should be a fortuitous opportunity to add…

The Plague Dogs – Revival of a Masterpiece

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you have probably noticed my passion for animal advocacy creeping into some of my posts. In general, I try to keep my perspective on these issues out of this space, but I have not always been successful at it. Still, I welcome guest posts on any…

The Hollywood Violence Tax

This is a guest post from Reel Change reader Michael E. Douroux. Have decades of finger pointing and complaining altered in any way how the entertainment industry, centered in Hollywood, is cultivating and marketing — particularly to our young — gratuitous, graphic violence as a socially acceptable form of mainstream entertainment? No. I spent 25…

The False Feminization of Hollywood

This is a guest post written by Evelyn Hunt. With the topic of gender equality, abortion, and women’s rights in the opinion and feature headlines of nearly every American publication as of late, it’s nearly impossible to ignore the fact that contemporary Americans seem to want to talk about feminism and what it means for…