The opening credits of Confirmation offer a quick history lesson. In 1991, President George H.W. Bush was struggling to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court to fill the seat left vacated by the first African-American Supreme, Thurgood Marshall. Robert Bork was shot down, then Bush selected a conservative African-American judge named Clarence Thomas. Though …
When I see TV mini-series like BBC’s excellent State of Play, I’m reminded of how the TV medium can be as powerful as the big screen, if just given half a chance. And I’m also reminded how U.S. TV networks shill out shovel-loads of crap not worth watching, and wonder why viewers are fleeing in …
There is a scene in Page Eight that is a stellar as any you’ll see all year in any film. The fact that it takes place in a board room, and the crackling tension circles around a sentence on a piece of paper makes it all the more awesome. Bill Nighy, Michael Gambon, and Judy …
I was 9 years old when the Iran hostage crisis happened in November 1979. The American diplomats, captured in the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, were held for 444 days. I was almost 11 when they were released. My memory of the incident was seeing the same image on the news every night, of a man …