Seized', winner of Anthem’s Best Short Documentary award, explores a police practice called civil asset forfeiture. 'Of Dogs and Men', winner of Best Libertarian Documentary Feature tries to explain why 10,000 pet dogs are killed by police every year.
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Music Review: Chris Hajian – ‘The Infiltrator’ (Original Motion Picture Score)
Composer Chris Hajian meets the challenge of creating an original, non-orchestral film score, though the short running time might leave some listeners yearning for more.
Read More »Anthem Film Festival: ‘Deep Web’ Explores Silk Road, Looking for the Dread Pirate Roberts
Before seeing 'Deep Web', like most people, I believed Silk Road was a criminal enterprise -- a gigantic drug network and online cartel run by a drug lord known as the "Dread Pirate Roberts." It turns out that this was a highly distorted picture.
Read More »Anthem Film Festival: Slavery Is Alive and Well (And May Be Living Down Your Street)
Slavery has become more subtle and is not just something that happens far away in third world countries. 'The Return' takes us into the world of a Filipino house maid held captive for years by an upper class family in Orange County, California.
Read More »Anthem Film Festival: Laughing Though the Pain
Between films focusing on dysfunctional futures, police excesses, brain damage, political oppression, climate fraud, cancer, and unjust imprisonment, Anthem Film Festival director Jo Ann Skousen worked in a few films that inspired giggles and guffaws. Thank you, Jo Ann.
Read More »Anthem Film Festival: Lenny Bruce, Gilbert Gottfried, and Penn Jillette vs. the Outrage Mob in ‘Can We Take a Joke’
We are reaching peak crazy. There are two possible outcomes. We get trampled or the rest of us wake up and start fighting the people who are trying to stifle free speech.
Read More »Movie Review: Noah Pritzker’s ‘Quitters’
Pritzker’s assured feature film debut is a quietly chilly portrait of a family in disrepair.
Read More »Sundance Film Festival Review: ‘Hooligan Sparrow,’ A Filmmaker Goes Undercover
Would you be incarcerated to fight injustice?
Read More »Blu-ray Review: The Coen Brothers’ Loopy ‘Hail, Caesar!’ Gives Old Hollywood the Old What For
Another winning addition to the rapidly growing arsenal of why the Coen brothers continue to be two of the most rightfully lauded filmmakers today.
Read More »DVD Review: ‘The Family Fang’ – Nicole Kidman, Jason Bateman & Christopher Walken
"The Family Fang is the best kind of art film - it has no pretensions to anything beyond telling its story and does so in the simplest and most straightforward manner it can.
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