Politics

Conspiracy

On january 20 1942 at the height of the second world war 15 government officials and ss commanders attended a conference on the outskirts of berlin. It was a simple meeting which by the end would decide the fate of six million lives. Conspiracy is based on the only surviving record of that meeting. Studio: Hbo Home Video Release Date: 03/29/2005 Starring: Kenneth Branagh Colin Firth Run time: 96 minutes Rating: R Director: Frank Pierso

On January 20, 1942, with the tide of war turning in favor of the Allies, a small group of SS officers, government ministers, and Nazi officials met near Berlin to decide the fate of Europe's Jews. Based on the only surviving record of that meeting, Conspiracy is a powerful combination of historical reconstruction and speculation that attempts to offer new insights into a pivotal moment in history.

The cast does a marvelous job of fleshing out the documentary evidence to create convincing characters. Kenneth Branagh is especially chilling as SS Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich, who uses a combination of charm and ruthless power-mongering to gain support for his plans. Colin Firth is fascinating as Wilhelm Stuckart, a lawyer who sees the brutal tactics of the SS as a threat to his own intellectualized anti-Semitism, and Stanley Tucci gives a wonderfully understated performance as Adolf Eichmann.

Conspiracy is a carefully crafted, completely unsensational film that offers ample proof of the banality of evil. There are no histrionics and no comic-book Nazi villains, just a small group of politicians and war-weary soldiers arguing about the meaning of words and the logistics of extermination, calmly preparing to unleash an unimaginable horror on the world. --Simon Leake

The Day of the Jackal

AN ASSASSIN TARGETS THE PRESIDENT OF FRANCE IN THIS TENSE FREDERICK FORSYTH THRILLER. FEATURES PRODUCTION NOTES, TALENT BIOS, FILM HIGHLIGHTS, AND TRAILERS.

With its high-intensity plot about an attempt to assassinate French President Charles de Gaulle, the bestselling novel by Frederick Forsyth was a prime candidate for screen adaptation. Director Fred Zinnemann brought his veteran skills to bear on what has become a timeless classic of screen suspense. Not to be confused with the later remake The Jackal starring Bruce Willis (which shamelessly embraced all the bombast that Zinnemann so wisely avoided), this 1973 thriller opts for lethal elegance and low-key tenacity in the form of the Jackal, the suave assassin played with consummate British coolness by Edward Fox. He's a killer of the highest order, a master of disguise and international elusiveness, and this riveting film follows his path to de Gaulle with an intense, straightforward documentary style. Perhaps one of the last great films from a bygone age of pure, down-to-basics suspense (and a kind of debonair European alternative to the American grittiness of The French Connection), The Day of the Jackal is a cat-and-mouse thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat until its brilliantly executed final scene (pardon the pun), by which time Fox has achieved cinematic immortality as one of the screen's most memorable killers. --Jeff Shannon

Michael Collins

A drama based on the life and struggles of Irish statesman Michael Collins who negotiated Ireland's break with England.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 14-FEB-2006
Media Type: DVD

A heartfelt epic from Irish director Neal Jordan (The Crying Game, Interview with the Vampire), Michael Collins is the biography of the charismatic and controversial Irish rebel leader who led the fight for independence from Britain. Among the most beautiful and atmospherically photographed movies of the '90s, Michael Collins is also a rich and intelligent study of the nature of politics and leadership: the IRA spokesman, full of fiery convictions, eventually gives way to the more mature negotiator who strives to reach a compromise solution and is politically undone in the process. Liam Neeson gives a grand and towering performance as Collins, but for all the character's legendary, heroic, or otherwise larger-than-life attributes, Jordan and Neeson also keep him human. This is sweeping historical filmmaking of the kind we haven't seen since the heyday of David Lean, but with Jordan's characteristic touches of complexity and ambivalence. --Jim Emerson

Irish writer-director Neil Jordan followed up his surprise hitThe Crying Game with this controversial biography of IRA leader Michael Collins (Liam Neeson), one of the most important political leaders of the 20th century. The film follows Collins as he matures from guerrilla leader to national hero and statesman. Jordan's take on Collins is that he was set up by Irish president Eamon De Valera (Alan Rickman), who was jealous of Collins's legendary popularity. De Valera puts Collins in the position of negotiating a peace treaty that would never satisfy the Irish hero's hard-core followers. When the IRA leader returns with a first-step compromise, De Valera undercuts Collins's popularity by refusing to support the revised treaty. And the civil war continues for months. Michael Collins occasionally loses focus and momentum, but is the kind of exciting historical drama that deserves to be called "sweeping." It is also one of the most beautifully photographed films in years: cinematographer Chris Menges uses color and texture to set moods and accent emotions. The movie also stars Aidan Quinn, Julia Roberts, and Stephen Rea. --Jim Emerson

The Killing Fields

This harrowing but rewarding 1984 drama concerns the real-life relationship between New York Times reporter Sidney Schanberg and his Cambodian assistant Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor), the latter left at the mercy of the Khmer Rouge after Schanberg--who chose to stay after American evacuation but was booted out--failed to get him safe passage. Filmmaker Roland Joffé, previously a documentarist, made his feature debut with this account of Dith's rocky survival in the ensuing madness of the Khmer Rouge's genocidal campaign. The script spends some time with Schanberg's feelings of guilt after the fact, but most of the movie is a shattering re-creation of hell on Earth. The late Haing S. Ngor--a real-life doctor who had never acted before and who lived through the events depicted by Joffé--is outstanding, and he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Oscars also went to cinematographer Chris Menges and editor Jim Clark. --Tom Keogh

Waterston stars as New York Times reporter Schanberg, a journalist who covered the war in Cambodia. Ngor stars as Dith, the translator and aide, who is exiled to Cambodian labor camps where millions of others have died.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: R
Release Date: 13-MAR-2001
Media Type: DVD

The Odessa File

A German journalist sets out to track down a Nazi war criminal, and discovers the existence of a secret Nazi organization called Odessa.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 28-AUG-2001
Media Type: DVD

An overeager German journalist (Jon Voight) discovers a long-buried secret plot beginning to resurface in this moderately compelling, surprisingly straightforward adaptation of a novel by conspiracy whiz Fredrick (Day of the Jackal) Forsythe. Although this somewhat pokey suspenser never quite flows the way a classic espionage thriller should, it does offer a number of compelling diversions along the way, including a blessedly nonhammy (and impressively accented) performance by Voight, Derek Jacobi's amusingly Freudian supporting turn, and a tremendously physical hand-to-hand confrontation in a print shop that leaves no pane of glass intact. Maximillian Schell's scenery-chewing, deliciously evil cameo almost makes this worth the watch by itself. Andrew Lloyd Webber composed the garishly florid (yet somehow effective) score. --Andrew Wright

In the Name of the Father

The true story of a dublin youth wrongly imprisoned for an ira bombing and vindicated in a courtroom battle. Studio: Uni Dist Corp. (mca) Release Date: 09/02/2003 Starring: Daniel Day-lewis Emma Thompson Run time: 133 minutes Rating: R

Based on a true story, this rousing and tough-minded film details British overzealousness in prosecuting an IRA bombing in the 1970s. Grabbing up a pair of small-time thieves (Daniel Day-Lewis and John Lynch) and their families, the government concocts a conspiracy case against them and tosses them all in jail. Until then, Day-Lewis has been a ne'er-do-well, an apolitical goof looking for a quick score. But confronted with the toughness of his own father (Pete Postlethwaite) in the face of British torture, he begins to realize just what the stakes are. In the Name of the Father is at times grueling and never less than compelling, with a complex performance by Day-Lewis and a strong one by Emma Thompson, as the lawyer who finally cracks through the British obstructions to the truth. --Marshall Fine

To Live

One of the best films of 1994, To Live is a bold, energetic masterpiece from Zhang Yimou, the foremost director from China's influential "fifth generation" of filmmakers. Continuing his brilliant collaboration with China's best-known actress Gong Li (their previous films include Ju Dou and Raise the Red Lantern), Zhang weaves an ambitious tapestry of personal and political events, following the struggles of an impoverished husband and wife (Ge You, Gong Li) from their heyday in the 1940s to the hardships that accompanied the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. They raise two children amidst a Communist regime, surviving numerous setbacks and yet managing, somehow, to live. Both intimate and epic, Zhang's film encompasses the simplest and most profound realities of Chinese life during this controversial period, and for their honesty, Zhang and Gong Li faced a two-year ban on future collaborations. To Live is a testament to their art, transcending politics to celebrate the tenacity of ordinary people in the wake of turbulent history. --Jeff Shannon

The story of Fugui and Jiazhen, and their family's struggle for survival from the 1940's through the 1980's.
Genre: Foreign Film - Chinese
Rating: UN
Release Date: 24-JUL-2007
Media Type: DVD

Cry Freedom

Story of the horrors of apartheid, based on the true story of the friendship between white newspaper reporter Donald Woods and South African Black activist Stephen Biko.
Genre: Feature Film-Drama
Rating: PG
Release Date: 2-SEP-2003
Media Type: DVD

Sir Richard Attenborough (Gandhi) directs this semi-successful drama about the relationship between South African black activist Steven Biko and a sympathetic newspaper editor (Kevin Kline). Attenborough's typical sweep of the life and times of Biko is particularly rewarding in the first half of the film, but once the leader comes to his untimely end at the hands of white police, the story shifts entirely to Kline's character and the latter's efforts to escape the country with his family. That change is a tactical error in the script that robs the film of its initial power and makes the arguably unfortunate choice of emphasizing the destiny of a white character when Biko himself deserved an entire feature for his story and causes. --Tom Keogh

Burnt by the Sun

Russian filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov is also the star of this tragic 1994 drama about the last happy season in the life of a Bolshevik hero's family. The year is 1936, and Stalin's purges are in full swing. Despite his reputation and revolutionary record, Sergei Kotov (Mikhalkov) seems to be on the dictator's hit list, as indicated by the insulting arrival of his wife's former lover, an agent of government police. Mikhalkov treats all this as a matter of personal and political intrigue dropping like rotting fruit in the middle of a sunny and loving period for the Kotov clan. The director ingeniously understates the mounting threat until one begins to realize that the Kotovs are only geographically distant from the long, bloody reach of Stalin. By the time we do realize it, the shock of change is almost unbearable. A very fine movie all around, though Mikhalkov's touches of magic realism (particularly the presence of a golden orb that keeps popping into the action) are distracting and a subject of controversy among viewers. --Tom Keogh

The Holcroft Covenant

Caine stars as the son of a prominent Nazi who becomes involved in a plot to release money supposedly set aside for Holocaust victims.
Genre: Feature Film-Action/Adventure
Rating: R
Release Date: 14-AUG-2001
Media Type: DVD

The 1980s weren't too kind to John Frankenheimer, but this film stands out as a top-notch spy thriller. A Nazi pact to steal a fortune from the Third Reich to aid Holocaust survivors results in a bizarre inheritance 40 years later, with architect Michael Caine having to come to terms with his father's past and the terrifying prospects of a Fourth Reich. The whole thing becomes a metaphor for a witches' covenant. It's exciting and well-paced and full of precious little moments (though Caine and Victoria Tennant fall short of being interesting characters). Supporting actors Mario Adorf, Michael Lonsdale, and Bernard Hepton really shine. The film was based on Robert Ludlum's bestseller and coscripted by George Axelrod (The Manchurian Candidate). Terrific audio commentary by the director provides valuable insight--for instance, allowing Lonsdale to carry a long exposition scene through his commanding presence. --Bill Desowitz