Unless otherwise noted, these are very brief reviews of many of the movies sent to me as a member of NY Film Critics Online or seen at a press screening, all in conjunction with our awards meeting held in December. ...I group the films by recommended, not recommended, and unwatchable—the last category defined by my inability to stomach more than 15 minutes or so. I make no pretensions to reviewing for a general public but offer my opinions for that narrow segment of the population with a taste for low-budget neorealist narrative films with nonprofessional casts and bold documentaries directed against one capitalist injustice or another.
in the time remaining, to help us understand how the man-made system of capitalism will lead to the extinction of our human species, and so many others.
We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up