Settlers review: Sci-fi allegory rooted in the land latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
As if they had been written yesterday, the revolutionary words of Helen Keller speak to the prevalent ills of crushing capitalism and the dehumanization it breeds. “Her Socialist Smile,” writer-director John Gianvito’s experimental biopic of one of the most influential women of the 20th century, revives them for modern examination.
While Keller’s voice, hard-fought and from her own chest, bookends this filmic essay, the piece largely consists of text in white lettering over black: long excerpts taken verbatim from speeches, interviews and letters. Narrator Carolyn Forché, with the academic monotone of a prerecorded guide in a museum exhibit, fills in the gaps and contextualizes Keller’s thoughts between the informative slides.
A gruesome 1983 murder in Corpus Christi, Texas, left two innocent casualties, one at the scene and another by lethal injection six years later. In “The Phantom,” documentarian Patrick Forbes observes this true-crime incident in the context of ingrained racism and the disproportionate number of people of color who die at the hands of the state.
A photograph of murder suspect Carlos DeLuna, left, in custody, from the 2021 documentary “The Phantom.”
(Greenwich Entertainment) In February 1983, gas station attendant Wanda Lopez was savagely stabbed; later that night, police apprehended Carlos DeLuna, a young Latino with a criminal history. Officers congratulated themselves for their swift response, assuming that DeLuna was the killer. DeLuna, who vehemently denied having committed the killing, was found guilty and received the death penalty.
Sun Children review: Majid Majidi, a voice for the marginalized latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.