REVIEW: Do Not Resist [2016]

“It isn’t just us. It’s everybody.” First-time director Craig Atkinson‘s Do Not Resist could easily have become an agenda piece highlighting one viewpoint of the escalating militarization of America’s police force above another. His footage on the ground at Ferguson during the protests of Michael Brown’s murder and numerous glimpses inside deliberations of city, state, and federal commissions seeking to bolster defense and/or question why leans towards the opinion that the country is growing more and more totalitarian. If he added talking-head interviews from liberal experts with leading questions that…

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REVIEW: Supot [2016]

“What if I can’t stand the pain?” For some rural villages in the Philippines circumcision is a rite of passage for young boys. We’re not talking surgical removal by a doctor as a baby, though. This tradition takes place at age ten by a designated patriarch with a sharpened blade and rock. Each boy soaks in water to soften the foreskin, chews some guava leaves, and looks up into the sky as the knife comes down. To us it’s barbaric; to them it’s an evolution towards manhood. When cut you…

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