ANGUS REID, ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review On The Sea, A Useful Ghost, Brunello: The Gracious Visionary, and Pinocchio Unstrung
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North Korea in the frame
ALAN FRANK recommends Alvaro Longoria’s documentary, which provides an unusual focus on one of the world’s most secretive countries
RON JACOBS enjoys a great tale, told by a US communist, of the lives of working-class New Yorkers
BRENT CUTLER searches a new history of contemporary Iran for an understanding of the Islamic Republic, finding both interesting detail and glaring omissions
MARIA DUARTE recommends the true story of the remarkable woman who sued Donald Trump for sexual assault not once, but twice
KENNY MacASKILL is disappointed by a polemical, rather than factual, account of the Lone Star State and its political path since the civil war
PAUL DONOVAN is fascinated by the lives of Charles and Mary Bagot, and the insight this biography shines on the morals of pre-Victorian society
GORDON PARSONS appreciates fine performances and a feel for ambiguity, but misses the music of the dialogue
The Propaganda Game (15)
Directed by Alvaro Longoria
4/5
“ALL art is propaganda. It is universally and inescapably propaganda; sometimes unconsciously but, often deliberately, propaganda,” the US author Upton Sinclair once declared.
This documentary, which relies upon privileged filming in North Korea, is an absorbing cinematic essay that tends to confirm Sinclair’s observation.
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