“Why don’t you make a happy film?” Wiseman was asked for a New York Times article in 1970. To which Wiseman replied, “All right, but what’s the subject?” @gideon_leek @FilmLinc

Coltrane’s blow in the second part of Love Supreme seemed to me as an extraterrestrial pattern — a message from space. As if I were in a parallel universe, a different reality.

From his early muckraking exposés to his longer, looser portraits, Wiseman’s documentaries exposed human decency and human cruelty through the institutions we’ve made for each other.

The strength of No Other Land is in its very existence, which took the filmmakers putting their lives on the line to photograph.

Cooper used his eloquent, streetwise voice to report on the burgeoning rap movement, writing about the music’s roots in the lively “toasting” records of the West Indies, and of its social similarities to punk in England and reggae in the Caribbean.

“When I got to the Voice, my very first day, [reporter Jack] Newfield says to me, ‘There’s this guy, Wayne Barrett, you got to meet. He’s a freelance reporter. He’s really good. He’s got a big article on Donald Trump.’”

As it was chockablock with muggings, random shootings, garbage strikes, and electrical blackouts, it is perhaps no surprise that “Little Murders,” Feiffer’s first play, flopped on Broadway, in 1967.

The rerun-president’s relentless attacks on democracy and civil norms for the past eight years show all signs of only getting worse. Can the resistance outlast the bullying?

“A rehearsal of the pivotal to-be-or-not speech in a dive bar quickly devolves into a brawl/shootout; Crane and Oosterveen must often interrupt their acting to kill threatening passersby.”

This year, E. L. Doctorow’s novel Ragtime, a kaleidoscopic evocation of the early 20th century, turns 50. A fast, fluid novel about post-World’s Fair, pre-World War America, it was a bestseller and won the National Book Critics Circle Award.

Atkinson on “Bye Bye Love” now showing @Metrograph: “The vibe is pure snot-nosed anti-establishment indie heaven, shot with golden amateur grain and the poise of a stoned weekend. Crude colors, crude action, fake reality out of the Godard handbook.”

These extremist beliefs are not relegated to the fringe. Maybe more dangerous in the long run is the mainstreaming of white nationalism into the hallowed halls of democracy, and into the wider zeitgeist.

The authentic characterizations are a direct result of Leigh’s unusual, tried-and-true method of working with actors. Starting without a script, they essentially make up the movie as they go along.

Chalamet performs nearly a dozen songs during the film, finding his own groove instead of simply imitating Dylan’s famous growl.

The movie really belongs to Nicole Kidman, who’s brilliant. She’s never exhibited comparable vulnerability or tread such dangerous turf.

What candy-coated, head-in-sand, MTV Real World beach house does Dean Kissick inhabit, anyway?

We see flashes of potential, of possibility, in Carter. We see a chance of help for New York City. We see a chance of a healing reconciliation between blacks and whites. We see a chance to control the spread of nuclear weapons. We see …

You’ll notice a roaring current of historical-political rage running through “Nosferatu.”

Three strippers bring the house down with “You Gotta Get a Gimmick,” a number prompted by one of them saying, “To be a stripper, all you need to have is no talent.”

Who can be surprised if I’m thinking the America around me is getting too complacent, much too proudly ignorant, and a good deal Wile E. Coyote-ish, only oblivious to the fact that we’ve run off a cliff because we haven’t bothered to look down yet.