RBG is a documentary directed and produced by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, focusing on the life and career of Supreme Court of the United States Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. RBG chronicles the career of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which spans several decades, and how she developed a legal legacy while becoming a pop culture icon. The film is a biographical depiction of Ginsburg from her birth, her college education and subsequent career as a law professor, her appointment to the federal judiciary by President Jimmy Carter, and eventual appointment to the Supreme Court by President Bill Clinton. The film also chronicles Ginsburg’s status as a pop culture icon, starting with the publication of Notorious R.B.G.: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, written by Shana Knizhnik and Irin Carmon. Ruth Bader Ginsburg is the second female justice after Sandra Day O’Connor.
Ruth Bader was born in Brooklyn on March 15, 1933 to a first-generation, American Jewish family. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Cornell University, where she met her husband, Martin Ginsburg. (They remained married until his death in 2010). Ruth enrolled in Harvard Law School before transferring to Columbia University while her husband started a successful career as a New York City tax attorney. After graduating Columbia, Ruth became a law professor at Rutgers Law School and Columbia Law School. Ruth Bader Ginsburg successfully argued five of six cases regarding gender discrimination before the U.S. Supreme Court. She advocated for both men and women facing sex-based bias: among the plaintiffs she represented was a woman facing housing discrimination in the U.S. Air Force and a male single parent denied Social Security benefits normally paid only to single mothers. Ginsburg argued these cases in the 1960s and ’70s, when gender discrimination was rampant in U.S. society and an all-male Supreme Court was generally skeptical of claims of bias against women.
RBG is a well made, significant documentary that goes on to tell Ruth’s entire history up until the present. At 85, she still holds down her position on the seat of the Supreme Count despite being diagnosed with colon cancer in 1999. She underwent surgery that was followed by Radiation and chemotherapy therapy. During the process, she never missed a day on the bench. She is a remarkable person and deserves to be celebrated. RBG can be seen on DVD and Blu-Ray. Check It Out!
[RBG is Oscar nominated for Best Original Song and Best Documentary Feature]
Through interviews, new footage, and archival audio and video, O.J.: Made in America traces the life and career of O. J. Simpson, starting with his arrival at the University of Southern California as an emerging football superstar and ending with his incarceration in 2007 for robbery. Throughout the documentary, Simpson’s life – the football success, television career, relationship with Nicole Brown, the domestic abuse, Nicole and Ron Goldman’s murder, the trial – runs parallel to the larger narrative of the city of Los Angeles, which serves as host to mounting racial tensions and a volatile relationship between the city’s police department and the African American community.
My reaction to this Netflix Original documentary is simply WOW! For a Black person, it’s truly depressing but it’s history and it is what it is. This is the kind of information everyone should know. Maybe it can make some kind of a difference regarding the race issues in America. No matter what character or category of person you might fall into, criminal, bad or compassionate, I don’t see how anyone could go along with the stinking thinking outlined in this film. 13th is titled after the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which outlawed slavery (unless as punishment for a crime). DuVernay’s, documentary opens with the idea that 25 percent of the people in the world, who are incarcerated, are incarcerated in the United States and argues that slavery is being effectively perpetuated in the US through mass incarceration. 13th features several prominent activists, politicians, and public figures such as, Angela Davis, Bryan Stevenson, Van Jones, Newt Gingrich, Cory Booker, Henry Louis Gates Jr. and many others. It’s been said that one of the most compelling defenses behind this documentary is that it’s not opinionated or accusatory, it only presents the facts that are non disputable. Racism, Slavery, the 13th Amendment, Jim Crow, ALEC, Republicans, The South, Political Leaders and Organizations, Militants, Murder and The Privatization of the Prison System are all featured. 13th has garnered acclaim from film critics everywhere, as a major historian contribution that should not be ignored.
The White Helmets is one of the most profound documentaries I’ve seen. Filmed in war torn Syria, one of the most dangerous places in the world. The film follows the daily operations of a group of volunteer rescue workers of the Syrian Civil Defense, also known as The White Helmets. The film is directed by Orlando von Einsiedel and produced by Joanna Natasegara.
Life Animated is a documentary that I first heard about on WHYY when they interviewed Ron Suskind who wrote the story about his son Owen. At the age of two, Owen started to lose his motor skills along with his perfectly structured speech patterns. By three, his words had turned to gibberish and Owen was diagnosed with autism. If you have a child with autism, you’re going to want to see this unique documentary. Since I have a grandson with high functioning autism, I was very interested in seeing Life Animated and learned a lot from Owen’s journey. I learned how he finally developed a way to communicate through the world of Disney, using animated Disney movies. Owen, like my grandson, would watch a movie over and over and over again. I never knew why, I just came to accept that was part of his personality. In Owen’s case, he memorized every Disney, animated movie ever made and used the dialogue as a form of communication.
Cartel Land is a documentary produced and directed by Matthew Heineman. It tells about what the Mexican people who joined together under two modern day vigilante groups are doing in, their desperation, to clean up the drug situation in their respective regions. Dr. Jose Mireles aka “El Doctor” is a small-town physician in Michoacán, Mexico who heads up the “Autodefensas” against the very violent “Knights Templar” drug cartel that has wreaked havoc on the region for years. With unprecedented access, Cartel Land is a riveting, on-the-ground look at the journeys of two modern-day vigilante groups and their shared enemy. Meanwhile, in Arizona’s Altar Valley, a narrow, 52-mile-long desert corridor known as Cocaine Alley, Tim “Nailer” Foley, an American veteran, heads a small paramilitary group called Arizona Border Recon, whose goal is to stop Mexico’s drug wars from seeping across the US border.
Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom, is a very hard documentary to watch. You have to be able to stomach seeing innocent people being beaten up, murdered in cold blood, abused and treated like animals. When I hear people complaining about the US, I wonder if they have watched any footage of some other countries and how the government treats their own people? One thing about documentaries, it’s reality, not script. This film documents a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began on the night of November 21, 2013 with public protests in Maidan Nezalezhnosti (“Independence Square”) in Kiev, demanding closer European integration and many calls for the resignation of President Vikto Yanukovych and his government. The protests led to the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Many protesters joined because of the violent dispersal of protesters on November 30th and “a will to change life in Ukraine.” By January 25th, 2014, the protests had been fueled by the perception of “widespread government corruption,” “abuse of power,” and “violation of human rights in Ukraine.” Transparency International named President Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world.
What Happened, Miss Simone? is a direct quote from a Maya Angelou poem. 
Amy Winehouse, a dynamic song writer and jazz and pop singer, found dead from alcohol poisoning at the age of 27, is documented in this sad but clear story of her brief life and career. I’ve formed a strong and definite opinion of Amy’s life and reasons for her early demise. “Amy” was quite painful to watch, especially after reading that her father (Mitch Winehouse) was protesting the film because he felt it made him look bad and also, at times, showed Amy in a bad light. I found his words hard to believe. In the documentary, her mother admitted she was unable to handle Amy with a simple no when needed. The film brilliantly showed times when Amy acted up as a small child, needing guidance and discipline and her mother (Janis Winehouse) giving up and giving in to Amy’s pressure tactics. I would say Amy was one of those special children, overactive, or what we call a “D” child. Hard to control, aggressive and in need of a disciplinarian. I felt watching her story that her parents were ill equipped to handle her. At 16 years old Amy and a friend had their own flat. That says a whole lot right there. As Amy got older and more popular with more responsibilities, she became more withdrawn from adulthood and was handling her life in a way most adolescence without proper training would. Adding booze, drugs, sex and a “I don’t care” attitude on top of everything just for the fun of it. Friends and family tried to intervene but she didn’t really want their help. She was in and out of rehab but she attached to mates who kept her where she didn’t want to be, even marrying Blake Fielder who really aided in bringing her to rock bottom by introducing her to drugs. She actually served as a gravy train for a few family members who looked out for themselves instead of Amy. When she started to grow up, it was really too late, she was unable to deal with all the problems she had created for herself which included bulimia, drug addiction, alcoholism and depression.
Since this is a documentary, I don’t really think it needs rating. However, I have to present this as an alleged account of sexual assaults as presented by the makers/writers of this film. The Hunting Ground tells the blatant truth about RAPE on campus and how it’s ignored. An edited version of The Hunting Ground aired on CNN, November 22, 2015 before it was released in December. This film starts out showing the excitement of several young girls and their families when they found out they were accepted in various colleges, which included the likes of Harvard, Berkley, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Amherst College, and Notre Dame. It didn’t take more than a couple of weeks before many of these girls lives were changed forever. Apparently, rape is a huge problem for colleges today and ignoring complaints is the way it’s dealt with. The film implies that many college officials were more concerned with minimizing rape statistics for their universities than with the welfare of the students, thus the message told over and over is that the college has to be protected, not the student. Other students, college administrators and city officials are accused of contributing more problems for students who try to aggressively pursue their claims. “The Hunting Ground also includes testimony from male victims of sexual assault. Producer Amy Ziering stated the filmmakers “felt it was important to show men and women. For men it’s often harder to speak up because there is a social stigma associated with rape. Many male victims were feeling ashamed.”
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