A look at director Hal Ashby

Hal Ashby died in 1988 at the age of 59. Ashby directed both good and great movies and was part of the reason that movies became so exciting during the 1970s. If you loved any of the following movies (Harold and Maude, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Coming Home and Being There), you need to see Hal, a documentary about Ashby's life as a pot-smoking, adventurous perfectionist. (I know. "Adventurous perfectionist" sounds like a contradiction in terms but with a figure such as Ashby, the two words seem to fit. Director Amy Scott includes a touching interview with director Norman Jewison, who helped Ashby gain a foothold in Hollywood. The two became lifelong pals and Ashby won an Oscar for editing Jewison's In the Heat of the Night. Actor Ben Foster reads excerpts from letters Ashby wrote to Jewison. They are love letters between two men who probably never had a better friendship. You'll see clips from Ashby's films, interviews with some of the actors who appeared in them: Beau Bridges, Jeff Bridges, and Louis Gossett Jr., for example. Screenwriter Robert Towne, who wrote screenplays for The Last Detail and Shampoo, makes an appearance along with some appreciative young directors, notably Judd Apatow and Lisa Cholodenko. Hal can't help but remind those of us who lived through it of a particularly fertile period in American film. I won't bore you with nostalgia but I remember where I saw both The Last Detail and Shampoo, two movies that helped shape my taste and taught me something about what movies could be. Ashby's career didn't end a high note, but he was part of a wave that, when it broke, left nothing but movie love in its wake -- not always requited but irrevocable.

Mass murder in Norway and its aftermath

22 July is director Paul Greengrass's latest movie about a catastrophic event.

With interruptions for several Bourne movies, director Paul Greengrass has become one of cinema's ablest chroniclers of catastrophe, creating a filmography that includes Bloody Sunday (2002), United 93 (2006), and Captain Phillips (2013), films that dealt with political upheaval, violence or outright terror.

This year brings us Greengrass's 22 July, an examination of the 2011 attack in which 77 Norwegians, most of them teenagers, were murdered by a white nationalist who claimed to be a soldier in the battle to save Europe from what he viewed as liberal elitist multiculturalism. The murderer resented the presence of Muslim immigrants in his country.

Eight of the victims were killed by an explosion outside a government building; 69 of them were murdered while attending a Labor Party youth camp on the island of Utoya, picked off as the killer freely roamed the campgrounds. No helicopter was available to drop police into the bloody fray.

Filming in English with a Scandinavian cast, Greengrass begins with the day of the mass murders. Soon-to-be murderer Anders Behring Breivik (chillingly played by Anders Danielsen Lie) disguises himself as a policeman to carry out his lethal rampage. After setting off an explosion in Oslo, Breivik proceeded to Utoya. He gained access to a ferry from the mainland by claiming he had been sent to secure the island for young people already alarmed by shocking news of the Oslo explosion.

Greengrass vividly presents Breivik's murders within roughly the first half hour of a film that runs for an overly long 143 minutes. 22 July then turns into a drama that deals mostly with the aftermath of the shootings, an intermittently effective catalog of the painful consequences that included Breivik's trial.

Greengrass recreates the chaotic atmosphere surrounding the shootings, but simplifies the story by concentrating on Breivik, the conflicted attorney who defended him (Jon Oigarden) and a young survivor (Jonas Strand Gravli), a horribly wounded 17-year-old whose grueling recovery is rendered with agonizing detail.

Arrogance allowed Breivik to cast himself as a hero; he imagined himself a vanguard figure in what he believed would be a war to restore white supremacy in Europe. After terrorizing the kids on Utoya, he surrendered to police without a fight.

Greengrass presents a mini portrait of a man so certain of himself that he has the gall to complain to the police that they're not tending to a cut he sustained during the shooting. A flying skull fragment from one of his victims injured a finger. The murderer needed a small bandage; his victims weren't so lucky.

Despite Lie's compelling performance, there isn't a whole lot to understand about Breivik or his deluded sense of superiority.

As a legal drama, 22 July hinges on Breivik's decision to scrap an insanity defense that would have replaced a prison sentence with confinement to a mental institution. Breivik insists on having his day in court so that he can control his own narrative. He wants a platform to present himself as a warrior of the far-right.

I confess to wondering exactly why this horrific story needed to be rehashed on screen. It is, of course, a cautionary tale about the toxicity of racist resentment and paranoia. I also speculated that Greengrass may have wanted us to remember this particular atrocity before it washes from our cultural memory bank, swept away by the stream of additional shootings that since have grabbed headlines.

Perhaps Greengrass would have come closer had he been able to pull a stronger statement from this fractured, combustible and often disturbing movie.

Bradley Cooper/ Lady Gaga join forces

A Star is Born dazzles before it dwindles.

Lady Gaga displays dazzling showbusiness versatility in A Star is Born, which co-stars Bradley Cooper, who also makes his directorial debut.

Cooper's take on a story that has been told on screen three times before features musical high points from Lady Gaga, who Cooper generously showcases. It's as if Cooper understands that the paying customers want to see Gaga soar or sink and he gives them plenty of room to decide in which direction she's headed.

Displaying talents that evoke images of everyone from Judy Garland to Janis Joplin to Barbra Streisand (of the last version) and maybe even a little Alice Cooper, Lady Gaga -- the erstwhile Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta -- holds the screen, even when her acting proves a bit shaky.

It's difficult to imagine that anyone could be unfamiliar with a narrative arc that's only slightly less shopworn than Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s Eve. Cooper follows the outline of Streisand's 1976 version, kicking the tale into the world of rock and pop stardom. He's sinking. She's rising. Everyone knows the drill.

Cooper plays Jackson Maine, a talented but fading country rocker with a massive alcohol problem. After a concert, Jackson polishes off a bottle in his chauffeured ride. But he's so badly in need of another drink that he stumbles into a drag bar where Lady Gaga's Ally is performing. The only female who's allowed on stage, she delivers a knock-out version of La Vie En Rose.

After her performance, Jackson and Ally spend a night hanging out and Ally confides that her singing career might be stalled because her nose is too big. He says he loves her nose. He recognizes that she has the potential to be a star, a view we readily share because ... well ... she's Lady Gaga.

Interested and smitten, the soft-spoken Jackson pulls Ally into his world, soon sending a private jet to pick her up for one of his concerts.

It doesn't take long for the transformative moment to arise. Jackson pulls Ally on stage. She's nervous, but she kills. And her talent begins to charge his batteries, too. After years of touring drudgery, Jackson seems to be having fun again.

Jackson and Ally work together -- until the point where an ambitious manager (Rafi Gavron) convinces Ally that she can rocket past her musical partner and love interest if she strikes out on her own.

Ally's ascendance parallels Jackson's decline, but when it comes to sinking into an alcoholic swamp, Jackson needs no help. He spirals downward during an overly long decline that reaches its low point when he embarrasses Ally at the Grammys, a scene that's bound to make an audience cringe at Jackson's pathetic degeneration.

To further underscore Jackson's march toward musical irrelevance, he also develops tinnitus, a condition that interferes with his singing and guitar playing.

A bearded, red-faced Cooper keeps his eyes downcast and drops his speaking voice to bass levels. Cooper plays Jackson's smoldering, nonchalant sexiness for all its worth, interrupting a display of cowboy charm with bouts of fall-down drunkenness. He's reasonably convincing doing his own singing.

There isn't much by way of a supporting cast in this Cooper/Gaga duet. Sam Elliott, a reliable symbol of country authenticity with a voice as deep and mellow as a summer afternoon, shows up as Jackson's brother Bobby, the guy who also manages the singer's road tours. The brothers eventually get crosswise and Elliott disappears.

Andrew Dice Clay portrays Ally's father, a failed crooner who wants Ally to achieve the stardom that eluded him.

Dave Chappelle shows up -- more or less out of nowhere -- offering a calming turn as one of Jackson's former buddies; he literally picks Jackson out of the gutter during one of his worst benders.

A Star is Born has a sustained imbalance that may result from its odd match of talents. Cooper is an actor; Lady Gaga is a phenomenon. He's in his actor's world. She's in her pop phenomenon world. It's possible to argue, I suppose, that the clash makes sense for a movie in which Ally's success is destined to eclipse Jackson's.

A Star is Born has entertaining moments to be sure, but there's no star born here. Lady Gaga is a star from the moment we first see her. Cooper's high immersion performance notwithstanding, Lady Gaga remains the movie's main attraction, even when she appears without any of her trademark makeup.

As a director, Cooper likes a funky, handheld camera. During the musical numbers, A Star is Born can feel like an energetic concert film -- albeit one that's interrupted by a story.

If you're up for a pop-cultural fairy tale, A Star is Born probably will get the job done. It struck me as more of a high-wire performance act than a look at two memorable characters. The perils of celebrity and alcoholism and an unlikely romance become supports for Cooper and Lady Gaga to "put it all out there," if you'll excuse some vernacular.

It strikes me that the movie also is about Cooper and Lady Gaga taking turns trying to charm the audience -- him with low-down, shaggy dereliction that screams out for salvage and her with a mixture of daring and talent that defies you not to pay attention.

It's all a bit overamped, an entertainment that's a little too in love with itself to bring down the curtain -- even as its two-hour and 15-minute length begins to wear. And dialogue about the need for authenticity in music didn't convince me that there wasn't a lot more show than substance in Cooper's collection of riffs, tiffs, and musical striving.

They want to have a baby

Director Tamara Jenkins returns to the screen with Private Life; Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn make the trip worthwhile.

In Private Life, Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn play a married couple who have spent years trying to have a baby. As a couple in their 40s, they're facing a difficult reality; their lives are beginning to lose all traces of youthful promise.

Clever, smart and entertaining, Private Life provides the perfect vehicle for director Tamara Jenkins to return to the screen after more than a decade. Jenkins' The Savages (2007) featured Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney as adult siblings trying to cope with a demented father.

In this outing, Jenkins turns her attention to a frustrated New York couple we get to know well, and who are so life-sized you feel as if they might live next door, providing you live in New York’s East Village.

After so much failure, it seems logical to wonder why Hahn's Rachel and Giamatti's Richard want to bring a child into their lives. The answer, as I’ve suggested, may lie in the fact that they're an attractive couple who seem to have reached their career limits.

The theater company Richard runs isn't going to make him rich or famous. Neither is the pickle company he operates to keep bread and butter on the table. Rachel's trips to Yaddo, a prestigious artists' colony, haven't pushed her to the top of the literary world. Richard and Rachel still live in a cramped apartment where the upstairs neighbor plays music that booms through the floorboards.

A child might mark Rachel and Richard's last way to leave something tangible behind but their lives have degenerated into a series of injections (administered by him), ovulation-cycle watching and visits to specialists. And, yes, Richard and Rachel also are in the process of trying to a adopt.

Striving for pregnancy has begun to look like penance for undisclosed sins or, at very least, a full-time job.

The movie's plot finally leads the couple to consider using Richard's sperm to fertilize a donor egg. Because Rachel would carry the baby, a donor might represent the closest the couple can get to biological reproduction.

Richard often turns to his brother Charlie (John Carroll Lynch) for money; Charlie's wife (Molly Shannon) is sick of hearing about Richard and Rachel's problems, another source of low-key tension.

Once an initially reluctant Rachel agrees to use a donor egg, it falls to Charlie and Rachel's daughter Sadie (Kayli Carter) to become the donor. Sadie has left college to move in with Richard and Rachel. An aspiring writer, Sadie thinks Richard and Rachel are "cool,'' a conclusion only a 25-year-old could draw about a couple that's suffering from the kind of life exhaustion that shows up just before the skin begins to wrinkle.

Jenkins writes with wit and Giamatti and Hahn create characters who are intelligent and credible.

You don't have to have had any experience with the difficulties of getting pregnant to enjoy a comedy that is saved from charges of urbane preciousnesses by Giamatti and Hahn. They're each blessed with the ability to create characters who are believably self-aware and who never push us so far away that we can't appreciate their full, rich and often annoying selves.

The story of a ground-breaking author

Keira Knightley plays the title character in Colette, a movie that's as much period piece as character study.

Colette, the French novelist, died in 1954 at the age of 81. The movie Colette focuses on roughly a quarter of Colette's fascinating life, notably the years she spent with her first husband, Henry Gauthier-Villars, a man who published under the name Willy. Colette wrote the famous Claudine novels, but Willy took credit for them.

A bon vivant, literary entrepreneur and music critic, Willy hired others to author books to which he proudly put his name. His major talent seems to have been for promotion, which suggests that he may have been born a century too soon.

Colette, who was 14 years younger than Willy, eventually divorced him. She went on to have a distinguished literary career, as well as a personal life that included two additional marriages and various relationships with women.

Director Wash Westmoreland (Still Alice) uses a portion of Colette's life to make a stylistically conventional movie about an unconventional woman.

As far as it goes, Colette proves enjoyable with Keira Knightley bringing a sense of fiber and substance to the role of Colette and Dominic West immersing himself in a convincing turn as man who relied on preening charm, profligate spending, and a charismatic personality.

Westmoreland doesn't shortchange Colette's adventurous sex life, presenting one episode in which Colette has an affair with an American woman who's visiting Paris (Eleanor Tomlinson). So, by the way, does Willy. Colette also establishes an on-going relationship with Mathilde de Morny (Denise Gough), an aristocrat and gender rebel who shocked polite society by dressing like a man.

Colette and Willy tolerated each other's sexual digressions; according to the movie, Colette prized honesty more than she valued fidelity. Willy agrees, but he’s not quite up Colette’s demanding standard.

Part tale of feminist assertion and part portrait of turn-of-the-century Paris, Colette engages without generating sustained excitement for a title character whose sharp edges have been buffed into submission by what may be a little too much production value.

Colette likely will be appreciated more as carefully appointed, nicely acted period piece than a provocative look at a woman who didn't so much challenge norms as bypass them with blithe indifference.

Put another way, Colette presents its subject with honesty but never throws down the gauntlet of challenge that would have pushed audiences out of their comfort zones, something Colette deserved.

The wild and strange west

The Sisters Brothers tells the story of hitmen siblings.

Some Westerns aim to uphold frontier mythology; others want to drag that mythology into the muddy grit of reality. And some don't necessarily want to do either. The Sisters Brothers seems to fit into that latter category; it's a strangely entertaining, slightly off-kilter take on the American West during a time of transition.

The Sisters Brothers (Joaquin Phoenix and John C. Reilly) are hitmen who work for a ruthless character known as the Commodore (Rutger Hauer). But these two gunmen are not like other gunfighters you've seen before. They're more brutal than slick and they banter and argue as only siblings can.

Based on a novel by Patrick deWitt, The Sister's Brothers takes French director Jacques Audiard (Rust and Bone, Dheepan and The Prophet) to the northwestern US -- Oregon mostly -- to follow the twisted adventures of brothers who have developed a proud level of expertise in their chosen occupation.

Not surprisingly, the brothers aren't always on the same page. Brother Eli (Reilly) has grown weary of killing people. He longs for the tenderness of home and hearth. He wants to retire. Brother Charlie sees no reason to quit, so long as the Commodore keeps giving them lucrative assignments.

Perhaps to let us know that we're not about to take a customary Western ride, Audiard begins his movie with a gunfight that takes place in the dark. Flashes from fired weapons pop across the screen along with the deep-throated sound of firing revolvers. If you're interested in assigning meaning to this battle, it might have something to do with Charlie and Eli's aimlessness. They're acting out an old script, but they have no real vision about what they might be pursuing. They're dancing in the dark.

The story soon focuses on the task to which Charlie and Eli currently have been assigned. They're supposed to catch up with Hermann Kermit Warm (Riz Ahmed) and torture him for reasons best discovered in a theater.

For their part, the brothers are task-specific; they've been hired to torture; it's not their job to locate the fleeing Warm. That task falls into the hands of John Morris (Jake Gyllenhaal) a detective whose impeccable diction couldn't seem more out of place in this environment.

As it turns out, Warm has a large agenda: He wants to found a harmonious, non-violent, egalitarian society in Dallas, Texas, and damn if Morris doesn't catch a bit of utopian fever himself.

The performances are marked by idiosyncratic fervor. Phoenix portrays Charlie as a drunk with a quick temper and a taste for life without regret. Reilly gives Eli a dogged quality with hints of unexpected tenderness. A shawl Eli carries with him serves as a kind of security blanket, a reminder that the comfort of a woman might exist somewhere, although it's probably somewhere where Eli isn't.

One of my favorite moments arrives when Charlie asks Eli why he insists on carrying around a scarf he purportedly was given by a woman. It's not a scarf insists Eli; it's a shawl. To him, the distinction means everything.

Audiard sets all this against the backdrop of the still-evolving west. At one point, Morris -- who keeps a diary -- notes that he's visiting settlements that didn't exist three months ago. In another signal of change, Charlie discovers the toothbrush, a device that he uses awkwardly. Think about it. How would you approach a toothbrush if you'd never seen one before?

Audiard allows what symbolism he employs to crawl out of the natural landscape. On the trail, a sleeping Eli swallows a spider that leaves him sick and poisoned. His face becomes distorted and swollen with bloat. The natural world seems to be turning against Eli.

I won't reveal the movie's ending but I'll tell you that Audiard allows his movie to settle like a pot that has been taken off the fire and has begun to lose its boiling fury. Audiard has given us a half-real, half-fantastical portrait of the West, putting it on the shoulders of two brothers who only seem unconstrained by their torments when their horses are bounding across open terrain. As the movie suggests, the West may not be what we once thought it was, but the image of horse and rider hasn't lost its power to stir.

The story of a young 'witch'

Rungano Nyoni, described in her biography as a Zambian/Welsh director, demonstrates a keen eye for the strange hypocrisies and contradictions in everyday life among ordinary villagers in Zambia. Nyoni's I Am Not a Witch focuses on what we're told is a "witch camp," a place where women who've been targeted as witches perform what looks to be forced labor. Sometimes, they pose with painted faces for tourists hungry for some exoticism. Shula (Maggie Mulubwa) shows up early. She's a serious-looking eight-year-old who may have been orphaned and who seems entirely lost. It doesn't take long for Shula, who has evidently no place else to go, to be encouraged to identify herself as a witch. As a low-level government official with a keen eye for exploitation, Mr. Banda (Henry B.J. Phir) takes a proprietary interest in Shula. She'll be good for tourism. Shula becomes government property. Nyoni finds warmth in the close ties among the women, who are victimized by the idiocy that arises from conflicts between government, tribal authorities and self-serving officials. Not without humor, I Am Not a Witch ultimately rests on Shula's story, which builds toward a mournful and mysterious finale.

Two fine docs from National Geographic

He dares to do what seems impossible.

As someone who's not crazy about heights, I approached the documentary Free Solo with a mixture of dread and interest. I wanted to see if I'd be able to watch climber Alex Honnold do what never had been done before: scale Yosemite's treacherous El Capitan without a rope or any other safety equipment.

The often-riveting Free Solo makes for challenging viewing for those of us who like to keep both feet planted firmly on the ground. Qualms or no, this is one compelling film.

Honnold makes his living as a climber, but it would be ridiculous to suggest that he does it for money or fame. What motivates him is an unquenchable desire to push himself, in this case by taking on a 3,000-foot granite wall. No ropes. No gear. Just a bit of chalk to help him secure what look to be the most tenuous of spots to place his hands and feet.

Filming Honnold's climb required the filmmakers to take some risks themselves. Directors E. Chai Vasarhelyi and Jimmy Chin (Meru) faced daunting challenges: How to get the most breathtaking images of the climb while staying out Honnold's way. I've read that the filmmakers used drones, rigs and powerful zoom lenses to accomplish their task.

Chin, who sometimes appears camera, is obviously troubled by an inescapable awareness that things could go terribly wrong. Climber Tommy Caldwell arrives to help Honnold train. He's encouraging but realistic, noting that "everyone who has made free soloing a big part of their carer is dead by now."

It must have been nerve-wracking for the filmmakers to know that they were telling a story about a guy who might die during the filming.

Honnold turns out to be a man of preternatural focus: He sees no reason to give up climbing, even if his girlfriend -- Sanni McCandless -- were to ask him to quit for the sake of their relationship. She doesn't.

Despite a couple of setbacks, Honnold's determination is impressive. I'm not sure that free soloing shouldn't be recognized as a form of insanity, but Free Solo holds your attention -- for every gut-wrenching minute of Honnold's history-making effort.

These science whizzes make you excited for their future -- and ours.

I'd be surprised if Science Fair didn't show up on this year's Oscar's documentary shortlist.

Directors Cristina Costantini and Darren Foster hit the inspirational bullseye by focusing on smart young people who are preparing to compete in 2017's International Science and Engineering Fair, an event that pits 1,700 finalists against one another as they compete for prizes in multiple categories.

The directors concentrate on young people from Kentucky, New York, South Dakota, and West Virginia, as well as from a small city in Brazil and an isolated community in rural Germany. You'll meet young men and women who boldly follow their interest in science in highly competitive academic surroundings such as Louisville's duPont Manual High School or at a school in South Dakota where there are no science labs and the sole competitor for international recognition must be sponsored by the football coach.

Kashfia, a Bangladeshi-American student who's investigating adolescent brain activity as it pertains to risk, is also a Muslim who wears a hijab. She may not be brimming with self-assurance, but the school's football coach recognizes a ferocity in her.

Dr. Serena McCalla, who teaches in Long Island, N.Y., proves a formidable adult presence, pushing her students toward excellence and refusing to accept anything less.

The individual stories all are interesting, but Science Fair deserves extra praise because its young subjects fill us with optimism for the future. I don't know if such positivity will prove entirely warranted, but damn if it didn't feel good to feel positive -- if only for the film's intriguing 90 minutes.

Michael Moore is back in action

Fahrenheit 11/9 fires at many targets, but scores a direct hit on the subject of Flint's tainted water supply.

Michael Moore leaves few stones unturned in his latest movie, Fahrenheit 11/9.

Under Moore's sardonic gaze: the Trump presidency, the water crisis in Flint, Mich., the Democratic party's treatment of Bernie Sanders, and the inability of what Moore views as the country's liberal majority to assert its will.

Put another way: Fahrenheit 11/9 stands as a catalog of current "progressive" laments, as well as a call to action.

Bolstered by a too-brief interview with Yale historian Timothy Snyder, Moore says that our democracy is under siege. No constitutional guarantees will save us from tyranny once it arrives and we may be closer to ruin than we think.

Much of 11/9 will be familiar to those who read the newspapers or watch any cable news channel other than FOX, but the movie includes at least one explanatory observation about the ascendance of Donald Trump that I haven't already heard.

Moore says that Trump decided to run for president in a fit of pique after hearing that NBC was paying Gwen Stafani (The Voice) more than he earned as host of The Apprentice. Make America Great Again was preceded by Make My Deal Better -- at least that's how Moore sees it.

Fahrenheit 11/9 qualifies as several films in one, all loosely related and all pointing to the terrible state in which a deeply polarized country now finds itself.

The strongest section of Fahrenheit 11/9 focuses on the water crisis in Moore's hometown, Flint, Mich. It’s not difficult to feel empathy for and outrage in behalf of Flint’s beleaguered residents who were victimized by their state government and by a Federal bureaucracy that didn’t respond adequately to their problems.

After some ill-advised tinkering created the issue, Rick Snyder, Michigan's Republican governor, refused to alleviate Flint's suffering. He could have switched the source of Flint's water from the polluted Flint River to its previous point of origin, Lake Huron. The result: Too many of Flint's children were subjected to unhealthy amounts of lead. Moore sees this as an assault on the town's mostly black population, a form of ethnic cleansing.

I won’t recount the details of everything that happened and still is happening in Flint, but this portion of the film is enough to justify its existence, and I'm grateful to Moore for putting Flint's story in one accessible place. Moore allows the residents of Flint to tell their stories, keeping his editorializing to a minimum ... well ... almost.

Moore repeats one of his familiar ploys; he visits the state capital in an attempt to make a citizen's arrest of Snyder. He also sprays the grounds of Michigan's governor's mansion with Flint water, hauled to the governor's home in a tanker truck.

In a lengthy film (a little longer than two hours), such prankish gestures seem even more superfluous than usual. Same goes for a montage about Trump's supposed prurient fascination with his daughter Ivanka.

Republicans may not like Moore’s film (certainly Trump fans won’t), but Democrats may be upset as well. Moore makes a point of noting that former President Obama, a politician he admires, visited Flint but didn’t bring the salvation that residents expected — and deserved.

Moore also takes aim at the "Repubicanization" (my word) of the Democratic party under a wily Clinton and an overly cautious Obama. He assigns a share of blame for our current situation to comprising Democrats who have failed to fight for the traditions of the party even though a majority of the country believes in a women's right to choose and affordable health care.

The strong section on Flint is surrounded by satellite stories that touch lots of hot-button issues -- not all convincingly. Students from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, who endured a terrible school shooting last February, launched a national campaign against guns: Moore clearly loves their activism and perhaps overestimates their impact.

A segment on the already well-covered West Virginia teachers strike deserved a film of its own.

Moore pushes the idea of an approaching American fascism when he compares Trump to Hitler, using Trump's voice over images of Hitler speaking at one of his rallies. The danger of authoritarianism in the US may be real and comparisons between the US today and Weimar Germany of the 1930s can be instructive, but using Trump's voice over a gesticulating Hitler struck me as a stunt.

Early on, I mentioned that Moore's interview with Timothy Snyder, the author of The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America and On Tyranny; Twenty lessons from the Twentieth Century, was too brief.

I say this because those familiar with Snyder's work know that he worries about the future of American democracy as much as Moore but is far more thorough and thought-provoking than a lot of what you'll see in Fahrenheit 11/9.
Moore might defend his approach by asserting that today's dangers are so obvious, so much on the surface, that there's no need to over-analyze. He'd have a point. Besides, he's calling his audience to action, asking viewers to channel their "mad-as-hell" attitudes into political activism; he wants more involvement and more voting.

I'd say that's basic civics dished out in a form that many will find entertaining and provocative; whether Moore's audience will do anything beyond seeing 11/9 and nodding their agreement remains to be seen.