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Review: Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold
Reviews
Sisters In Law
Pleasant doc captures progressivism in a Cameroon court
By
PETER KEOUGH
|
May 3, 2006
SISTERS IN LAW
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3.0
Stars
Genocide, famine, injustice — that’s what we’ve come to expect from documentaries about Africa. Not so with this skilled, moving, and funny look at two woman judges pushing a progressive agenda in a Cameroon courthouse. Those annoyed by red tape and stirred by Judge Judy will appreciate Vera Ngassa and Beatrice Ntuba, who shoot down the patriarchal and other nonsense of those brought before them with common sense and good humor. The cases, presented in an intimate cinéma-vérité, include one little girl beaten by an aunt, another molested by a neighbor, and a battered wife bringing charges against her abusive husband. This last proved the first successful prosecution of a domestic-violence case in Cameroon in 17 years. Nonetheless, I suspect that these crusaders still have a lot of work cut out for them. But after director Kim Longinotto’s bleaker films on women’s rights,
The Day I Will Never Forget
and
Divorce Iranian Style
, I can’t begrudge her a little optimism.
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ARTICLES BY PETER KEOUGH
REVIEW: WHERE DO WE GO NOW?
| May 22, 2012
Lebanese director Nadine Labaki's whimsical film about internecine slaughter has a tone problem from the very start: a group of widows engage in a goofy line dance while the voiceover narrator bewails the death toll of religious warfare.
REVIEW: MEN IN BLACK 3
| May 24, 2012
Griffin (Michael Stuhlbarg), a fifth dimensional alien, can see the infinite possibilities each moment possesses and the infinite contingencies that caused it to happen.
INTERVIEW: RICHARD LINKLATER MESSES WITH TEXAS IN BERNIE
| May 16, 2012
No matter how far he strays, Richard Linklater's heart remains in Texas.
REVIEW: THE DICTATOR
| May 16, 2012
Though his PR campaign might suggest otherwise, Sacha Baron Cohen has actually made (with director Larry Charles) a sweet movie, not unlike Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator , if less sentimental.
REVIEW: THE HUNTER
| May 17, 2012
Apparently extinct since the 1930s, the Tasmanian Tiger resembled an uncanny assortment of mismatched parts from other animals. Daniel Nettheim's film is equally weird and motley.
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PETER KEOUGH
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