Social realism points the camera at ordinary life and refuses to look away. This tag collects reviews and essays on socially realist film and fiction: class, work, and lives rendered without glamor or rescue.
2000sPrecious (2009) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A sixteen-year-old in Harlem in 1987 is transferred to an alternative school and learns to read. Gabourey Sidibe had never acted and Mo'Nique won Supporting Actress for a performance…
1960sIn Cold Blood (1967) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Richard Brooks shot Capote's book in the actual house where the murders happened, cast two unknowns for their resemblance to the killers, and used seven of the…
2000sDistrict 9 (2009) rates 9 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A first-time director shot an alien occupation film in a real Soweto township for thirty million dollars, cast his friend who had never acted, and got a Best…
FictionOn the most beautiful morning he can remember, a young fisherman sees three great vessels with white wings that were not there the night before, and little boats putting out from them toward his shore. He watches the strangers come…
2010sMichael O'Shea's grounded debut uses vampirism as a lens for trauma and isolation. Is Milo a vampire? The film never says, and the ambiguity is the point.
1960sGeorge Romero's 1968 zombie template. The genre's foundational document.
2010sJordan Peele's 2017 directorial debut. Daniel Kaluuya at his white girlfriend's parents' house.
1940sMeet John Doe is Frank Capra's 1941 American political drama about a newspaper columnist who invents a fictional everyman who threatens to commit suicide on Christmas Eve in protest against social injustice, and who must then find a real person…
2000sSatoshi Kon directs the story of three homeless Tokyo residents who find an abandoned baby on Christmas Eve and search for the parents. Tokyo Godfathers is Satoshi Kon's 2003 Japanese animated film depicting three homeless Tokyo residents, a middle-aged alcoholic…
1980sA drifter discovers sunglasses that reveal the wealthy elite are alien creatures controlling humanity through subliminal messaging. They Live is John Carpenter's 1988 American science-fiction horror film depicting a drifter who discovers sunglasses that reveal the wealthy elite are alien…
1980sMichael Moore's 1989 directorial debut. GM CEO Roger Smith and Flint Michigan plant closures.
2010sAging death squad leaders reenact their killings as movie scenes. The Act of Killing is Joshua Oppenheimer's 2012 Danish-British-Norwegian documentary depicting former Indonesian death squad leaders who participated in the 1965-66 anti-communist purges that killed approximately five hundred thousand to…
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