crime
THE NOTORIOUS MR BOUT
According to this new documentary from filmmakers Tony Gerber and Maxim Pozdorovkin it would seem that everybody has wildly exaggerated polarizing ideas about who Viktor Anatolyevich Bout really is. None more so than Mr Bout himself who considers himself simply as a devoted family man and a highly successful international entrepreneur, and the D.E.A. who claim that his…
HAPPY VALLEY
Although Amir Bar-Lev’s new documentary is about the sexual abuse that infamous Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky carried out on scores of young boys over a 15 year period, the focus is less on the crimes themselves but about the whole culture surrounding them and the devastating effects on that college town. Initially…
Captivated : The Trials of Pamela Smart
In 1990 in a small New England town Pamela Smart, an attractive blond sexpot teacher who was having an affair with one of her students, was accused of plotting her husband’s murder. This rather scandalous cause celebre was the first ever trial to be televised and this new HBO documentary from filmmaker Jeremiah Zagar focuses…
American Hustle
Its very vaguely based on a real incident from that time when the FBI enlisted the services of a con man from the Bronx to lead an undercover operation called Abscam that included the creation of a fictitious Arab sheikh named Abdul and resulted in the conviction of six congressman and a United States…