On Wednesday, Third Way released the top 10 films of 2017 by three of its reviewers, including me. With each film we chose, we included a brief synopsis and why we chose it for that position. Today, I get to expand on my choice of what I felt was the best film of 2017. I chose it as my no. 1 film of 2017 because it is a must-see documentary for our time. I Am Not Your Negro is a documentary by Raoul Peck that focuses mainly on James Baldwin, the African American writer known particularly for his books Go Tell […]

The right to live By Rachelle Lyndaker Schlabach “We are human beings. We need the right to live,” a Syrian Palestinian family told me when I visited Lebanon several years ago. The family was receiving a food voucher from Mennonite Central Committee (MCC) that helped them buy basic items like rice, oil and bread. Unable to work legally in Lebanon, the family depended on a small stipend from the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to help pay their rent. But that stipend had been reduced recently due to lack of funds. Now UNRWA faces yet more funding cuts. […]

Vic’s Top Ten Films of 2017 Counting down, in a year of great films made by and about women: 10. Their Finest – In a year when, for the first time, my top-ten list includes two films written and directed by women, as well as eight films with a female protagonist, it’s appropriate to begin with a film about the role of women in filmmaking (and in WWII Britain generally). Written by Gaby Chiappe and directed by Lone Scherfig, Their Finest stars Gemma Arterton as a screenwriter for a 1940 propaganda film about the retreat from Dunkirk. It’s much more […]

One of the key challenges facing a planet on which human life is becoming increasingly unsustainable is overpopulation. But what if you could find a way to downsize not just our companies or personal living spaces but people themselves—to 0.0346 percent of their current size? Not only would such a miniature population require only a tiny fraction of the Earth’s resources (compared to our normal-sized population), but a thousand people would produce only one small bag of waste in a year. It’s an absurd idea, of course, but that’s the premise of Downsizing, the latest film from writer/director Alexander Payne. I […]

A New Year’s resolution for diplomacy By Charissa Zehr The relationship between the U.S. and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, or North Korea) proved ever more volatile in 2017, with much public and political anxiety as rash decisions and name-calling of leaders came from both sides. There was renewed focus on the meaning of nuclear deterrence and authorization to use military force, both in Congress and the administration. In August, President Trump issued an executive order outlining travel restrictions for U.S. citizens visiting North Korea. Concerned this would hamper our humanitarian efforts, Mennonite Central Committee U.S. (MCC) wrote a […]

The cowboy western is the quintessential American movie form. These films can function as a mythic telling of American history, how to solve problems, and what the nature of evil is. I paid attention when Netflix released a new western miniseries, to see if they disrupted this myth in the same way that they and several of the premium cable networks have disrupted the delivery of entertainment. These binge-inducing shows often have the aesthetic properties of cinema while enjoying the more serial nature of television. Godless breaks less ground then I would hope, since in the end violence is presented […]