A good doctor gets a pretty good documentary in Bernadette Wegenstein's THE GOOD BREAST

During the first few minutes of watching THE GOOD BREAST, the 2016 documentary directed and co-written by Bernadette Wegenstein, TrustMovies was convinced that any woman having to deal with breast cancer should only be lucky enough to have a doctor as good, as careful and as scientific as the one we first meet here: Dr. Lauren Schnaper. That feeling never fully dissipated but it did lessen somewhat as the documentary drew on.

This was due to the inordinate amount of time this 90-minute movie manages to spend on the subject of Saint Agatha, the patron saint of breast cancer. (More about all this later.)

Ms Wegenstein, shown at right, initially introduces us to Dr. Schnaper and her idea that the medical profession allows and, in fact, encourages many more mastectomies than are actually necessary, often by instilling such fear into the patient that full-out and immediate breast removal seems the only answer.

You will most likely have heard this before, but it bears repeating, especially when offered up in such a quiet, non-emotional, and backed-by-scientific-fact explanation as given by Schnaper. The film then wastes no time before introducing us to a quartet of women undergoing treatment for breast cancer.

These range from a very active-positive gal (shown above, right) who, by the time the film concludes, has turned into a mass of tears and tics, fears and needs, and who actually wants something quite different from the thing she appeared to most desire when the film began. It's sad in so many ways.

The saddest of these women is the one with the most faith in god -- who is so certain that "he" means her to live. She and her family are put through the proverbial mill, as that faith slowly weakens and finally vanishes. The four women provide a kind of balance, as well as a somewhat typical array of diagnoses and outcomes that can be expected here.

And yet, back and back and back again we go to that patron saint and all the many different artworks (one of which is shown above) that portray her and her awfully graphic and literally tortured experience at the hands of these "men of faith." At one point we even take a trip to Italy, below, with Schnaper and her nurse to visit and witness an entire festival devoted to Saint Agatha. Granted, the art exposes the kind of nasty, male-entitled horror to which the women of the time were subjected, so, yes, there's a feminist angle here.

But we finally spend so much time on this less-important byway that the sad saint keeps threatening to become the full-out subject here. And she's not. One wonders if this growing imbalance was more due to Dr. Schnaper or to Ms Wegenstein? Or both? Whichever, poor Saint Agatha finally does these docs  -- the film and the physician -- no favors whatsoever.

Otherwise, The Good Breast offers an interesting, empathetic look at four women facing a particularly difficult challenge -- one that goes close to what many women feel is the very heart of their femininity. The film does point out that not all women treat their breasts as something so sacrosanct. But plenty do, and the result can be as difficult as it is confounding. Just as it is for us men, when we're told our penis and/or scrotum, thanks to prostate or testicular cancer, will no longer be functioning sexually.

From Icarus Films Home Video, The Good Breast will be available on DVD this coming Tuesday, June 18 -- for purchase and rental (the latter also via Amazon or iTunes).

Vital, joyous and as important as life: Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos' BENDING THE ARC

What a thrill, a joy, an unexpected amazement it is to see a new documentary that addresses (other than global warming) one of the most important subjects in our world today -- the right to health care for all human beings -- and does this is a manner that first makes you sit up and take notice and soon has you glued to the screen in wonder, and then in tears -- of thanks -- for the good work the people you've met have done and are continuing to do. If you can sit dry-eyed through BENDING THE ARC, I shall be very surprised. Boy, do we need this movie now!

As directed by the team of Kief Davidson and Pedro Kos (shown above, with Kos on the right) and written by Cori Shepherd Stern, the documentary covers some 35 years, during which its protagonists -- we begin with just three of them; today there are many more -- who've formed a group called Partners in Health (PIH) slowly bring some decent health care to the general populace of Haiti and then go on to Peru, where they help solve the problem of Multi-Drug-Resistant Tuberculosis, eventually help bring relief from AIDS to developing countries, and finally move to post-genocide Rwanda, where we watch and marvel as a fine health care system is developed.

The three (then) young people who form this group are (shown above, from left to right) Jim Yong Kim, Ophelia Dahl and Paul Farmer. We see the steps along the way in each of the situations they encounter and so become aware of, not simply the problems -- plenty, of course -- but how each is tackled and (in some form) surmounted. Initially we may find ourselves thinking, "Oh, some more do-gooders," but soon the good that they are doing countermands most other concerns. It's real. And it counts.

When the movie becomes the most personal, showing us individuals suffering from TB and then AIDS, along with what happens to them, it also hits hardest and strongest. Also powerful and anger-provoking are the near-constant attempts by academics, politicians and the medical profession, as well as the powers that be, internationally (initially, The World Bank is one of these), to undermine the PIH accomplishments, rather than embracing them and helping foot the necessary bill.

The documentary is full of excitement, suspense and surprise, as well as peopled with memorable  characters whom we grow to care about and hugely appreciate, especially some of the patients (shown above and below) to whom PIH ministers and saves, or not, along the way.

Unlike the very lightweight and close-to-embarrassing doc that opened last week, Prosperity, Bending the Arc makes no claims that its protagonists can save the world. It simply shows us what can be accomplished by smart, caring people who keep trying. What happens to these three is interesting, of course, but in the case of Mr. Kim, it is rather amazing and thrilling -- bringing a much-needed change to one of the world's most powerful organizations.

The titular "Arc" here is that metaphoric "arc of justice," which philosophers of the kindly sort tend to see bending very slowly toward justice for all. While it is difficult, under current American (not to mention much of the rest of the world's) leadership, to even remotely believe in this possibility, Bending the Arc, against all odds, will convince you that this is indeed happening.

My one caveat with the movie is that nowhere does it mention the probable problems that crop up when dealing with dictatorial governments in places where your group needs to provide help. What special arrangement had to be made, for instance, and what was "skimmed off the top"  by government officials? Of course it would not prove helpful to further endeavors to even bring up this subject, I suppose. Just as this sort of thing becomes the price of "doing business" in a corrupt country, it is undoubtedly also the price of doing good. Still, one can't help but wonder how the negotiations worked.

From Abramorama and running 102 minutes, Bending the Arc -- a shoo-in, I would think, for an Oscar nomination -- opens this Friday, October 6, in New York City at the Village East Cinema,and then the following Friday, October 13, in Boston (Sommervile Theater) Los Angeles (Laemmle's Monica Film Center),and Washington DC (Landmark's West End Cinema). On Friday, October 20, it hits San Francisco (Landmark's Opera Plaza) and Berkeley (Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas). If you're interested in arranging a screening for your community, click here then scroll down.

Prepare to feel, and deeply, as Ken Loach and Paul Laverty's I, DANIEL BLAKE hits theaters

So real you can practically taste, smell and breathe in the anger that will rise from your stomach through your chest and into your throat as you experience I, DANIEL BLAKE, the new and (as usual) quiet provocation from director Ken Loach and screenwriter Paul Laverty, this is a movie that will break your heart without leaving your brain in any way undernourished.

In dealing with the story of one man trying his best to navigate the British health and unemployment systems, Loach (pictured at right) and Laverty (below, left) have contributed their own gift to this year's trilogy of citizens-against-the-system movies -- beginning with Mexico's alarming Monster With a Thousand Heads, continuing with the Chinese-Canadian Old Stone, and now this: the best of the lot so far. In his fine screenplay, Laverty places life and truth above melodrama and contrivance, while

Loach directs with his usual flair for the kind of in-the-moment/ dead-on-believable behavior that thrusts us headlong into things.
(There is one exception: Daniel's discovery of his lady friend Katie's new employment, which smacks of the sort of coincidence found regularly on Downton Abbey. Yet, so hooked are you likely to be at this point in the film's unfurling that the moment ought not be a deal-breaker.) Mr. Loach has long given us character-driven movies that are also filled with event. This is the case here, as well, and Daniel Blake is certainly among the great character "everymen" to grace the modern film canon.

Daniel (a so-real-it-hurts performance by Dave Johns, shown below, right and on poster top) is a kind, decent, even talented man just entering his senior years, who has been felled by a heart attack and cannot go back to work until his is deemed "better." But thanks to a stupid glitch in the bureaucracy, he is meanwhile being denied the benefits he needs to live on while he heals.

In a society where the individual counted for anything, this kind of glitch would be quickly taken care of. But not in Britain. Not today. So our hero is put back and forth through the proverbial mill until he and we are ready to crack. To their credit, Loach and Laverty make villains of the bureaucracy and the way it works rather than the bureaucrats themselves - a few of whom even rise to the occasion and actually do something helpful. But the way the system has been set up is designed to crush both the body and the spirit -- and goddamned if it doesn't do that job just splendidly.

At the unemployment office (or whatever the Brits call this sort of thing), Daniel meets Katie (a sad, spunky and commanding performance from Hayley Squires, above, right), the mother of two young kids, both of whom are adorable and one of whom clearly has a touch of maybe Aspergers. As Katie, too, is given the run-around, Daniel rises to her defense, and though they are both asked to leave, a bond has formed.

The movie explores this bond, while we watch Daniel try to do everything the system asks of him, to little avail. We meet his charming neighbors (who are themselves helpful), watch him as he takes a class in Preparing Your CV, pad along as he does the stupid and unnecessary job search (for which, even if hired, he is not allowed to accept),

And on it all goes. It would be ceaseless woe, not only for Daniel but for us viewers, were not the movie so full of life and humor and absolute importance. At any point along the way, all it would take would be one single person who wields even a modicum of power to have said, "Oh, something is wrong here." And then to simply right that wrong. But nobody does. And the one woman who actually tries to do something is then disciplined for her effort.

I, Daniel Blake is simultaneously and consistently heartbreaking and wonderful -- an unusual combination, to say the least. The film is certainly one of this year's best, and this holiday-time opening will be, for progressive-minded film-goers out there, the most wonderful kind of Christmas/Chanukah present imaginable.

From Sundance Selects/IFC Films and running 100 minutes, the movie opens today, Friday, December 23, in New York City at the IFC Center and the Lincoln Plaza Cinema, and in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Royal. Elsewhere. To be sure, in the weeks to come. I don't have cities and dates just yet, but you can periodically click here and then click on the bright green link WATCH NOW to lean if the film is playing anywhere near you.

The Autism Media Channel's WHO KILLED ALEX SPOURDALAKIS? raises some ugly questions

Having now seen a number of documentaries dealing with autism and its discontents, TrustMovies can vouch that the new one titled WHO KILLED ALEX SPOURDALAKIS? is one of the most disturbing of all. A horror story about the kind of medical care dished out by major hospitals and their doctors to patients afflicted with a disease like autism, the movie is less a mystery -- we know from the start who killed the boy in question: his mother (shown below) and his godmother -- than a history, both narrative and visual, of what led up to this murder.

The movie has made that point -- about ignorance and indifference in our medical establishment -- so quietly and effectively that it does not need its ram-the-point-down-our-throats finale. This is unfortunate because the movie will have by that time convinced most of its audience, so going over the top may well undo the good already accomplished. This aside, Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis? is a remarkable document about the lengths a loving mother and godmother will go to save their son (below is the photo of the two at the time of their arrest), and the stupidity of some -- not all -- of the doctors supposedly helping the boy.

Early on, after the onset of autism was diagnosed, Alex's mom placed him on a recommended diet that helped his symptoms enormously. (We've seen this same treatment shown in other documentaries, as well.) Why Alex was ever taken off that diet is not explained to a good enough degree, but once the symptoms began again, there would seem to be no excuse for not putting the boy back on the healthier regimen.

Alex's allergic reactions and inability to handle many of the drugs given him would underscore once again our over-reliance on drug use. In Alex's case, the film soon becomes the anti-prescription-drug movie of all time. Much of the science shown us here is fascinating, as is the degree of connection between autisim and intestinal damage.

The movie points a justified finger in the director of a certain Dr. Berman, chief of Loyola Hospital's pediatric gastroenterology -- who stupidly and heartlessly put psychiatry above the management of Alex's physical pain. When at last, we see a doctor who does the right thing -- and view the results of this -- it's a wonderful respite from the continuing hell-on-earth that Alex and his two moms have suffered.

Other than Alex's mom and godmother, there are other heroes in the movie, too: an autism advocate (above) who come to the defense of the threesome, and doctors (below) who actually know what they are doing and care enough to consequently do the right thing for the boy.

Unfortunately, by the time we reach the end of the story, Alex's mom has grown so weakened in mind and spirit that she appears to be unable to any longer make intelligent decisions. (The doctor she agrees to go with toward the end is clearly the wrong one.) But after seeing what the woman and her son have been through, I doubt you will believe that you could have done much better by the boy.

Who Killed Alex Spourdalakis? -- from disinformation, running only a bit over one hour, and packed with anger-making information and history -- is now available on DVD and VOD. Click here to learn how you can obtain the DVD. For VOD, consult your local cable provider.

The hottest doc? Ryan McGarry's CODE BLACK probes the ER workers at L.A.'s County Hospital

The year is about halfway along, but with the theatrical release of the new documentary CODE BLACK, which deals with the young doctors who help run the Emergency Room of the the Los Angeles County Hospital, it looks like we've got (unless there's some Academy rule or other that I'm unaware of) a sure contender for a Best Documentary nomination, and very likely the winning film. This important and well-made movie doesn't simply show us these doctors at work, both saving and losing lives (which would already be enough to rivet us), it gives us the best demonstration imaginable for the need for decent health care across our nation, particularly in the emergency rooms that serve those who can least afford to pay for the kind of most expensive/least effective heath care our country has for so long insisted on providing.

The movie and its movie-maker, Ryan McGarry (at right) -- himself one of these young doctors and also the director and co-writer of, as well as one of the cinematographers and "performers" in the film -- takes us into a place, the likes of which we may imagine we've seen (on a TV program such as ER) and shows it to us anew and from a perspective we have not, up to now, gotten anywhere near. The first thing you may notice is how incredibly crowded is this ER. I am not referring to the waiting room, which is also terribly crowded, but to the area the doctors call C Booth where much of the life-saving (and life-losing) takes place.

As one doctor explains, C Booth may "look like chaos" (and, boy, does it ever -- there seems barely room for anyone to even move), "but as a trained doctor, I can see that it is not." C Booth, we're also told is "where you learn."

We're immediately swept back and forth between emergencies and meeting our cast, the doctors who "work twice the hours for half the pay." Who are these people? "Emergency medicine," we're told, "calls a certain type of person." This turns out to be someone for whom the adrenaline rush is important. "Being a new doctor," someone else explains, "optimism overshadows realism. It has to."

But then we learn that, "Death connects everyone," and we're then shown exactly what this means: in the experience of losing a patient ("Do we drape her and clean her for the family?" one new doc asks), of having to tell loved ones what has happened (we hear the grief expressed, rather than see it, which is more decent and generous than most documentaries or television programs would allow) and then of having to live with the outcome of this failure.

While this film was being prepared and made, Los Angeles finally moved its County Hospital from the old quarters -- above, built in the early 1930s, via a bond issue that helped pay for it, and not, unfortunately "earthquake proof" -- to its spanking new headquarters (below), which, of course, is better. Sort of. The old building, it turns out, was so old that it had few of the modern conveniences such as computer record-keeping and the like, which is now demanded of the doctors and leads to the problem of constant documentation and a concurrent flood of paperwork.

We learn what the number codes 1 through 4 mean to the folk waiting to receive emergency care and how they can sometimes wait ten to fifteen hours for that care to materialize. "Code Black," it turns out, refers to the times when ER is so crowded that the doctors know in advance that they will never be able to see all the patients gathered before them.

At the new facility, besieged with paperwork, the doctors come up with a "fast track" ideas to better serve the patients. This has its pros and cons, and we see how difficult innovation can sometimes be, especially when the nursing staff is badly under-served. We also learn some of the backstories of our doctors, especially that of filmmaker McGarry, below, who knows first-hand what ER help can mean.

Code Black is consistently intelligent and thoughtful in its take on ER health care, and like the doctors we see here, it is also tight, organized and efficient. It is political about health care in the best way, and also as personal as it gets. It is difficult to imagine U.S. citizens of any stripe (except perhaps completely closed-minded Republicans) viewing this film and not understanding the importance of and need for decent health care. Toward the end of the movie, there is a terribly moving grace note, as the camera simply pans around the room -- no music, no sound -- and we see a whole range of people, young to old, quiet, ill and waiting for care.

The film also demonstrates that if we have folk like the graduating-class doctors we see here, then our country simply can't be as irreparably lost as it sometimes seems.  I was born and raised in Los Angeles -- a sprawling city I've never much liked -- but nothing I've so far encountered has made me as proud of the place as has this movie.

Code Black opens this Friday, June 20, here in New York at the IFC Center, and next Friday, June 27, in Los Angeles at The Landmark. (There will be Q&As with director and his cast over opening weekends in both cities.) In the weeks and months  to come, the film will play many cities across the country. To see all currently scheduled playdates, with cities and theaters listed, click here.

The photos above are from the film itself, except for 

that of McGarry (second from top), which is by 

Eugene Gologursky, courtesy of Getty Images, 

and the shots of the new and old L.A. County Hospital.