Television Articles: July 2008

The possibility of panicky flight hangs over Ido Haar's affecting documentary, 9 Star Hotel.

Airing as part of PBS' Wide Angle, The Burning Season examines the complex relationship among Indonesian farmers, global corporate entities, and earth's future.

In The Closer, Kyra Sedgwick's Brenda Johnson often walks a fine line between complex and irritating.

Heidi Fleiss: The Would-Be Madam of Crystal is not the documentary you might expect.

In the second season premiere of TNT's Saving Grace, Grace's pursuit of drama took forms that were both overt and effectively repressed.

The first episode of The Cleaner takes its self-appointed contextualizing very seriously.

Methodically and cleverly, The Last Conquistador follows the controversy surrounding El Paso's commmisioned statue of Don Juan de Oñate.

For his remarkable documentary, filmmaker Jezza Neumann spent three and half months posing as a tourist in order to obtain undercover footage of victims, traffickers, and buyers.

The start of HBO's Generation Kill lays out some essential points of focus: the Kuwaiti desert is hot, the firepower is awesome, and the kids in U.S. uniforms are exactly that: kids.

Flashpoint is not about the crisis per se, it's not about possible terrorism or even about a crazed individual. Instead, it's about aftermath.

Much like the corrido that opens it, The Ballad of Esequiel Hernández means to remember Esequiel and the circumstances of his murder.

Chuck Connelly's story, as recounted in The Art of Failure: Chuck Connelly Not for Sale, is at once fragmented, exasperating, and weirdly predictable.

Many stories are told in Election Day, Katy Chevigny's bracing, insightful documentary on what happened four years ago.