Citizen K (2020) - Movie Review

Alex Gibney is one of the strongest documentarians working today. He’s basically the embodiment of the more investigative, journalistic side of the art form, diving head-long into incredibly intricate and invariably depressing subjects, managing to unearth gold more times than not. We last caught up with him with the 2015 Scientology documentary Going Clear, a film so effective that I still can’t listen to Bohemian Rhapsody without feeling slightly ill. And with his latest, he’s getting into a topic that might be even dicier than going through David Miscavige’s dirty laundry: Putin’s Russia.

Red Sparrow (2018) - Movie Review

The plot: After an injury cuts her career as a ballerina short, Dominika (Jennifer Lawrence) is left with a terrible choice: Submit to her circumstances or work for the Russian government as a Sparrow.

As she learns the ways of the Sparrow, using seduction and psychology to intercept targets, she becomes entangled with CIA agent Nate Nash (Joel Edgerton) after accepting an assignment to find a Russian mole that Nate works with. Between the government forcing her hand, her fellow agents showing signs of distrust and the actual warmth shown by Nate, it seems Dominika will have to think fast if she wants to get out of this situation alive.