Ed Rampell
Ed Rampell is an L.A.-based film historian and critic who also reviews culture, foreign affairs and current events.
Ed can be reached at edrampel@gte.net.
New film detailed amateurish plot led by a gang of mercenaries who couldn’t shoot straight
As the Trump regime deploys the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group—including a nuclear-powered attack submarine, P-8A Poseidon maritime surveillance aircraft, three U.S. Navy destroyers equipped with some of the most advanced air defense, ballistic missile defense, and...
Sovereign—distributed by the same company that brought us the 2023 Donald Trump/Roy Cohn biopic The Apprentice—is among 2025’s best theatrically released political features.
The hard-hitting movie dramatizes America’s right-wing terrorist threat, when a so-called “Sovereign Citizen” and his teenage son disastrously face off against the courts, law enforcement,...
From Tahiti to New Zealand to New Caledonia to Palau, the U.S. and France unleashed a reign of terror against the Nuclear-Free and Independent Pacific movement in 1985.
The Pacific Islands have often been depicted as idyllic in Western fiction, paintings and movies. But there is another side to “paradise,”...
According to its mission statement, “AFI FEST… showcase the best films from across the globe to captivated audiences in Los Angeles. With a diverse and innovative slate of programming, the film festival presents a robust lineup of fiction and nonfiction features and shorts… along with panels and conversations featuring...
Carter’s Canonization: Saint Jimmy
Once again Americans have been inundated by a tsunami of one-sided “news” coverage and an officially sanctioned mourning period and state funeral were exploited (at taxpayers’ expense) for political purposes, as we were subjected to a hagiographies of former President Jimmy Carter.
We endured hours of propagandistic...
According to its mission statement, “AFI FEST… showcase the best films from across the globe to captivated audiences in Los Angeles.
With a diverse and innovative slate of programming, the film festival presents a robust line-up of fiction and non-fiction features and shorts… along with panels and conversations featuring both...
The Film was one of the most pro-union movies in American history
In many ways, 1954’s Salt of the Earth is a singular, cinematic phenomenon, one of the most unique American movies ever made. At a time when star-driven Hollywood was cranking out widescreen biblical epics, technicolor musicals, sci-fi and...
New HBO Series Looks Back at Stop the Steal Campaign by Trump and His Acolytes
As Americans prepare to go to the polls, a new HBO documentary is a cautionary tale warning against Donald Trump’s treachery and dishonesty in his efforts to hold and seize power.
In the 1919 book Ten...
When I Confronted RFK Jr. About Trump
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s backing of the Republican presidential candidate and disloyalty to the Democrats, the party his family has been so closely identified with for decades, came on the 85th anniversary of one of history’s most shocking acts of backstabbing. But the...
Spy Spoof: The Spy Who Shrinked Me
As I entered Los Angeles’ Pacific Resident Theatre’s smaller “co-op space,” Herb Alpert’s jaunty, trumpet-y instrumental piece “Casino Royale” was playing on the P.A. system.
In fact, this clever choice was a perfect mood-setter that (literally) set the stage for Gregg Ostrin’s The Spy...
