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.
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...
“Biden Biden, Whattaya Say? How Many Kids You Kill Today?”
This was one of the militant chants of hundreds of students on May 1 at UCLA. I went to the university after covering the May Day rally in Hollywood, arriving around 4:00 p.m., and this is what I witnessed at the...
Sebastian Junger and Charlie Sadoff’s gripping new documentary poses a bone-chilling prospect: Is America poised to descend into a second civil war? And, if so, will U.S. military veterans form a sort of Praetorian Guard for legions of assorted right-wing and gun-rights zealots, MAGA denizens, white nationalists, paramilitaries, neo-Nazis,...
Just as the Israeli settler state is engaged in fierce warfare with Palestine’s Native people, director/co-writer Felipe Gálvez’s has produced a timely film called The Settlers, which offers an unsettling look at the colonization of Tierra del Fuego in Chile circa 1900.
The film features a British soldier Alexander MacLennan...
New Doc Curiously Commemorates the Greatest Whodunit in American History
This November 22 marks a grim milestone: The 60th anniversary of the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in Dallas.
JFK’s liquidation has left an indelible scar on the psyche of America, one that has arguably never healed.
Compounding the loss of...
Was Lee Harvey Oswald a “Lone Nut”? “Lone Gunman”? “Hitman”? “Conspirator”? Or, As He Claimed, “A Patsy”?
To try to get the answers to the above questions about the man accused of shooting President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, I attended a reading at Theatre 40 in Beverly Hills of Dennis Richard’s...
