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The Bleeding Edge (Netflix)

Kirby Dick has made a career in recent years for tackling some difficult topics in a way that makes the audience angry (and has even gotten results). In his newest film, The Bleeding Edge, he tackles the medical device industry and the inherent risks in it that are being hidden. By focusing on a few specific types of devices — a joint replacement and two forms of permanent birth control — Dick is able to dig deep into how an industry has gotten tens of thousands of people to use a device that the companies knowย will hurt.

Dick is one of our smartest mainstream documentarians, and he knows that the secret to a political film lies in making it personal. So before he gets to painting the picture of the corruption of the medical implant industry, or the ineptitude of the FDA, or even the horror stories of what these implants do to people, he takes the time to hear their stories, how they met their spouses, and who they are as humans. These are more than victims; they are well-rounded characters in a sprawling narrative. As we bear witness to the debilitating pain, the ER visits, the family strife, and the turmoil in their lives, we care and are hit hard. When we get to video proof that companies and the FDA knew of risks and ignored them with a quick joke, we know that those risks look and sound like and it hits hard.

CLASSIC: 4 Little Girls (Amazon Prime)

If you are preparing for (or have just seen) BlacKkKlansman, it is worth going back to another film Spike Lee made about the KKK in the 1960s and a community struggling in the face of violence. 4 Little Girls, which is one of only two Oscar nominations Lee has ever received and is now in the National Film Registry, tells the story of the Birmingham bombing of a black church in 1963 that killed four young girls and woke up a lot of America to the dangers of white supremacy in the South. It remains today a stark film to watch, as timely now as it was then (although a quick appearance by Bill Cosby as a talking head plays a little jarringly in 2018). 4 Little Girls is more than just a rehashing of a horrid event. The bombing itself isnโ€™t what Lee is most interested in telling us about. Instead, it is a film about a community that is rocked by tragedy, about what that tragedy does to families, and about how evil is able to hide in plain sight in America, both 50 years ago and today.

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