Cover-Up review – atrocity exposer Seymour Hersh, journalist legend, gets a moment in the spotlight

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Hersh’s record on uncovering the big stories, from My Lai to Abu Ghraib, speaks for itself. This documentary watches him at work: dogged, nonconformist and combative Renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh was never played in a film by Robert Redford or Dustin Hoffman, like the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. But as this documentary portrait argues, he’s probably more important than either. Hersh has a longer record of breaking big stories, from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam to torture by US army personnel at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq – the latter a historic scoop underscored by the stomach-turning photos which Hersh brought to light. Hersh is asked if Abu Ghraib would have been the story it was without those pictures and replies: “No pictures, no story.” Well, maybe. But his other scoops had no pictures of this kind. One incidental thing Abu Ghraib showed was how ubiquitous digital photography became at the beginning of the century; how easy it was to take...
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How to Make Gravy review – a well-intentioned, mawkish misfire

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This soupy Christmas drama based on Paul Kelly’s song tips into corny sentimentalism – and comes dangerously close to suggesting that gravy is actually magic

How to Make Gravy is a rare example of a film that originated as a song – in this case, the beloved ballad by Paul Kelly. Maybe, given the entertainment industry’s addiction to recycling pre-existing IP, transforming popular tracks into movies will one day become a thing. Not that I’m looking forward to it: this soupy Christmas drama from first-time feature director Nick Waterman demonstrates how lyrics can become a series of reference points, with an obvious temptation to be very visual and literal – to give us that shot of a gravy boat being passed reverentially around the dinner table.

Waterman deploys the gravy early in the runtime, staging it as a moment of quasi-religious significance. This is not a subtle film – some scenes made my face react not like I’d consumed a delicious, nourishing sauce (infused with a dollop of tomato sauce for sweetness and that extra tang) but like I’d wolfed down a brick-sized block of artery-clogging cheese.

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