Along with Richard Pryor, George Carlin was a groundbreaker in the comedy world. As Judd Apatow and Michael Bonfiglio’s documentary “George Carlin’s American Dream” shows, the comedian had a comic vision of Nostradamus-like proportions.

The film digs deep and gets to the soul of Carlin’s philosophies. The man could be called a comedic prophet, as his political and

(during all of this week, Screen Comment’s Eric Althoff gives readers his take on the choicest films from the 2020 crop of AFI Docs, the world’s premier documentary film festival which took place online this year due to the coronavirus). He was one of the most famous fixers of the last century, who rubbed elbows with everyone from Joseph McCarthy to then-real estate tycoon Donald Trump.  But Roy Cohn, the pugnacious New York attorney who took on

1986’s Chernobyl accident was the result of a flawed reactor design operated by inadequately-trained personnel. The disaster was the only accident in the history of commercial nuclear power in which radiation-related fatalities occurred. It’s estimated that the incident resulted in as many as 93,000 fatalities.

The HBO miniseries “Chernobyl” examines the domino

What's "Game of Thrones," you ask? This Shakesperean tragedy with plenty of parallels to be drawn with our century, chockfull of epic battles, sex and betrayal and set in a fantasy medieval-type atmosphere, depicts the epochal clashes between power-hungry monarchies. Each one wants to seize the iron throne, all this action taking place on a continent named Westeros. Bi-partisan? Mythological? Check and check. The internet is buzzing

“Marathon Boy” follows the unbelievable story of Budhia Singh, a boy born into the crushing poverty of an Indian slum, sold by his destitute mother, and rescued by a judo coach who runs an orphanage. The coach, Biranchi Das, soon discovers that then-three year-old Budhia has a prodigious talent for running. Jumping on what he sees as a huge opportunity both for himself and the children who depend on him, Das promotes Budhia to the Indian media as a boy wonder, an expression of the unquenchable Indian spirit. By the time he is four, Budhia has run twenty half-marathons and 48 full marathons.

Buoyed by Budhia’s inexhaustible willpower Das stages one hell of a publicity stunt: a 42-mile run, which could set a new world record.

Director Gemma Atwal does a masterful job, in this HBO production, of allowing the story to play out in front of her without prejudicing it.