Welcome to Leith (Netflix)

Leith, North Dakota is the sort of American small town, with a population of 24, that seems to scream out for a documentary. So when white supremacist Craig Cobb moved into town and started buying up property, you can only imagine filmmakers Christopher K. Walker and Michael Beach Nichols running towards the story. Cobb is trying to move as many allies as he can into town in an attempt to legally control the city and create a safe zone for a community of white nationalists. The people of Leith want nothing to do with the cause and try anything they can to get the neo-Nazi group out. Welcome to Leith follows the town and Cobb through a series of town council meetings and angry stand-offs between neighbors as Leith tries to come to terms with its new residents and their agendas.

Halfway through the film, Walker and Nichols turn the tables and instead of seeing things through Leith’s eyes, we begin to see the story from the eyes of the white supremacists. The shift is jolting, but it also only helps to underline the problems lying under the surface of the film. As soon as the focus shifts, and we realize we aren’t going back to the viewpoint of the town residents, we haven’t gotten nearly deep enough to what is troubling the people of Leith. We see residents showing off their newly bought guns, and talking about moving their families out of town, but we don’t really understand what they are afraid of. We see members of Cobb’s community complaining about their treatment, but we don’t understand what is drawing them to their cause or what they are concerned about. The town’s only black resident is given a quick interview and then disappears. By the end, we haven’t heard the truth from anyone; both sides are merely spouting off what they want us to hear, and the film has no more depth than cable news talking heads. It seems almost afraid to ask anyone a difficult question. Welcome to Leith crafts a tense tale of the struggles going on in Leith, but the film merely stretches it out rather than digs underneath there to tell us something, anything about these opposing lifestyles and the beliefs that drive them.

Attacking the Devil: Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime (Netflix)

Attacking the Devil, David and Jaqui Morris’ account of the Thalidomide children in 1960s England, begins and ends with bookended title cards making it clear that the current management of the drug company Distillers are not to blame for the actions of the company during the events of this film. That seems perfectly reasonable for a film in which there are no grey areas: there are good guys and there are bad guys, neither of which have any shading, and so of course there is the good Distillers of today and the bad Distillers of yesterday. This isn’t to fault the film. Attacking the Devil knows what it wants to be and say: Thalidomide, a drug marketed by Distillers in the late 50s and early 60s to combat morning sickness in pregnant women, was a dangerous drug that caused children to be born with extreme disabilities and the company’s refusal to pay for the damages was unconscionable. The actions of crusading journalist Harold Evans, who could do no wrong in the filmmakers’ eyes, brought a large settlement to the families and changed the face of British journalism. Even the parents are black and white: the fathers who abandon their children are given the brush off, while father David Mason, who resists the early settlement offers and unpopularly fights for more, is put on equal footing with Evans.

It is interesting that the film’s subtitle gives equal billing to Harold Evans and the Last Nazi War Crime because by the time the film gets around to exposing Thalidomide’s association with Nazi Germany it slows down. This part of the story feels like an afterthought, especially because the way that the Morrises paint the battle for a settlement from Distillers like a thriller is so effective and suspenseful (especially to an ignorant American who knows nothing about this story). You almost feel like the entire section was added in unnecessarily in order to get the word Nazi into the title of the film and sell more tickets. It doesn’t need it. As a nail-biting exposé about one of the most unfairly forgotten travesties of the twentieth century, it is a must-see story all on its own.