Jonathan Kim is an independent film critic. He writes and produces movie reviews for ReThinkReviews.net, which focuses on the political aspects of current and past films. He is a regular guest on Cenk Uygur's Air America/XM radio show, the Young Turks, where Jonathan discusses movies and the political issues raised by them. Jonathan has also made appearances on MSNBC, Uprising Radio, Radar Online and Meet the Bloggers.

Jonathan was formerly a Co-Producer at Brave New Films. He co-produced and sometimes edited the Fox Attacks video series and blogged for the bravenewfilms.org and foxattacks.com websites under his nom de guerre, DJK. Jonathan was also an associate producer on BNF's latest documentary, Rethink Afghanistan. Before joining Brave New Films in May of 2007, Jonathan worked as a ranch hand on a small ranch in Santa Barbara wine country, where his duties included general maintenance, gardening, and tending the ranch's goats, zebras and chickens. During his three and a half years there, Jonathan also produced and directed a series of anti-recruitment ads and several documentaries with the Santa Ynez Chumash tribe. Prior to that, Jonathan attended the Vancouver Film School and worked as a copywriter and hand model for the Sharper Image. Jonathan also does stand-up comedy in Los Angeles.

email Jonathan at: ReThinkReviews@gmail.com

Blog Entries by Jonathan Kim

ReThink Review: A Charlie Brown Christmas -- the True Spirit of Christmas, Free of Charge

2 Comments | Posted December 22, 2009 | 05:04 AM (EST)


If you're like most Christmas-celebrating Americans, this week finds you frantically searching for last-minute gifts. Maybe you procrastinated, your schedule was thrown off by the big east coast blizzard, someone slipped your mind, or you were guilted into it when someone you had deemed un-giftworthy unexpectedly got you something. Whatever...

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ReThink Interview: Phillippe Diaz (part 2) -- The End of Poverty? and Changing the System

2 Comments | Posted December 15, 2009 | 07:24 PM (EST)


A few weeks ago, a friend of mine from Canada was in town on business and stayed with me for the weekend. As we looked through a Los Angeles guidebook, he told me he wanted to make sure we stopped at a Target. Apparently there are no Targets in Canada,...

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Sarah Palin vs. Miss Teen South Carolina: Presidential Qualifications Edition

3 Comments | Posted December 9, 2009 | 07:16 AM (EST)


Watching Sarah Palin in a recent interview attempting to explain to Bill O'Reilly why she possesses the intelligence to be president, I got an eerie sense of deja vu. I'd heard this kind of answer mangling before. So I went on YouTube, found some video, and put this together.

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ReThink Review: Brothers -- the War Drama Curse Continues

7 Comments | Posted December 8, 2009 | 08:38 PM (EST)


So far, Hollywood's attempts at making movies about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have been failures, usually critically but always financially.

There are a lot of potential reasons for this. While coverage of the wars has ebbed and flowed, it has never disappeared, so why would you pay...

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ReThink Review: The Road -- It's Post-Apocariffic!

Posted December 3, 2009 | 09:33 PM (EST)


If you survive the apocalypse -- whether it be nuclear, environmental, pestilent or zombie -- don't think you're out of the woods just yet. As we see in the new film the Road, directed by John Hillcoat and based on the Pulitzer prize-winning book by Cormac McCarthy, making it through...

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ReThink Interview: Philippe Diaz (part 1) -- The End of Poverty? and How It Started

Posted November 23, 2009 | 07:01 AM (EST)


What causes global poverty? Why do the countries of the northern hemisphere enjoy so much wealth while over a billion people in the southern hemisphere live in slums where one person (usually a child under 5) dies of starvation every 3.6 seconds? Many politicians and pundits would say that...

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ReThink Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats -- the First Earth Battalion Wants You!

4 Comments | Posted November 17, 2009 | 05:45 PM (EST)


The Men Who Stare at Goats is dividing viewers and critics. Some thought it was funny and some didn't -- that's just a matter of taste. But it seems the main point of contention is the difference between what people thought the movie would be -- a dark, sometimes surreal...

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ReThink Review: The Yes Men Fix the World -- Speaking Truth by Faking Power

1 Comments | Posted November 11, 2009 | 05:51 PM (EST)


Armed only with cheap suits, fake websites, a few props and nuts the size of Survivaballs, the Yes Men have become infamous for infiltrating corporate events pretending to be spokesmen for government agencies or some of the world's most powerful companies. Once inside, they either announce that the group they're...

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ReThink Review: Disney's A Christmas Carol (3D) -- Don't Get Scrooged

31 Comments | Posted November 6, 2009 | 04:13 PM (EST)


If you've seen any of the ads (including posters/print) for Disney's A Christmas Carol (3D), you (and kids) would think that the film is a funny, slapsticky, action-filled Jim Carrey romp that makes dazzling use of the advances in performance-capture 3D/CG technology. And you would be wrong. Very, very wrong....

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ReThink Review: Outrage -- One Reason Why the Bird/Shepard Hate Crimes Act Took So Long

4 Comments | Posted November 3, 2009 | 03:48 PM (EST)


How do you get republicans, who take such pride in their talent for "supporting the troops" and "defending America", to vote against a defense bill in the midst of two wars? Make it a defense bill that defends gay people!

That's right -- 35 republican senators voted against the...

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ReThink Interview: Josh Harris -- Nostradamus of the Net Tells Your Online Future

Posted October 28, 2009 | 06:25 PM (EST)


With the internet celebrating its 40th anniversary and increasingly making its way into our lives through sites like Facebook and Twitter, the timing is right for Ondi Timoner's excellent new documentary We Live in Public, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance for best doc of 2009. That...

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ReThink Review: Amelia -- Yup, It's a Biopic

6 Comments | Posted October 24, 2009 | 03:38 PM (EST)


The biopic pattern/trap in films is a hard one to avoid. Follow the typical biopic structure seen in Ray and Walk the Line (formative childhood incident, early struggle, meteoric rise, alcohol-/drug-/fame-/infidelity-induced fall, redemption) and you're accused of being formulaic. Attempt to reveal little-known, potentially darker aspects of a luminary's life...

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ReThink Review: Where the Wild Things Are -- the Wild Within

4 Comments | Posted October 21, 2009 | 11:09 AM (EST)


It's been a while since a movie generated as much of a rift among critics as Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are, perhaps best illustrated by the glowing review by the New York Times' Manohla Dargis (who said the film "startles and charms and delights") while...

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ReThink Interview: Daniel Ellsberg -- the Most Dangerous Man in America Speaks, Part Two

2 Comments | Posted October 14, 2009 | 05:10 PM (EST)


Here is the second part of my interview with Daniel Ellsberg, the true American hero who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971, which later led to Nixon's resignation and the end of the Vietnam War several months after that. Ellsberg is the subject of a new documentary, The Most...

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The Nobel Prize Wasn't for Obama -- It Was for the American People. Do We Deserve It?

5 Comments | Posted October 13, 2009 | 06:30 PM (EST)


On November 4, 2008, the US did something vital and magnificent in front of the entire world. We rescued the most powerful nation in world history from a future defined by warmongering, ignorance, cruelty, homophobia, Christian fundamentalism, unfettered greed, environmental destruction, and a disregard for the rule of law. Yes,...

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ReThink Interview with Daniel Ellsberg: The Most Dangerous Man in America Speaks (Part One)

5 Comments | Posted October 7, 2009 | 06:20 PM (EST)


Like many people born after the Vietnam War, I had never heard of Daniel Ellsberg. That's not a justification or an excuse, just a statement of fact.

After asking a PR firm to send me films I might be interested in for ReThink Reviews, an advanced copy of the documentary...

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ReThink Review: Capitalism: A Love Story -- A Must-See Subversion

6 Comments | Posted September 28, 2009 | 07:06 AM (EST)


Michael Moore's new documentary, Capitalism: A Love Story, opened this weekend with a staggering $240,000 box office in just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, giving it the highest per-screen average of any film this year. As the recession rolls on powered by increasing unemployment, and...

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ReThink Review: American Casino -- Gambling on Timebomb Loans

1 Comments | Posted September 20, 2009 | 10:12 PM (EST)


I'll admit that I haven't understood the housing crisis as well as I could have. Maybe that's because the media and politicians kept talking about how crazily complex the "financial instruments" (or whatever you call them) were that caused the housing meltdown which continues to reverberate across the world economy....

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ReThinking Norma Rae: A Union Icon Falls Fighting the Healthcare Industry

3 Comments | Posted September 16, 2009 | 02:01 PM (EST)


Crystal Lee Sutton, whose struggle to unionize a North Carolina textile mill became the inspiration for the 1979 film Norma Rae, died last Friday at the age of 68 after a long battle with brain cancer. Sally Field won the Oscar for best actress for her performance portraying a...

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ReThinking The Battle of Algiers: A Movie the Pentagon, the Black Panthers and the IRA Can Agree On

1 Comments | Posted September 10, 2009 | 09:56 PM (EST)


What do the Pentagon, the Black Panthers, and the Irish Republican Army have in common? All three studied Gillo Pontecorvo's classic 1966 film The Battle of Algiers to learn how to fight -- or wage -- an insurgency. Watch my ReThink Review below:

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