Leslie and Andrew Cockburn were interviewed on Brian Lamb’s terrific Sunday night show “Q&A” on Sunday, January 3, at 8 pm.  In the hour long discussion they talked about the background to the film, how and why they made it and many other fascinating details.  To watch the show or read the transcript, click here

The Women Film Critics Circle is honored to award AMERICAN CASINO as Best Documentary 2009: Above And Beyond.

The Women Film Critics Circle is an association of 47 women film critics from around the country and internationally, who are involved in print, radio, online and television media.

We came together in 2004 to form the first women critics organization in the United States, in the belief that women’s perspectives and voices in film criticism need to be recognized fully, while offering a fresh and differently experienced perspective.

“American Casino… has the power of a haymaker that somehow sneaks up on you. It’s a nightmare that starts like a normal daytime drive and ends in a vortex-like sinkhole,” writes Michael Srager  in the Baltimore Sun’s print edition “It’s a nightmare that starts like a normal daytime drive and ends in a vortex-like sinkhole.”

Watch Sun critic Michael Sragow’s amazing  video review

Fresh Air’s John Powers reviews American Casino:

“Following E.M. Forster’s old command — “Only connect” — this smart, touching documentary traces the connections between Wall Street’s high-flying practices and the countless citizens on Main Street who now face bankruptcy and eviction”

Read or Listen to the full review here.

Lincoln Star-Leger promotes Casino.  Read full review here.

The New Yorker’s David Denby, after calling American Casino “terrific” and “fascinating” in his review, circled back and gave the film a second positive review two weeks later, by way of comparison with another film.  Read his revisit

here

Daily Beast’s Lloyd Grove tips Casino!

“When it comes to documentaries about the Wall Street meltdown, don’t let all the hype for Michael Moore’s ‘Capitalism, A Love Story’ deter you from seeing a real gem of a movie, Leslie and Andrew Cockburn’s American Casino. The wife-and-husband team avoid vaudeville shtick in order to offer a fascinating, and occasionally heartrending, morality play of predatory greed in the crazy world of derivatives and collateralized debt obligations and its brutal impact on hardworking African-American home owners in Baltimore. Watching ‘American Casino,’ it’s hard to believe that the pinstriped gamblers have reverted to their reckless ways.”

Jonathan Kim writes,

… American Casino proves that understanding what caused the housing crisis and its effects on individuals, communities, and the economy isn’t nearly as difficult as we’ve been led to believe. And to prevent this from happening again, it’s vital that we understand how it happened and repudiate the failed ideology at its root.

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jonathan-kim/rethink-review-emamerican_b_292894.html

Fantastic New York Times Op Ed cites American Casino,

The Recession’s Racial Divide

by Barbara Ehrenreich and Dedrick Muhammed cites American Casino:

“…In a new documentary film about the subprime crisis, “American Casino,” solid black citizens — a high school social studies teacher, a psychotherapist, a minister — relate how they lost their homes when their monthly mortgage payments exploded. Watching the parts of the film set in Baltimore is a little like watching the TV series “The Wire,” except that the bad guys don’t live in the projects; they hover over computer screens on Wall Street…

“It’s not easy to get people to talk about their subprime experiences. There’s the humiliation of having been “played” by distant, mysterious forces. “I don’t feel very good about myself,” says the teacher in “American Casino.” “I kind of feel like a failure.”