Isaac Jackson
As seen in:
Yahoo Singapore,
AllAfrica,
Liberian Observer,
HometownSource,
Varsity,
The Indiependent
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Articles by Isaac Jackson
Liberia: Echoes of the Past - The Peril in Demonizing Political Opponents
When critics are likened to dogs or cockroaches, history reminds us of the dangerous consequences that can follow. Muammar Gaddafi once described his critics as "cockroaches" and "rats," and many were subsequently killed in large numbers. Similarly, Hutu leaders dehumanized Tutsis as "cockroaches" to justify their slaughter during the Rwandan Genocide.
The Smartest New Show On Television : The Indiependent
Rhea Seehorn in 'Pluribus' © Apple TV+ ★★★★☆ If you spend any time at all in the new year catching up with TV shows you might have missed from the tail-end of 2025, you’d do well to put Pluribus right at the top of your priority list. This is the excellent new show from writer-director, Vince Gilligan, his first in almost two decades to be set outside the Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe, for which he has become a televisual household name.
TV Review: ‘Stranger Things' Season Five: A Bombastic, If Uneven Culmination : The Indiependent
Stranger Things © Netflix ★★★☆☆ Congratulations everyone, we made it! Stranger Things, the Duffer Brothers’ nostalgic tribute to all things 80s and undoubtedly one of the greatest success stories of the streaming era, has at last wound things up with its long-awaited fifth and final season.
‘Jay Kelly’ Review: Trite Clooney Star Vehicle Struggles To Get Into Gear
Jay Kelly (2025) © Netflix Having taken a couple of years’ sabbatical to join his wife Greta Gerwig in penning the screenplay for her box-office juggernaut Barbie, Noah Baumbach is back on somewhat more familiar terrain with this featherweight tale of a fading movie star reflecting on his life and career whilst sojourning in Europe.
‘Homebound’ Review: Hindi Drama Beams With Sincerity
Homebound (2025) © Dharma Productions Almost six years on from the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, it feels like we’re only just starting to see the crisis being depicted on our screens as context rather than text.
‘Alpha’ Review: Disjointed Body Horror Fails To Get Under The Skin : The Indiependent
Alpha (2025) © Mandarin & Compagnie A mere three feature films into her directorial career, and it already feels pretty safe to consider Julia Ducournau the uncontested doyenne of contemporary body horror—the closest thing we have to a 21st century David Cronenberg (still prolific, if somewhat past his prime). What the films of these two directors dish out in viscera, they also share in spirit: for every body graphically torn to pieces, there is invariably another to be caressed or embraced.
‘The Man in My Basement’ Review: A Belaboured Two-Hander
From Sexy Beast (2000) to mother! (2017), there’s an argument to be made that some of the most genuinely disquieting ‘home invasion’ movies of the last 25 years have been those where undesirable house-callers, far from having to break down the front door, have instead been welcomed in with (albeit tentatively) open arms.
A trip to the Eagle with Mark Kermode
“The Exorcist was designed to play in cinemas – that’s absolutely its natural home”. So says former chief film critic for The Observer (and well-established Exorcist super-fan) Mark Kermode, as we chat over a glass of wine at the Eagle on a stormy November evening.
What to watch this week
Dream Scenario (in cinemas) – 4 STARS A Being John Malkovich for the age of TikTok, this dark comedy stars Nicolas Cage as a hapless university professor who suddenly becomes an overnight sensation when millions of strangers start seeing him in their dreams. It’s difficult to tell whether this eventually ends up completely exhausting its concept or just isn’t quite brave enough to take it to its boldest conclusion.
Sustaining Singapore's flourishing economy
Sustaining Singapore's flourishing economy By Isaac Jackson web posted November 20, 2023 When my parents visited Singapore, they were amazed to hear that the airport occupied 25% of Singapore's total land. The country is approximately 275 square miles and smaller than the state of Rhode Island. Despite their relatively small size, Singapore's thriving economy continues to maximize their limited space. How did they do this and how will they continue grow in the future?
In conversation with Asif Kapadia
“When I made Senna I had no idea I’d make another doc”, Asif Kapadia tells me, a matter of minutes into our conversation. It’s a surprising admission to hear from a man who, now over a decade after the release of that film, can safely be considered the most notable British documentary filmmaker of his generation.
What to watch this week
Sex Education (Netflix) 3.5 STARS Four seasons in, I can’t help but feel that all this build-up has ultimately resulted in an anti-climax. As Otis and co. arrive at their new school they are met with a hoard of vibrant new characters, each with their own nuanced identities and challenges. They undoubtedly enhance the scope of representation which the show has pioneered since its first season, but the sheer amount of new storylines leads to a season which is seriously overstuffed and underdeveloped.
What’s On?
Meg 2: The Trench (dir. Ben Wheatley) 2.5 STARS There are good films, and there are bad films – Meg 2: The Trench is somehow neither, and yet also somehow both. The script is one of the worst I’ve ever come across, and the acting resembles parody, but I just couldn’t stop laughing.
Making memories with Past Lives
Celine Song’s debut uncovers a melancholic beauty in the road not taken “If you leave something behind, you gain something too”. So muses a mother at the beginning of Past Lives, this gently affecting inaugural feature from writer-director Celine Song. Meanwhile, the camera turns to her young daughter, Na Young, and her best friend Hae Sung playing together, clambering over two large sculptures of human faces and laughing gleefully as they peer at each other through gaps in the stonework.
Oppenheimer is cinema to shake the soul
“Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to man. For this he was chained to a rock and tortured for eternity”. In the very first moments of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, these words fade slowly onto the screen, against a searing backdrop of gargantuan flames and the seat-shaking echoes of a nuclear explosion. The Promethean story is certainly a neat cultural shorthand for the darker side of human ingenuity embodied in the figure of J.
Christopher Nolan - ranked!
11) Tenet It was meant to heroically swoop in to save UK cinemas from the economic ravages of the pandemic – but perhaps a more realistic legacy for Tenet is to be remembered as Nolan’s most incoherent film. I’ve no qualms also calling it his worst – cool concept aside (reverse entropy! kind of like time travel but a lot more confusing!), it’s mostly a pretty opaque slog. Early on, another character urges our protagonist; ‘Don’t try to understand it, just feel it’.
Looking to the stars with Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City
Why are we all so mad about Wes? I can’t be the only one who finds it a little baffling that a director whose latest work has only become less accessible for mainstream audiences, has also recently become a kind of digital household name.
Vulture’s top ten films of the year, so far
10 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. Adapted from Judy Blume’s classic tween novel from the 70s, Kelly Fremon Craig’s long-awaited follow-up to The Edge of Seventeen (2016) is a heartfelt, poignant tale of the highs and lows of early adolescence. Abby Ryder Fortson gives a masterful performance as Margaret, a precocious 11-year-old caught between two cities, two religions and, above all, two senses of herself; the person she is and the person she wants to become.
Gazing With Open Eyes at Succession
“Nobody is ever missing”. So ends John Berryman’s Dream Song 29, an elegiac poem from over 50 years ago that has found new contemporary life with Jesse Armstrong’s brilliant Succession, its lyrics forming the titles of each season finale episode. But, of course, something is very much missing from our lives now – after four celebrated series, the best show on television about the worst people on television has finally come to an end.
Vulture’s May Week Watchlist
Richard Linklater’s Before Sunrise (1995) is the perfect antidote to May Week madness. This tender and understated rendering of young-love-found-abroad is a filmic deep breath sure to slow you down, all while fuelling you up with enough wistful yearning for a whole summer of maladaptive daydreaming (though do bear in mind it’s unlikely every stranger you encounter on holiday will be as charming as Ethan Hawke or Julie Delpy…).
Beware of Beau Is Afraid
Barely ninety minutes into the colossal three-hour run time of Beau Is Afraid, we’re treated to the sight of a man, clad like a child in oversized silk pyjamas, having his head repeatedly shoved against a wall, at the hands of a woman drenched from head to toe in blue paint. It’s an absurd image, one hardly out of character for an obstinately absurd film – and also oddly fitting.
One Fine Morning: another humanist triumph from Mia Hansen-Løve
Whenever I think back upon the past year in cinema, my mind returns to the image of a young woman bursting onto a half-empty dance floor, singing along, as if her life depended on it, to that quintessential anthem of the heartbroken young lover, The Winner Takes It All. It sounds unremarkable – but, in Bergman Island, it becomes the unlikely backdrop for a deeply moving moment of personal epiphany.
Revitalising the British romcom with Rye Lane
As audiences, we’re well attuned to the trappings of formulae when it comes to the romcom, not least the oh-so-familiar staple of the ‘meet cute’.
Damien Chazelle’s uproarious ode to Golden Age Hollywood
It’s an adage as old as storytelling itself that you must capture the attention of your audience within minutes if you want them to carry on listening. “Call me Ishamel”; “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”; “Rosebud”; there’s nothing with quite as much power to draw us in as a caustic opening line. I may not remember the exact first words of Babylon, but let’s address the elephant in the room.
A character study of cosmic proportions in Todd Field’s TÁR
Tár starts by — as it intends to continue with — offering its audience a challenge. My screening was met with confused murmurs, laughter and even grunts of annoyance at the prolonged crawl of opening credits, acknowledging first those usually relegated to the very end of the end credits, the catering staff, production units and assistant editors. Some might call it pretentious, but it strikes me as a thematically trenchant act of subterfuge from writer-director Todd Field.
Forget the cabinet, Sight and Sound’s latest poll is the most radical reshuffle of 2022
As each calendar year draws to a close, it’s hardly unusual to find various lists across the internet claiming to rank the ‘best films of the year’. They’re so commonplace you’d be forgiven for feeling a little fed up. But 2022 was always going to be different, with these typical lists destined to take a cultural backseat to a bigger beast.
Liberia: 'How the Mighty Have Fallen, and the Weapons of War Perished!'
Liberia: 'How the Mighty Have Fallen, and the Weapons of War Perished!' opinion By Isaac W. Jackson, Jr. (2 Samuel 1:27) Like many Christians, I believe that the Holy Bible conveys objective and fundamental truths. And so, this passage from the Holy Bible came to mind as I saw a handful of Unity Party (UP) leaders and partisans parade in "protest".
Liberia: History Beckons Boakai to Make the Ultimate Sacrifice
By Isaac W. Jackson, Jr. The advocacy to pull out of the CPP because an 80-year-old man with a pacemaker is unlikely to head the CPP not only amputates the need for genuine change in Liberia but invokes serious democratic concerns. Can we not agree to disagree in the CPP? How can this bunch of political zealots proudly say with a clear conscience that they represent the aspirations of the Liberian people while dallying into this form of self-interest-driven maneuvers?
Memo to Cllr. Charles Walker Brumskine
The late Cllr. Charles Walker Brumskine, former Liberty Party standard bearer and former Senate Pro Tempore By Isaac W. Jackson, Jr. As twin starting points: Today is your birthday; you departed this life on 20 November 2019. Reflecting upon your courageous fight for a corruption-free Liberia under the rule of Law, it is of deep concern to me how your venerated legacy is being exploited and poorly treated by some of our friends.
Liberia: The Need to De-Emotionalize Criminal Justice
opinion By Isaac W. Jackson, Jr. The recent demonstrations against the intensity of rape cases in Liberia are commendable, in that, they shed light on one of society's disgusting crimes. This outpouring of emotion encourages Liberians to collectivize their efforts in tackling rape. And I think it would be a disservice to the national discourse if different perspectives are not brought to bear on the conversation regarding the approach to tackling sexual and gender-based violence, especially RAPE.
Liberia: Flagging Hypocrisy
opinion By Isaac W. Jackson, Jr. It is less than 72 hours since I did a critique regarding Chairman Alex Cummings' appearance on the 50-50 Talk Show. I concluded that the health of our national politics was deplorable and lamented the chronic weakness of those playing active leadership roles in the opposition community as well as the government. As if things are not bad enough, the public is being drawn to the disturbing and shaming development at the Senate.
Who Should Be Allowed To Adopt Native American Children?
Native American tribes got a big win in August when a federal court upheld the Indian Child Welfare Act, a pivotal 1978 law that requires states to prioritize placing Native children in foster or adoptive homes with Native families over non-Native families. But the decision by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit is now being reconsidered by the full court, which announced earlier this month that it is granting a rehearing in a case known as Brackeen v. Bernhardt.
PSEO: A way to save money and rise to a challenge
The rising cost of a college education is among the top complaints of our youngest generation. While there are many opportunities to lower the costs of post-secondary training, I believe that one of the best options available to Minnesota students is a state-run program called Post-Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO). PSEO is a dual-credit enrollment program that enables 10th, 11th, and 12th grade students to earn free college credits by taking classes on a college campus or online.
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