A superb script, committed cast and crew have taken a low buget indie into the exalted territory of a tutorial masterwork. Empires utilize military terror to enforce ownership rights. Militarized acquisition of assets is capitalism, And covering the ‘violence up is the state media and military domain. Never before have I seen it so clearly defined and articulated. Civil Rights as they’re internationally understood do not exist for the underclass, for “the people” of a nation state. Here the s State’s outlawed freedom of assembly and speech calling it “law and order”. A peaceful demonstration is redefined as a racist/political provocation for a predetermined military violence. The slaughter has sent the message of imperial resolve. Blame the victim, sew disinformation, protect the murderers and the queen decorates the mass murderers & sadist who executed unarmed civilians. Lies if guns, planted bombs, all long used in the U.S. imperial arsenal of frameups. He coverup is called “imperial will”, “bravery and heroism”. As a citizen I’m so familiar with this scenario, it’s played out yearly by empires around the world, including in the U.S. to U.S. citizens (especially of color). But in cinema it’s so rare that a fantastical honest little fills lays out the strategies and implementation from the oligarchs so boldly and clearly. The dead are unmourned, the powerful indemnified, injustice is the coin of the realm. The only surprise it may bring to U.S. viewers is the violence is white on white but the same racial & religious insults are everywhere evident.

I’ve had Kanopy for several years. Hands down, amazing content, however, its been really clunky with the same problems for all of these years. This: There is zero way to recover if you accidentally press the wrong button while watching a film. The only way to get back to it is to “rent” again. (lose a credit) There’s no option to finish watching it later or tomorrow. Nope. Not without using a credit. Oh and oops, if you accidentally press the wrong button, press play for a movie you don’t want to watch (even for a split second and immediately get out of it) well too bad, you lose a credit. Why not have a simple “do you want to use credit” or similar? There’s no doubt my public library is paying for a service its users are not able to fully utilize. I get 12 credits per month and am fairly tech savvy but I find this issue hugely frustrating. I can imagine it is much more frustrating for first time users, especially if they only are allowed 3 credits per month. What a bummer! I’ve read a lot of other reviews. Every single review that poses a question regarding disappearing credits receives the same response- we’re sorry you’re having this problem, please send an email directly to Kanopy to discuss further, aka …(probably) you don’t have a real solution other than manually crediting to individual accounts. C’mon Kanopy, we’re all fans here, just fix it already.

I am very impressed by the variety and multitud of genres that Kanopy has. But not all things are perfect, and I have problems with rewinding, going back to the beginning of the film, or trying to go back just one frame is impossible. I watch mostly documentaries and educational videos, and if I pause one day and restart the same video later it counts it as a separate movie, so that in the end I use up my six available rentals without even finishing one single movie. Even if I am only half way on a movie I cannot go back to it after pausing, so if I want to watch a movie I have to make sure I have enough time to finish the whole thing in one sitting, otherwise I won’t be able to see the end until the next month. It is very frustrating. I have to wait to the end of the month to watch the reminder of the movie, because it tells me I used up all my rentals even tough I never finished watching the whole thing. Hopefully they can fix that. It Is ridiculous that I used up all my six rentals on just one video and it was an instructional video.

Overall it gets the job done. I mostly use the app on Apple TV and less often on my iPad. The app does not feel like an iOS native app and does not support the kind of interactions one expects in a good iOS app. It feels like an app that was written once to run on many platforms and while that may seem efficient it leads to a lack of surprise and delight when using the app on a specific platform. Please make an iOS native app that takes advantage of iOS frameworks. I like the overall navigation layout, showing new content, and especially showing content that is leaving in the month. Very handy. Areas for improvement: Integrate with Sign in With Apple to reduce the friction of signing up and not having to create yet another login account. Integrate with Apple TV next up feature to make it easy to get back to content I’m watching. Integrate with Siri for searching in the app so I don’t have to use the on-screen keyboard to create searches. Ability to filter watch list by rating and by what’s leaving the platform in the current month. I prioritize what I’m going to watch next based on what’s leaving. Ability to mark content being watched as complete. For instance, a movie still shows up as being watched because I did not watch the last few minutes of the credits. Indicate audio/video details (HD, UHD, 4K, Dolby, etc). I see ratings for content but no way to rate things myself. Where are the ratings coming from? Would be nice to be able to add my own and then have the platform recommend content based on my ratings. Need ability to remove library that is no longer affiliated with the service. One of my libraries accounts apparently expired but no way to remove it.