Tell Me Cuba

Tell Me Cuba. The history of Cuba is a long, rolling orgy of cataclysmically bad luck and even worse judgment, and very seldom is that sordid tale recounted with the clear-headedness and pure journalistic balls that filmmaker Megan Williams brings to Tell Me Cuba. Beginning with the native rebel Hatuey — who flipped off invading conquistadors with great class and aplomb in the 16th Century — Williams tells virtually the whole story in under two hours, displaying the same species of compassion that Michael Moore always pretends to possess. She does this in the hope of unraveling the mystery: Why aren't Americans allowed to travel to Cuba? The fact that she fails in this endeavor doesn't make Tell Me Cuba a bad movie — it just means that Williams is tackling an unfair question. There is no good reason why Americans' movements are restricted in this one, tiny part of the world. Despite the film's unavoidable lack of resolution, Williams manages to shed some very creepy light on her subject. Tell Me Cuba's most striking moments come in an interview with Dr. Orlando Bosch, a repeatedly convicted terrorist currently living as a free man in Miami. After filming big-shot Floridian politicos like Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Jeb Bush getting all weepy-eyed over how beautiful the man is, she gets Bosch to admit, on camera, his involvement in a slew of atrocities. One of these includes the 1976 bombing of Cubana Flight 455, which took the lives of 73 civilians, many of whom were high schoolers. If enough people go to see Tell Me Cuba, it should cause a sensation. One of the points the film drives home is how unreasonable partisans on both sides of the Cuban debate have become, and Megan Williams is really sticking her neck out advocating the one thing nobody wants to hear about: moderation. (Monday, November 13, 6 and 8 p.m., Cinema Paradiso; 85 minutes.)