The U.S. vs. John Lennon

Ends Thurs., Nov. 16. There’s a bit of pop-star hagiography in this music-and-politics documentary co-produced by VH1, but there’s also a pungently focused run-through of the sociopolitical history in Lennon’s post-Beatle/Yoko-teamed phase. Briskly edited snippets give surprisingly sharp voice to several figures from the Vietnam/Watergate period, including Black Panther Bobby Seale and musician/marijuana martyr John Sinclair (both of whom prove retrospectively eloquent) and White House plumber G. Gordon Liddy (who remains malignantly insolent). Through richly suggestive combinations of archival footage, talking heads and musical moments, filmmakers David Leaf and John Scheinfeld provide some smartly persuasive contexts for their climactic sound-bites from Gore Vidal (“Lennon represented Life, and Mr. Nixon and Mr. Bush represented Death”) and Lennon himself (“I believe time wounds all heels”). Meanwhile, plenty of implied reverberations with current events are there for the taking.