The truth is out there. Amidst a slew of Iraq War-inspired documentaries No End in Sight comes off as the most accurate, most astute and most straight forward of them all. Sure, we all realize that Bush and his axis-weilding bullshit-spouting cronies are nothing short of war criminals (even once ardent supporters are jumping ship by now and making their way for safer waters) so No End in Sight should comes as no surprise in what it has to say nor should it sway any of those blindfolded hangers-on that still say the Iraq War is justified (nothing shy of a freaking A-Bomb to their genitals are about to do that, and even then...) but still, Furguson's film is worth the time for believers and non-believers alike.

Though it may be preaching to the proverbial choir, No End in Sight gives us an insight into the atrocities (and the inanities) of this endless-seeming war (doesn't anyone here remember Vietnam!?) with firsthand accounts by not just those expected to be anti-war (or anti-Bush?) but by those very men and women who so believed in what they were doing was the right thing to do. The war is no longer a debate to be tassled over in the aisles of congress or by the blue and red talking heads of CNN and MSNBC (or the rather crimson-coloured "reportage" of the two right-footed FOX News) but instead is a monstrous behemoth ready to devour everything in its path, red, white, blue or freaking purple with yellow polka dots. No End in Sight gives us just that. [09/03/07]

I must admit to not being much of a fan of anime. Actually my thrill of animated film as a whole is on rather shaky ground with such pedestrian fare as all the visually bright yet thematically plebian Pixar/Dreamworks/Disney/whoever movies that pass for animated entertainment these days, choosing instead to savor recent films such as Sylvain Chomet's brilliantly piquant (and hand drawn cel animated - call me old school) Triplets of Belleville or perhaps harkening back to the days of precode Max Fleischer or even Winsor McCay. Although universally accepted as artistically cutting edge, I suppose I just find anime to be the same old same old as today's shallow pool of Hollywood animation.

But I do not dislike all anime. Perhaps Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, my first real look at anime and one of the best films of the last ten years, was merely a fluke, or perhaps, after seeing the lesser yet still enjoyable Howl's Moving Castle, it is not anime so much that I dislike, just anime done by anyone other than Miyazaki. To that cause though, I am among the few who were not overtly impressed with Satoshi Kon's latest, a mindfuck of a cartoon called Paprika. Sure some moments were indeed fun and it is visually stimulating throughout the majority, but in the end I really felt not much at all. A tired story, just convoluted enough to seem artsy doth not a great film make. [06/06/07]

Politically eye-opening and steadfastly astute, Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's adaptation of Satrapi's own graphic novel about growing up an Iranian woman in the throes of a fundamentalist revolution, is a dreamlike thesis on everything from growing up to fitting in to finding your own identity in the midst of chaos (both phsyical and emotional) all the while backdropped by war and death. Showing the truth of what Iran was and is and may someday be - as opposed to the Jihad-spouting rhetoric put forth by most of the Western world - Satrapi gives us an Iran of intellegent thinkers and free-spirited philosophers, and Iran that is more like us than any of us would have ever dreamed - or in some cases wanted.

Brazenly hand drawn in this age of super-saturated mega-pixeled CGI-ordained ultra-animated-behemothy and taking cues from both German Expressionism and French Surrealism, and with more than a nod to Charles Schultz's Peanuts - not to mention the obvious connection to Art Spiegelman's holocaust memoir Maus - Persepolis paints not an idealistic picture of Iran (and its liberal-minded Socialist exiles) but instead gives us, simply and straightforwardly, Iran as it is. Yet Persepolis is not so much about Iran and its religio-political contradictions so much as it is about a young girl (Marjane was 9 when the Shah was deposed in Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution - a revolution that eventually gave the country an even worse situation than it had originally been fighting against) and eventual woman trying to discover exactly who she is and where she belongs, which in the quite downbeat (read: realistic) end, she (and we) are still searching. [02/20/08]

The story of Albert Pierrepoint, England's supposed last hangman, is basically a typical run-of-the-mill message movie hiding somehwere inside the social distortion of a Mike Leigh-esque exterior (even to the point of casting Leigh alum Timothy Spall in the tital role), and Shergold's film cannot hide long what is ultimately a directionless failure. Spall tries his damnest to succeed here where Shergold has failed, and does manage a bit of dignity in his softly bravura enactment of this sad character.

Yet just when one thinks Spall has brought the film up to adequate level, the film nearly, nay passes, the very point of ludicrous with a late inning plot point involving the hanging of a pub pal (how Pierrepoint has not noticed the arrest and ensuing trial of his friend is beyond this critic's thought process), The Last Hangman, preposterous and contrived as it is, glides by only trepidatiously on the heels of Spall's haunting performance as the stoic hangman. [06/11/07]

Claustrophobic and emotionally tolling, Andrea Arnold's feature debut about a thirtysomething single woman who spends her days watching the decaying inner-city area of Glasgow, via city-wide police surveillance cameras, and her nights in monochrome loneliness, is a mysterious thesis on obsessiveness and voyeurism.

Jackie (played with a gaunt sense of immediacy by Kate Dickie) becomes involved directly with those she is watching, as she is drawn nearer and nearer to a shadowy figure she spies one night on her CCTV monitor. Who this man is and what his relationship is to Jackie is kept a guarded secret until just the right moment is landed upon to blurt it out. Enigmatic indeed, Arnold's film - and Dickie's performance - is a puzzle that slowly, methodically unravels itself to reveal layer upon layer of hidden meanings and denied back stories.

Deliberately dingy in its appearance, Red Road (named after the project-esque apartment building home of the aforementioned mystery man) is the most abstruse of films and not for the light-hearted cinema crowd. Full of under-belly characters (the awfully good Nathalie Press, who starred in Arnold's Oscar winning short, Wasp, is yet another dark and dreadful highlight of this film), Red Road is indeed what one might call Dark Scots Cinema. [06/02/07]

When one thinks Werner Herzog, one surely thinks cinematic insanity. Whether it be from Herzog's wild boy semi-cinéma-vérité style of filmmaking or from his frequent collaborations with nut-case extraordinaire Klaus Kinski or be it from a general penchant for the odd sides of life, one surely thinks they are going to be in for a deliciously demented demitasse of demiurgical dimensions. Aguirre, Wrath of God, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde, his retelling of Nosferatu, even Grizzly Man. What all these films (and more) have in common is the ever-present possibility of total freak-out. What Rescue Dawn has is very possibly the complete opposite. But wait, that isn't necessarily a bad thing. No, in fact, despite its rather quotidian manner, Herzog's film is still quite the mighty mass of bravura auteurism. You just have to know where to look.

Rescue Dawn, a dramatic retelling of his 1997 documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly, about Dieter Dengler, a German-born US pilot who was held as a P.O.W. in Laos during the Vietnam War and who in turn escaped and miraculously made it out of the jungle alive, may very well be Herzog's most accessible picture to date (read: middle-of-the-road), and it may not have the lunatic energy of many of his past films (read: commonplace), and it may seem tame compared to his wild past with Kinski and the Sgt. Screwball Loony Mind's Club Band, but the breathtaking photography (the opening salvo a sideways glance homage to the opening of Apocalypse Now) and Sisyphean performances of method actors du jour Christian Bale, Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies is, lo and behold, something to experience. [07/30/07]

In case you were ever wondering what a film would be like if you blended "The Office" with that of any of the recent Splat Pack films such as Saw or Hostel - and who wasn't really - then you need go no farther than Christopher Smith's Severance, the story of a band of arms dealers on a team-building weekend in the middle of Hungary (or Serbia, or Bosnia or wherever they may be). Stalked like prey by a gang of faceless killers (faceless killers whose identities have many possibilities and no answers), our intrepid stereotyped office workers are hacked down one by gory one.

The only problem Smith's film has is that it has nowhere near the acerbic wit of a tv show such as "The Office" and it has nowhere near the blood-splattered wit of Hostel. There seems to be no forward momentum, just spinning in place and going nowhere. Spotted with a handful of funny gags, Severance never quite gets to where it is going - wherever the hell that may be. [06/09/07]