The Best Documentaries of 2010

1. Inside Job

"Listening to the media echo chamber discuss President Obama's tax deal this week, I realized that it's been more than two months since I saw Charles Ferguson's illuminating Inside Job, and, shockingly, I think I still understand his deft explanation of the reasons behind the financial meltdown and, consequently, our current panic about tax rates and unemployment benefits. After numerous films - including but not limited to Capitalism: A Love Story (0/2 for Michael Moore after he dropped the health care ball with the forgettable Sicko), American Casino, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and even The Other Guys - tried and failed to explain what led to The Great Recession, Ferguson's film was like a breath of fresh air, illustrating the financial foolishness in terms that anyone can understand. Good thing, too, because as I said in my pan of the meaningless Wall Street, this was probably the last chance The Recession Movie had to establish itself as a viable genre."

2. Restrepo

"If Restrepo isn't the most visceral war film we've ever seen, it's at least the most visceral movie about the war in Afghanistan that we've yet seen, and the most insightful documentary on the 21st-century soldier's experience since The War Tapes...Restrepo almost seems to exist in a vacuum, like a fictionalized action movie (Predators, Avatar?) in which a dozen American soldiers accidentally land on another planet and have to fight for their lives. Of course, that's not the case. These are real twenty-somethings from Wisconsin, Florida, California, and elsewhere, fighting for their lives in a desolate valley on the other side of the world, wearing our flag on their shoulders, shooting at the trees in the hopes of killing unknown enemies who may or may not be connected to one of several networks that could be planning attacks against us somewhere on the planet and sometime in the near, or long-term, future. If this represents our very best attempt at securing American freedom and prosperity and liberating the world from themselves (that's the mandate we've proclaimed, right?), I'm afraid we should be deeply concerned."

3. I'm Still Here

"Maybe I'm just a more observant viewer than most, but I would think that most focused movie-goers and critics would pick up on at least a few of these clues.But whether or not you feel like you've been unfairly taken for a ride, there are a few aspects of I'm Still Here that I think should be appreciated. First, the film shows us just how little the average person actually knew about Joaquin Phoenix to begin with; that we still don't know anything about the "real" him is fascinating to consider. Second, I'm Still Here probably chronicles the death of a Hollywood career as it would happen - as it does happen, to many former stars. Lastly, it demonstrates just how talented an actor Joaquin Phoenix is, playing an alternate version of himself in a much more committed way than, say, John Malkovich in Being John Malkovich. Few actors would ever take the risk to spend two years on a project like this, and I hope Phoenix's career is justly rewarded - even if Hollywood is bitter that the joke was always on them."

The Best Movies of 2010

1. A Prophet

"A Prophet is one of the best crime sagas in recent memory, and, along with last year's Lion's Den and Hunger, it has helped usher in a new era of harrowing prison dramas (the last truly memorable one being what, The Shawshank Redemption?).

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, whose last film (The Beat My Heart Skipped) was highly acclaimed but unseen by me, A Prophet boasts impressive verisimilitude for a completely fictional story. Maybe it's not surprising considering former convicts were hired as extras and advisers, but Audiard himself has admitted that prison life is rarely depicted in French film and television. French citizens are apparently clueless about what goes on behind prison walls in their country, so it doesn't take much convincing to accept this story as reality.

Indeed, life on the inside is reflective of life on the outside: the old French/European power structure is fading as new immigrant groups - particularly Arab Muslims (that term should not sound nearly as redundant as it does) - are arriving and establishing their identities as the "new French". Symbolically speaking, this film is urgently relevant (it won nine of the record 13 César Awards for which it was nominated); cinematically speaking it is a masterful showcase of acting, cinematography, pacing (even at 150 minutes), suspense, music, action and, most importantly, global insight."

2. The Social Network

"No matter how hard we might try, and no matter how much of it is actually true, and no matter that (or likely because) it is such an assured and polished piece of cinema, The Social Network is now and forever will be a primary influence on our thinking about Facebook and its founding. You can deny it, but for better or (probably) for worse, it has significantly changed some of our opinions about Zuckerberg and social networking, and thus also the decisions we'll make about if and how we use Facebook. Since the Facebook story is not yet complete, I find that realization fascinating: The Social Network will influence the real-life future of its characters - Zuckerberg included - considerably more than the average film based on true events."

Playing With the Truth: Film in 2010

Based on a true story.

Inspired by actual events. 

I'm not sure if it was an actual trend in 2010 or just a common trait of the few movies that I saw, but phrases like those above seemed to appear on screen in quite a lot of films, including 127 Hours, Conviction, Howl, Carlos, North Face, and even more that I didn't see, such as Made in Dagenham, Casino Jack, Eat Pray Love, I Love You Philip Morris, Mesrine: Killer Instinct & Public Enemy #1, and Nowhere Boy, to name only a few (and to say nothing of the tricky-truthy documentaries like I'm Still Here, Catfish, and Exit Through the Gift Shop).

Are there this many films based on true events every year and I only noticed it in 2010, or is this a newly developing trend? Either possibility would surprise me. If this is common every year, why have I not picked up on it so acutely, particularly considering I usually see twice as many movies as I did in 2010, and that I have a running series about movies based on real life? On the other hand, if this is a newly developing trend - why?

I'm almost positive it's the former, that this is not a new thing at all, but in any case it doesn't matter. I'm always more interested in how these films depict the truth they are meant to represent and, in doing so, how they shape our understanding and perspective on past events. For example, when I ask you to imagine the sinking of the Titanic, what images come to your mind? What about Roman gladiator fighting in the Colosseum? What do you picture when you think of John Smith and Pocahontas, or the Zodiac killer who terrorized San Francisco, or the fate of United Flight 93, or the storming of Omaha Beach on D-Day?

You see where I'm going with this: for many people, films based on true events serve as the primary influence on the subconscious in remembering or imagining those events. If you've seen those movies - Titanic, Gladiator, The New World, Zodiac, United 93, Saving Private Ryan - you bring their images to mind without even realizing it, particularly when a.) the images are astonishingly rendered (Titanic), and b.) there are few other film adaptations, documentaries, or other visual aids to provide alternative images in your mind (United 93). In essence, perception becomes reality; what we see becomes what actually happened, even if it didn't actually happen.

But does it matter when those images and those memories produce a reality that didn't actually exist? Where does the truth end and the dramatization begin, and is the truth ever interesting enough to stand on its own, free of embellishment? I'm sure it's a question as old as film itself - as art itself, really - but I'd like to consider it in the context of five films I saw in the last few months of 2010: The Social Network, The Fighter, Fair Game, The King's Speech, and All Good Things.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Marwencol, Black Swan, True Grit, & Exit Through the Gift Shop

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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Marwencol (A) 

There's a fine line between a hobby and an obsession. Take my love of movies, for example - is this blog a healthy,  creative side project, or an unhealthy manifestation of a subconscious desire to escape reality through film? Or what about Mark Hogancamp, who, after being beaten within an inch of his life several years ago and his long-term memory, regained his personality and his imagination through a fantastical world he created with plastic figurines? I can live without movies (maybe?), but Hogancamp can't live without these dolls. They are not a hobby, and they are not even an obsession. They are like air and water, necessary for his daily life. 

Hogancamp's alternate reality, named Marwencol, is so detailed and lifelike that it appears to exists as a living, breathing place, filled with characters and backstories enough to fill a series of books. If I had the patience and artistic talent to create places like it, I might end up lost with the dolls as well. This is not to say that Hogancamp doesn't have a handle on reality, just that considering where he's coming from it makes perfect sense that Marwencol is his security blanket from the judgments of the world (he was beaten at a bar after admitting to a habit of cross-dressing). It's the place he can go to get away, and be his own person in his own mind, and in that sense Marwencol is an almost uncomfortably personal entry into his thoughts and emotions.

I'm sure it wasn't easy for Mark Hogancamp to agree to "expose" himself through this film, but his world, Marwencol, should be appreciated not only for what it means to him, but to everyone who seeks a place that offers that kind of solace.

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Black Swan (B)  

As Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan reached its climactic finale, I'd made peace with my opinion of the movie: it was a lesser Fight Club, without the humor and witty cultural references. Maybe that says something about my gender or my disinterest in ballet, but in my head it was just a reaction to the familiarity of the story. I realize the plots aren't in any way similar, but, despite not having seen a trailer or learned anything about the story, I felt I'd been led to believe Black Swan was going to be some kind of transcendent thriller that would twist my mind and leave me breathless. Instead, I had a headache from the avian sound effects and predictable fright scenes, and I grew impatient to see something I hadn't seen before.

In the weeks afterward I considered the praise for Black Swan's ambiguity (i.e., was the ending real?) and acting, but as it recedes in my mind I don't have any great desire to see it again. I'm optimistic there are any number of similar films about passion and drive that aren't as cold, dark, and disturbing, like, for instance, Aronofosky's The Wrestler, which is a light and cheery family film in comparison.

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True Grit (A-)  

At least for me, movies in 2010 were severely lacking memorable characters. I mean the kind of characters that you can recognize with one line of dialogue, or dress up for Halloween as, or spoof on "Saturday Night Live". Jeff Bridges as Rooster Cogburn is one of those characters, and although I haven't seen the original True Grit, I think I'd rather watch Bridges in the character if only because he's a lot more fun to imitate than John Wayne.

Sure, the Coen Brothers left their mark on True Grit, but I'd be lying if I didn't expect more from them. Not more in terms of quality, per se, but more in terms of Coen-ness. More scenes like the bartering scene with Mattie Ross or the courtroom scene, more bizarre characters popping in and out of nowhere, and a little more dry humor. But their intention was a straightforward adaptation, and in that they likely succeeded (I haven't read the novel). Just doesn't seem like they had much reason for taking this on if they weren't going to do something unique with it.

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Exit Through the Gift Shop (A-) 

I finally caught up to this raved-about documentary, and despite hearing much about its authenticity, the mysteries didn't appear where and when I expected. I've known of Banksy for several years, but I knew little about the rise of street art or the increasing number of public exhibitions by street artists. Essentially, I didn't realize their work had been accepted as legitimate in the eyes of collectors and auction houses. So, it didn't take much to convince me that Thierry Guetta could be a real person. As improbable as everything was, nothing really seemed outside of the realm of possibility (similar to My Kid Could Paint That), and there were fewer aspects of this film that made me think it wasn't real.

Conversely, everything about I'm Still Here seemed fake from the beginning (I saw it before it was officially announced as a hoax), so I could laugh along with Phoenix and Affleck as they punked everyone. Does its greater believability make Exit Through the Gift Shop a better documentary? Is it even a documentary, or an actual artistic statement by Banksy? Does it even matter? This is what I'm left wondering, but regardless of what I believe or discover about the truth, I now understand why this film has received so much attention. It's like one of Banksy's great works, subverting our expectations and telling us something we don't want to admit to ourselves about art, hype, and money.

Un-fracking-believable: Gasland

Just think, you can cook without a stove!

If you became angry or frustrated while watching Inside Job, wait until you get a load of Gasland, the award-winning documentary exposing even more egregious shenanigans committed by Corporate America. All things considered (including his personal relationship to the story), filmmaker Josh Fox lays out an honest, objective examination of hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking", the controversial new trend in domestic natural gas production. Gasland is this decade's Erin Brockovich or A Civil Action, the significant difference being that in this documentary, and thus in real life, companies aren't committing crimes by breaking or going around government regulations meant to protect citizens. That's because relatively speaking, there are no such regulations in place.

Much as you might expect this be a right vs. left political issue, what with Halliburton behind both the fracking technology and the Dick Cheney-initiated "Halliburton Loophole" (which exempts oil and gas companies - all of them - from our country's long-standing clean air and water regulations), the uncomfortable truth is that this is bipartisan bad behavior. While conservative interests may comprise corporate boards and shareholder majorities, President Obama and environmentalists are championing domestic natural gas production as an alternative to our addiction to foreign oil.

Problem is, nobody has developed a safe way to retrieve shale gas from the earth's crust, so for the time being more natural gas production means more fracking (by all accounts an extremely messy process). And more fracking - well as you can imagine that means more really nasty pollution, and more people being able to light their methane-infused tap water on fire.

Gasland won a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2010, and was recently short-listed for this year's Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. I can't say it's a polished film (it's occasionally tangential and burdened with mumbling narration by Fox), but, alongside Inside Job and Restrepo, it's among the most important American documentaries of the year.

One of the memorable insights Fox shares at the end of film is that as he drove thousands of miles across the country to study the impact of fracking on local communities, every place started to look the same. Of course this is a common observation East Coasters make once they get west of Pennsylvania, but the stereotypical reasons (e.g., boring landscapes) were not cited here. Rather, the states blended together for Fox because fracking is happening everywhere: refineries and wells littered the country in places he never expected, and the stories and horrific symptoms from people he met were similar across thousands of miles. In other words, the problem isn't spreading - it's already spread, everywhere.

And, despite the fact that nobody yet knows the true effect fracking has on our air and water supply (only recently did the EPA initiate an official study on it), the practice continues unabated in one of the least regulated industries in the country. Completely helpless citizens are being poisoned and communities ruined, and not only is there no law against it, but the current laws were made to enable it. Worse, state agencies and departments that would normally be charged with looking into citizen's complaints are among the first to be cut as government budgets bleed out during the recession.

It's ironic then, or maybe it's not, that corporate interests helped lead to the recession, which has led to government budget deficits, which have led to agency and department personnel cuts, which has led to decreased regulation of corporate practices like fracking, which has led to greater corporate profits.

God Bless America.

Gasland comes out today on DVD (New Media/Docurama Films)
Add to your Netflix queue

Further reading:

"A Colossal Fracking Mess", Vanity Fair, June 2010

"Fracking yields fuel, fear in Northeast", CNN.com, September 2010

Further viewing:

"Shaleionaires" - 60 Minutes, November 14, 2010

Taking It Home: Inside Job

Finally, it all makes sense. Mostly.

Listening to the media echo chamber discuss President Obama's tax deal this week, I realized that it's been more than two months since I saw Charles Ferguson's illuminating Inside Job, and, shockingly, I think I still understand his deft explanation of the reasons behind the financial meltdown and, consequently, our current panic about tax rates and unemployment benefits. After numerous films - including but not limited to Capitalism: A Love Story (0/2 for Michael Moore after he dropped the health care ball with the forgettable Sicko), American Casino, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and even The Other Guys - tried and failed to explain what led to The Great Recession, Ferguson's film was like a breath of fresh air, illustrating the financial foolishness in terms that anyone can understand. Good thing, too, because as I said in my pan of the meaningless Wall Street, this was probably the last chance The Recession Movie had to establish itself as a viable genre.

Why was it so hard to present this financial information in a clear way prior to this film? To be fair it does require a lot of detailed explanation, and when filmmakers have other things on their minds (melodrama and an Oscar in the case of Stone's Wall Street; comedy and I-don't-know-what in the case of Moore's Capitalism), the meat of the subject at hand is guaranteed to be lost. Inside Job, in contrast, has little else on it's mind other than telling us what happened and, not accidentally, making us feel really angry about it. This isn't necessarily a fair and balanced documentary (and maybe not a documentary at all?), but it nonetheless presents the facts and allows educated people to talk about them, even though in this case the facts really speak for themselves.

127 Hours in 94 Riveting Minutes

The other night I had a dream, or rather a nightmare, that our cat was trapped in an unplugged microwave for three days until I was able to break the door open and rescue her. Her eyes were bloodshot and her tired, sweaty body was bruised and bloodied in a few spots; her right hind leg was stripped of flesh and fur almost to the bone. As I woke up in a hazy state, it didn't take long for me to peg 127 Hours as the inspiration for my subconscious. Thankfully I don't have dreams like this often, and our cat is just fine, but this movie has haunted my mind for a week not only because of the nightmarish, climactic battle between mind and body, but also because of the questions this incredibly simple story raised about relationships, independence, family, regret, determination, and even technology.

Much more than the nerve-wracking "thriller" I expected, 127 Hours is a tender, even beautiful tribute to the resiliency of the human spirit. It's a film that jars you awake from the tedious monotony of the cinematic landscape, engaging instead of entertaining and not compromising for the sake of your viewing comfort. So does the Saw franchise, one could argue, but while I've never seen any of those movies, I've also never been under the impression that they have the artistic, acting, or even comic merit exhibited in 127 Hours.

Independent Lens presents: Lost Sparrow

Lost Sparrow is the type of documentary that should come with a warning label: "May cause severe emotional distress". It does not contain much disturbing or graphic content, but the tragedy of the Billing family history is so nakedly laid bare that you can't help but be affected. I was mentally worn and emotionally vulnerable on the night that I watched it, and I'll fully admit the film's denouement had me sobbing. While I was reminded of Capturing the Friedmans, Surfwise, and Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father, I was keenly aware while watching Lost Sparrow that there were many more social layers under the surface of this particular story.

Never manipulative and consistently engrossing, Lost Sparrow is a downward spiraling journey into the marginalization and mistreatment of the Native American community, the strength of the family bond, and the challenge of forgiving an unforgivable sin. If making a film about the skeletons in your family's closet is considered a sign of bravery (and I think it is), director Chris Billing deserves a medal of valor.

In the early 1970's, Billing's family adopted four Crow Indian siblings (two boys, two girls) who were removed from their home on an impoverished Montana reservation after numerous allegations of domestic abuse. The Billing family, already with six children, quickly became a family of 10 kids and two parents, seemingly as happy as they are in the family photo above. 

In 1978, however, the two Crow Indian brothers were mysteriously killed by a freight train near the family's home in upstate New York (no one knows why they were lying on the tracks). The accident devastated the family and the community, the children were buried nearby (against Crow tradition) and the wounds slowly began to heal - or so it appeared. Chris Billing went on to become a highly-respected journalist and the Beijing Bureau Chief for NBC, but he was always uncomfortable with the uncertainty around his brothers' death. Lost Sparrow is his effort to find out what happened, and in doing so he discovers much more than he bargained for, and much more than anyone should ever hope to discover and publicly share about their family.

What impressed me so much about Lost Sparrow was the impossibly objective light Chris Billing shone on the tragic history of this family, no doubt due to years of journalistic practice. He somehow does not condemn and he does not apologize, and tells an incredibly personal story without making an overtly personal film. No family is perfect, and the themes in Lost Sparrow - love, forgiveness, fear, and pain - resonate on a universally human level. While Lost Sparrow could be seen as a traditional documentary about family history that you'd expect to find on PBS, I saw it as much more: an unforgettable portrait about adoption, redemption, and owning up to a past that has haunted your family for 30 years.

Lost Sparrow premieres on PBS on Tuesday, November 16 (check local listings)

300 Words About: Waste Land

Topically similar to Garbage Dreams but thematically similar to Born into Brothels, Lucy Walker's endearing Waste Land is a humble, tender tribute to the millions of people we walk by daily but avoid looking in the eye. In the U.S., as in Brazil and maybe every other developed nation, an undercurrent of classism wreaks havoc on the social fabric. We marginalize and generalize about the groups below us on the social ladder, never considering to recognize the ambitions and talents of the individuals who comprise those groups. If a picture is worth a thousand words, Vik Muniz' portraits of workers in the world's largest landfill (Jardim Gramacho, outside Rio de Janeiro) tell a timeless story of human ambition, cooperation, innovation, beauty, and creativity.

That's pretty flowery language applied to a film set amongst mountains of rotting garbage, but it's there if you look for it - and you don't have to look too hard. These portraits, which are photos of garbage arranged to represent photos (you might have to see it to understand it), are astounding artistic achievements even without considering the subjects of the photos, the team of people involved in constructing the portraits, or the materials from which they are composed. When all of that is evaluated as well, it's not surprising to learn that the "Pictures of Garbage" (double entendre intended) collection broke attendance records at modern art museums around the world.

On the surface, the motive behind Muniz' project (to "change lives") appeared naive, even foolish. This is partly because he had the complete wrong impression of the people who worked at Jardim Gramacho, and partly because no good deed goes unpunished, and whatever sacrifices Muniz was willing to make (in this case, his marriage) were not necessarily going to guarantee a better life for the civil servants who provide what amounts to indentured labor in picking recycled materials out of the landfill.

But Muniz was successful, and director Lucy Walker was successful (for the second time in two years), because both of them realized that often the most effective way to lift someone up is to embrace who they are, where they are, before finding a way to tap into the positive aspects of their individual character. It's probably not a coincidence that the subjects chosen by Muniz for this particular project are quite attractive by most standards, but if he has shown anything, it's that even beautiful people might not recognize their beauty until someone shows it to them.

Carlos @ the Walker - This Weekend Only

Tell you what, if I'm going to spend 5+ hours in a theater for one film, I'd much rather it be in the comfort of the Walker Cinema than in the chiropractic-certified Uptown Theater, where I saw Steven Soderbergh's epic, Che. So if back pain is your excuse not to see Carlos this weekend in its exclusive engagement at the Walker, you better come up with another excuse.

And I better come up with a worthier excuse for missing the Regis Dialogue with director Olivier Assayas last week, in which he must have given terrific insight into his latest film. If you haven't seen any of the Assayas films being screened at the Walker this month, this weekend is your last chance to see his newest critical darling, which will premiere on the Sundance Channel and Video on Demand later this year.

What I appreciated most about Carlos, aside from its impossibly quick 319-minute running time, is that it tells so much critically important world history while also illuminating the inner life of "Carlos the Jackal", one of the most notorious international terrorists of the last generation (to me, the potential similarity to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda is striking). Assayas has somehow made a historical film more action-packed than it should be, and an action thriller more historically relevant than it should be. And in addition to its watchability, Carlos features one of the flat-out best performances of the year by Édgar Ramírez as the title character (incidentally, he also starred in Che).

Granted, before the first scene we read that there is no way to accurately portray two decades worth of Carlos' exploits, and yes, much of the political dialogue is as subtle as a sledgehammer. But to me this is an ambitious, original film that doesn't substitute entertainment for art - something Soderbergh may have wisely considered before Che landed with a bit of thud to restless audiences. People have assumptions and mythical ideas about terrorists, after all, and artistically painting them in a sympathetic light isn't likely to do much but confuse and disengage. Assayas understands this desire on the part of the viewer (kind of strange considering the art-value of his other films), and essentially delivers the made-for-TV version - just done really well. We can only hope other marathon movies follow suit.

Carlos screens Sat 10/30 and Sun 10/31 at 1:00 PM,

with a 15- and 30-minute intermission.

Tickets are only $8 (!)

Getafilm Gallimaufry: Animal Kingdom, Get Low, Let Me In or Leave Me Out, & Perfect Song #8

[This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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Animal Kingdom (A)

Aside from being among the best indie movies of the year, David Michôd's Animal Kingdom is also the Feel Bad Movie of the Year. It's not graphic, it's not lewd, and it's not even particularly violent, but you become so intimate with the cold, calculating, evil characters that you just want to shower immediately afterward. I haven't been this disgusted walking out of a film since Boy A, another excellent movie that not coincidentally deals with trust, regret, family, and crime.

Stories about criminal families are nothing new, but Animal Kingdom boasts such a crackerjack script and stellar cast that you don't even realize you've heard this story before (it helps that the actors are unfamiliar to American audiences). I was a big fan of the stylistic flourishes (understated use of slow motion, haunting music, etc.) and undercurrent of unpredictability, and well, I'll just say it: if Animal Kingdom were made by a veteran American director like Scorsese, it would be a shoo-in for a Best Picture nomination.

Taking It Home: Restrepo

(Images courtesy Outpost Films)

"Our idea was...let's make the most visceral war film you've ever seen." 

So said photojournalist Tim Hetherington, who partnered with author/journalist Sebastian Junger to create the Sundance-award winning documentary Restrepo, which delivers what's sure to be the most nerve-racking viewing experience of the year so far. Inception plays like a Saturday morning cartoon in comparison. If Restrepo isn't the most visceral war film we've ever seen, it's at least the most visceral movie about the war in Afghanistan that we've yet seen, and the most insightful documentary on the 21st-century soldier's experience since The War Tapes (which, along with the disappointing Gunnar Palace, comprise the few films that actually feature soldiers and not actors). 

Pro-war, anti-war, McChrystal, Wikileaks, whatever. The talking heads and the rest of the U.S. should stop shouting and hand-wringing for a moment to witness what's actually happening on the ground, or at least was in 2007-08. Restrepo follows the deployment of a dozen or so brave American infantrymen from Second Platoon, Battle Company, of the 173rd Airborne, who spent more than a year in Afghanistan's deadly Korengal Valley. The reasons to see this documentary are as numerous as the opinions about what the U.S. is doing in Afghanistan (i.e., the "graveyard of empires"); suffice to say you don't have much business in a conversation about the latter until you've seen the former.

Getafilm Gallimaufry: A Prophet, Fish Tank, Robin Hood and More

[Note: This series includes scattered thoughts on various movie-related topics. I was looking for a word that started with the letter "g" that means collection or assortment, but lest you think I'm some elitist wordsmith, know that I'd never heard of "gallimaufry" and I don't even know how to say it, but it was the only other option the thesaurus provided aside from "goulash" (too foody) and "garbage" (no).]

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A Prophet (A) 

A Prophet is the first must-see film of 2010. Maybe that's not saying much considering the caliber of movies that have been released in this first quarter. How about this instead: A Prophet is one of the best crime sagas in recent memory, and, along with last year's Lion's Den and Hunger, it has helped usher in a new era of harrowing prison dramas (the last truly memorable one being what, The Shawshank Redemption?).

Written and directed by Jacques Audiard, whose last film (The Beat My Heart Skipped) was highly acclaimed but unseen by me, A Prophet boasts impressive verisimilitude for a completely fictional story. Maybe it's not surprising considering former convicts were hired as extras and advisers, but Audiard himself has admitted that prison life is rarely depicted in French film and television. French citizens are apparently clueless about what goes on behind prison walls in their country, so it doesn't take much convincing to accept this story as reality.

Indeed, life on the inside is reflective of life on the outside: the old French/European power structure is fading as new immigrant groups - particularly Arab Muslims (that term should not sound nearly as redundant as it does) - are arriving and establishing their identities as the "new French". Symbolically speaking, this film is urgently relevant (it won nine of the record 13 César Awards for which it was nominated); cinematically speaking it is a masterful showcase of acting, cinematography, pacing (even at 150 minutes), suspense, music, action and, most importantly, global insight.

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