Jonathan Rosenbaum
- At a time when detailed truth about the war in Iraq continues to be scarce, these are the two best documentaries on the subject I’ve seen so far: The War Tapes, directed by Deborah Scranton and produced and edited by Chicagoan Steve James, addresses the American experience of the war with all its terrifying contradictions; and James Longley’s poetic and informative Iraq in Fragments addresses the more neglected Iraqi experience.
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Jean-Luc Godard’s 84-minute compression on film of his magisterial 1998 video series Histoire(s) du Cinema, Moments Choisis des Histoire(s) du Cinema, carries on the tradition of films serving as film criticism with somber authority. Isabella Rossellini, the writer of and sole actor in Guy Maddin’s 16-minute My Dad Is 100 Years Old, gracefully juggles her feelings about her father (Roberto, represented by a giant belly), a long view of film history, and riotous buffoonery in her impersonations of Chaplin, Fellini, Hitchcock, and Selznick–all while channeling her mother, Ingrid Bergman.
Tsotsi Young Presley Chweneyagae lit up this South African feature as a cruel Johannesburg street hood who steals a car, finds a baby in the backseat, and takes it home to his ramshackle flat. Caring for the baby reawakens his sense of decency, but his attachment to it makes him a target for police. This is the sort of character Cagney or Bogart might have played, and like them, Chweneyagae shows an impassive mask of cruelty fractured by fear, rage, and conscience.
Borat This grungy digital-video escapade prompted a torrent of op-ed comment and outrage from some of those who’d been conned into appearing in it. As a Kazakh TV personality reporting from the U.S., Sacha Baron Cohen elevated the pranksterism of cable-TV comedy to the level of social satire, offering a savage indictment of American greed, hate, selfishness, and jingoism.
