info-11552 Reviews

No End in Sight (2007)

Audience Beware

[1/10 · 10 August 2007]

This is a well made informative film in the vein of PBS Frontline. The problem is, Frontline already did this piece and managed to bring L. Paul Bremer in to tell his side of the story. More troubling is the fact that the director of the film, Charles Ferguson--a former think tank wonk, was a war supporter until the occupation went south. What did he think would happen?

The invasion of Poland went really well too until it was messed up by those pesky Nazis.And that is what this film feels like--an apology for occupation rather than a deconstruction of the act of war itself.

Ferguson seems to suggest that the war could have been run better--as if any war can be better.

The Prisoner or: How I Planned to Kill Tony Blair (2006)

Stranger than Fiction

[10/10 · 13 January 2007]

I just saw the film at a sneak preview screening in New York where we did not know what we were seeing. It's not the kind of film I would normally see, but I found that Mr. Abbas' story opened my eyes to what average Iraqis have suffered in this war. More, his story--and the charges against him--would be extremely funny if were not for the fact that they are true. Yes, US intelligence thought he was plotting to kill Tony Blair. How they thought he was supposed to do that (the only evidence they found was a bottle of shampoo!) is beyond me. The real shocker in the film is just how bad the conditions in Abu Ghraib were. The army admits now that up to 80% of the 1000s of prisoners there were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I also agree with the previous poster that the comic imagery is a surprise, but it does work. The whole story reads like a comedy of errors--complete with cartoonish villains.