Joshua Land

A triumph of documentary activism nine years in the making.

Expertly programmed by Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt, the second go-round of The Animation Show features 12 films from five countries.

It's tough to be sure of anything in this murky experimental feature, which sadly fails to live up to its title.

The characters are a bit too OCD for LOL to work as the definitive commentary on technology and human relationships that it strives to be...But the movie is unusually attentive to the ironies of communications technology.

Sleeker and more ambitious than the 2003 BBC-produced "Congo: White King, Red Rubber, Black Death," which focused more narrowly on long-suppressed Belgian atrocities of that era.

Warmhearted but never sentimental or condescending, Home finally proves most affecting as an unsparing glimpse into the psychology of poverty.

Micheli's documentary finds a fresh angle via the intersecting stories of two stuntwomen.

Largely content to bask in the great man's glow, Angio provides generous clips and soundbites alongside fond reminiscences, but the celebratory tone leaves room for darker reflections.

Wranovics's entertaining documentary feels appropriately detached.

At times resembling an Iranian "Dead Man Walking," Beautiful City goes out of its way to give each character a fair shake-a few patriarchal rages notwithstanding, even the vengeful father is treated sympathetically. But the script, overly laden with red herrings, forces its characters into some improbable dilemmas.

A stark, relentlessly deglamorized vision of ghetto life, La Sierra is essential viewing for anyone who ponied up for the aestheticized amorality of the Brazilian "City of God."

Lively, intelligent look at the art of film editing.

Frustratingly little here grapples with the day-to-day realities of life in Chechnya and the surrounding areas.

The master propagandist comes across here as a brooding, insecure megalomaniac--or at times, a bitchy member of a particularly malevolent high school clique, an effect enhanced by some of narrator Kenneth Branagh's English line readings.

Christopher Browne's entertaining A League of Ordinary Gentlemen goes behind the scenes of the Professional Bowlers Association's comeback bid following the league's 2000 sale (for a mere $5 million) to a trio of retired Microsoft execs.

A fair-minded (but hardly apolitical) grunt's-eye view of the war in Iraq that trusts the audience to draw its own conclusions.

Poorly organized mishmash of archival war films, scholarly chatter, and literary quotations.

A formal hodgepodge, Congo suffers from abrasive voice-over narration, stilted re-enactments, and an awkward courtroom conceit, but gets by on its shocking material.

Investigates the events leading up to the coup d'état; that it was the second for Aristide (overthrown in 1991, mere months after becoming Haiti's first democratically elected president) darkens the film's triumphalist-sounding title.

With its unobtrusive visual style, Justice plays like a near-parody of documentary objectivity, subtly suggesting the malleable nature of "truth," both in the courtroom and the movie theater.

Atmosphere trumps plot throughout, enabling the movie to survive an unfortunate, if inevitable, final-act turn.

A few American soldiers are interviewed in a halfhearted attempt at balance, but Berends, who thankfully eschews narration, makes his own p.o.v. clear enough.

The Roost proves that West has enough talent to do without the gimmick next time around.

Too glib to qualify as satire, Hair High nails the high school experience.

Establishes a strong sense of milieu in these street scenes, and while the movie's not without its flaws--much of the dialogue is colorless and Lisa seems a bit too together to be hanging out with Curtis--it's never less than credible.

Not only is the candid (but never prurient) treatment of early-teen sexuality and drug use too hot to handle, but the narrative blend of fairy-tale wonder and nightmare logic feels sui generis.

While positioned firmly as camp, the new Trapped by the Mormons is a surprisingly faithful rendering--at least until the flesh-eating zombies show up.

Florida-born folksinger Jim White serves as guide on this musical tour of the rural South, conceptualized less as a state of mind than as an atmosphere.

Raging Dove can't avoid the biodoc pitfall of fixating on its subject's personal saga to the virtual exclusion of all else; by the end it's essentially blaming the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for Abu Lashin's professional demise.

Grappell implicitly uses the juxtaposition with the martyred Kurbas to gauge her commitment to her own art. Light From the East drinks freely from the triumphalist cup of the glasnost era.

It's all pleasant enough, but the pretty pictures, languid pacing, and endless stretches of mood music eventually combine to soporific effect.

As a director (Caan) occasionally falls prey to the rookie mistake of excessive crosscutting, fragmenting the dramatic momentum created by his fine cast.

Avoids the narrative contrivances of many recent forays into Americana -- by virtually avoiding narrative.

While the questions may be universal, they're not particularly original, and the responses largely run the expected range, rendering the whole project less enlightening than your average collegiate coffee-and-cigarettes bull session.

Kill Your Idols pulls a few punches, tempering its respect for No Wave values like extremity and contentiousness with a more 2006 concern for not actually offending anyone in particular.

Witherspoon's oft charming perkiness is merely patronizing here, but mid-'90s MTV staple Donal Logue steals every scene he's in as an ethically challenged therapist.

Nicely rendered moments of casual intimacy between the men attest to the trip's therapeutic value, but very little of it transfers to the audience. The dull large-group scenes consist mostly of old standbys like writing problems on slips of paper and burning them.

The thriller plot sputters and the romance between Slater and eco-friendly Harvard MBA Selma Blair is a nonstarter, but the movie's threadbare execution actually enhances its queasy vision of a nation in decline.

One might expect some insight into nationalist propaganda from This Ain't No Heartland, which opens with a Goering quotation, but Austrian director Andreas Horvath's scattershot film is more interested in advancing the thesis that Midwesterners are all dumb hicks.

A movie refreshingly lacking in social graces, Piggie uses the transparency of video to x-ray the psyches of characters obsessed with the essence of things.

Surprisingly bearable family comedy.

Todd Verow's overstuffed Vacationland promises more than it delivers in just about every sense.

This witless satire dares to take on the culture of--get ready for this--reality TV! Arriving a stupefying five years out of date, Surviving Eden is a not particularly rigorous attempt at mockumentary.

The movie recovers from a sluggish opening act to pack some real suspense in its second half.