Restrepo

A searing documentary about Afghanistan's valley of death

The most surreal scene in this searing, adrenaline rush of a documentary about a US platoon in Afghanistan is the sight of three soldiers dancing madly in their bunker to "Touch Me, I Want to Feel Your Body" on an iPod.

First Light, BBC Two

A very fine Spitfire drama takes to the skies

How do you rescue a drama about Spitfire pilots from over half a century of cliché and pastiche, from Kenneth More in Reach for the Sky to Armstrong and Miller’s street-talking RAF officers? After all, put an actor in a flying jacket and a cravat, get him to smoke a pipe and read the paper as he awaits the call to scramble, and you’ve got a 24-carat stereotype. The answer, as the wholly admirable First Light illustrates, is to go back to basics – to find the authentic details amidst the stock scenarios, and the emotional truth behind the stiff upper lips.

Tuscany is Ready for Her Close-Up

The chequered film career of a much-loved landscape

As befits a film set in Tuscany, Certified Copy is an international affair. It stars Juliette Binoche as a French gallery owner and William Shimell as an English art historian. Its Iranian director is Abbas Kiarostami. The dialogue is in three languages. It’s the latest of la bella Toscana’s many starring roles in what’s been - let's face it - a chequered sort of film career.

DVD Release: Eagles Over London

Italian war movie is kitsch classic

This 1969 Italian movie has accrued a somewhat baffling mystique, not least because of the way it has been lavished with praise by the excitable Quentin Tarantino. This DVD issue includes a hilariously amateurish short of Tarantino hosting a low-rent showing of the film in Los Angeles, followed by an onstage chat with director Enzo G Castellari, clearly amazed to have been invited. He doesn't have to say much, since Tarantino just keeps babbling non-stop about how great he is.

Lebanon

Tank's-eye-view of the horrors of war

A field of sunflowers hang their heads, as though in shame or sorrow, to the deep thrum of a single chord in the film's opening shot, at once beautiful and threatening. But that is about the only breath of fresh air in the whole of the movie. Set on the first day of the 1982 Lebanon War, it proceeds for the rest of its duration to trap us, along with four terrified young Israeli soldiers, inside the confines of their tank, a monstrous apparition fetid with stale cigarette smoke, sweat and blood and a fifth character in its own right.

City of Life and Death

A Chinese war film of symphonic ambition humanises the Japanese enemy too

From The Bridge on the River Kwai onwards, the Japanese haven’t tended to come up smelling of roses in war movies. Kind of unsurprisingly. In recent years it was Clint Eastwood who moved the story on. In Flags of Our Fathers he painted the Japanese military as the yellow peril, but gave them the benefit of the doubt in Letters from Iwo Jima, the other half of his Pacific diptych. City of Life and Death attempts to do in one film what Eastwood split into two: a portrait of the Japanese war machine as a manifestation of pitiless amorality; and the component parts of that machine as sentient human beings (at least some of them, anyway).

Green Zone

Do Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass shake off the Bourne legacy in Iraq thriller?

It seems both Matt Damon and director Paul Greengrass felt it was time to leave the Bourne franchise on the shelf for a while, fearing they would corner themselves into making The Bourne Redundancy. Instead, they have transposed their working partnership into this Iraq war saga. The result is a fast-moving conspiracy thriller, but with an underpinning of actualité in the way Greengrass alludes to a war waged on a false premise, and spotlights the criminal ignorance and stupidity of American attempts to rebuild Iraq.

The Hurt Locker wins the Best Picture Oscar

Kathryn Bigelow makes Hollywood history with her brilliant, low-budget Iraq war drama

Kathryn Bigelow made Hollywood history last night at the 82nd Academy Awards by becoming the first woman to be named Best Director for The Hurt Locker, which also won for Best Picture. Her brilliant, low-budget Iraq war drama was the big winner at the ceremony, bagging six statuettes as against three Oscars for the co-favourite, Avatar, the sci-fi extravaganza directed by Bigelow's ex-husband James Cameron. The four acting awards were utterly unsurprising and it was a lean night indeed for the Brits, although the respected costume designer Sandy Powell - previously a laureate for Shakespeare in Love and The Aviator - won her third Oscar for The Young Victoria. A full list of nominees follows below.

DVDs Round-Up 3

The Hurt Locker, Inglourious Basterds, Antichrist, Harry Potter and much more

 There's a strong distaff presence in theartsdesk's third DVD round-up. The headline film is Kathryn Bigelow's superb war thrillerThe Hurt Locker, currently mopping up awards in the US and a hot favourite for the Oscars. Also in the mix: Audrey Tautou as the redoubtable doyenne of French fashion in Anne Fontaine's Coco Before Chanel and Julie Christie in Sally Potter's avant-garde 1983 debut feature The Gold Diggers. Fear not, however: a robust testosterone level is maintained by Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, by the hit stag-party comedy The Hangover and by Antichrist, Lars von Trier's "misogynist" (according to some) psychodrama. Harry Potter is the star of our box set of the month. The selection was made by Anne Billson, Ryan Gilbey, Sheila Johnston and Jasper Rees.

Film: Johnny Mad Dog

Johnny be bad: a chilling tale of child soldiers in Africa

The raucous young lads swaggering down the streets of a charred, deserted town could be the Lost Boys in an African production of Peter Pan. Some are in their late teens, others are no older than 10 or 11, but most are decked out in fancy-dress garb and accoutrements which suggest a recent dip in the dressing-up box.
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