An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Derek Malcolm's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Errol Morris.
Description: Documentary filmmaker Errol Morris conducts an expose of the soldiers involved in the shocking pictures from Abu Ghraib prison, which changed perceptions of American servicemen and -women fighting in Iraq. Attempting to understand the motivation behind the images, Morris interviews US forces who took and appeared in the photographs, examining whether these headline-grabbing snapshots in time are really evidence of physical and mental abuse, or have been twisted out of context to fit sensationalist headlines.
Country: US. 2008. 115mins
Notorious: detainees at the prison, where inmates were tortured and humiliated
Errol Morris's minutely researched film about the appalling treatment of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and the notorious photographs that came to light in 2004, was made long enough ago to seem slightly secondhand by now. It says nothing that the more modestly produced Taxi to the Dark Side - which was about torturing prisoners in Afghanistan - didn't say in spades.
Added to that, this fine documentarist's attempt to tart up his film so that it gets a wider release is not entirely successful. There's an overweaning score from Danny Elfman, much swishing camerawork from robert Chappell and robert richardson, and a sense that Morris himself stares rather too long at the American GIs who produced those awful snaps.
In particular, he stares, without comment, at lynndie England, the private first class who is seen grinning inanely at the piled-up Iraqi bodies, and at Staff Sergeant Charles Granier, who ordered the fatal photos and with whom she was in love. If these wretched grunts are worth castigating, how much more culpable are those who either ordered such behaviour or did nothing to stop it?
Morris is never unfair, unlike certain other American documentarists, and this is still an important slice of film evidence which will shortly be published as a book. But this is not his best film. It's too polished by half.
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