The English Surgeon

A good documentary does more to stimulate my mind than the best fictional films. The English Surgeon is above and beyond a spectacular documentary. Most scriptwriters couldn't dare compete with the sheer drama and uncomfortable tension filmmaker Geoffrey Smith captures in his real-life story of English neurosurgeon Henry Marsh, who became fed up with the inability of Ukrainian doctors to treat patients in need of brain operations and decided to do something about it. When a young Ukrainian man needs an operation to remove a tumor in his brain, Doctor Smith is his only hope for long-term survival. Unfortunately for this patient, modern luxuries are nowhere to be found in modern-day Ukraine and the only the way the operation can move forward is by using nothing but local anesthetics to reduce the pain of drilling thru the scull and scraping away the cancerous cells growing on his brain--In other words, doing the entire operation while completely awake and conscious. Beyond the unbelievable situations throughout the film, the simple message of humanitarianism shines. In today's consumerist smorgasbord of a world we live in, it can be easy to forget the simple things that make being a fellow human being a rewarding experience. This film helps remind us. -Clayton Hauck

My Country, My Country

My Country, My Country is just the way I like a documentary to be. Plain, simple and un-intruding yet very well-done and covering an extremely interesting topic--the war in Iraq. The film loosely follows a doctor and his family as he spends time volunteering at a free clinic and chatting with local people and Sunni leaders about their involvement in the upcoming national elections of 2005, an election the Sunni leaders would eventually decide to boycott. With bombs and gunshots exploding while the family attempts to cook a meal or swat a house fly and ultimately live a normal life, we get the eerie sense that this insanely awful and unpredictable life has become normal for these Iraqis. In probably the most touching moment of the film, we are witness to a man in phone negotiations with extremists who have just kidnapped his son for ransom money "in order to fight the occupiers." While on hold, the man mentions to the others in the room that the Americans had been sympathetic of his situation and spread the word around to other checkpoints, which was potentially overheard by the captors, who were not at all happy and left the man with little hope of seeing his son ever again.

With so many dark moments such as this one, you'd think the Iraqi people would be totally hopeless and depressed, and while there are plenty doses of that to go around, they find a way to keep their heads up and get thru the day. When the doctor asks some of his patients who they will be voting for, one mother, with a straight-face says Saddam Hussein, which lets the entire room, including myself watching at home in my comfortable bedroom, have a good laugh. This to me is why My Country, My Country works so well as a documentary. It may not be the most shocking or exploitive documentary around but it gives us a humble and accurate account of what's going on inside Iraq from the regular people who live there and are forced to deal with the situations we have forced upon them from our comfortable bedrooms here in the USA. -Clayton Hauck

Religulous

In one telling scene during Bill Maher's rant-against-religion film Religulous, Maher grills a calm yet persistent actor playing the role of Jesus at a goofy Florida Christian theme park. After numerous rebuttals, Jesus settles on his best argument against non-beliver Bill Maher. "Well, what if you're wrong?" Asks Jesus. After a chuckle, Maher replies, "What if you're wrong?"

This no-evidence answer is about as close as the film comes to actually laying out a meaningful dialogue on the topic of religion. Instead, we are taken on a carefully edited and often-times entertaining trip around the world, full of religious fanatics who come across as insanely out of touch with reality and just plain silly-looking simpletons annoyed by any sort of questioning of their faith. While Maher's film works as a fun and reinforcing tale to anyone already leaning towards Atheism, I was hoping for something more than just preaching to the choir. -Clayton Hauck

The Hurt Locker

My ideal movie viewing experience is one with zero expectations or even knowledge about the movie going into it. This was the case with The Hurt Locker, generally considered one of the best films of 2009 and currently up for multiple year-end awards. I did not know all this while I watched it. In fact, I knew nothing at all. It simply ended up on my Netflix queue some time ago based on something I read in passing and -- viola!  One day it appeared at my doorstep.

Perhaps one of the easiest ways to make a suspenseful film is to include plenty of bombs. Time bombs, hidden bombs, remotely-detonated bombs and bombs you have to diffuse under harsh circumstances. Stick it all in an active war zone and you'll have the audience on the edge of their seats the entire duration. This is, of course, if we care about the survival of the characters we are on a journey with. The Hurt Locker gives us a handful of very likable and interesting characters -- from the guy who doesn't really belong in a war, to the alpha male who secretly doesn't want to be there, to the alpha male who only wants to be there.

The Hurt Locker is more than just a highly dramatic, highly suspenseful war drama. It takes us on a personal journey and poses subtle questions about what brings us to fight wars in the first place. Of course, along the way we are treated to some of the best reality-based action sequences of my recent memory. Without going into any more specifics, I will leave it at that and let you see for yourself; because for me, the biggest reason this movie was so special were all the details hidden within the extremely lively environment we become a witness to. -Clayton Hauck

Food, Inc.

This should probably be every American's next film they watch. An insanely moving portrayal of the horrible ways we get our foods and how quality loses out to profitability -- and our health and well-being is probably not even considered at all. With more consolidation within the industry, increasingly our food sources are becoming limited in variety and harder to quality control. Bacterial outbreaks are now normal and instead of going back to basics to implement ways to avoid them in the first place, new "solutions" to the problems are invented which make the process even less organic and more complicated, creating foods that are more of a mix of chemicals, genetic modifications, preservatives and God knows what else. While it's true that feeding a nation of 300 million people is no small feat, finding a good balance where food costs are low enough and nutrition levels high enough is the real trick. A fast food hamburger, which is insanely bad for the environment by the way, should not cost less than a healthy snack but that's the system we currently have in place. Seriously, go watch this film now and end the disconnect we have with what we put in our mouths every day because, afterall, we are what we eat. -Clayton Hauck

World's Greatest Dad.

Bob(cat) Goldthwait wrote & directed this film that tried too hard to be funny and in the end fell short of what it could have been -- considering the very smart and clever premise. Even though I knew how it would all play out by the mid point of the movie (I'm not bragging, it just stuck religiously to a standard movie script format), the ending still by far succeeded as the strongest moment and a savior for the film as a whole, which spent the majority of its time trying to decide if it was a comedy or a drama and whether or not we cared about any of its characters. My thinking while watching was that I get what you're trying to tell me and I like it, but you're making me feel stupid for watching it. -Clayton Hauck