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Battle for Terra
USA, 2007, 100 minutes
Director: Aristomenis Tsirbas

Featuring posh animation hard to believe was funded and produced independently, it’s the story that eventually wins over this sci-fi war movie. It translates the complexity and sacrifice of war into an understandable narrative without compromising the horror—Battlestar Galactica for kids, essentially.

Dividing equal sympathies for both humans and aliens, the film could almost go either way. An all-star voice cast compliment rather than distract; showing the big studios how it’s done.

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Adoration
Canada/France, 2008, 100 minutes
Director: Atom Egoyan

Powerful and packed with profound ideas, Adoration is an ode to the budding 21st century. Our identities continue to shift as the world continues its culture fusion, now more than ever in a terrorism-obsessed Post-9/11 world.

These characters’ lives are intertwined on a personal level to contrast technology’s ability to globally connect us all, perfectly visualized in the film as iChat video conferences with dozens of people. It’s a film about human connection and why we desire to make our mark upon others.

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Empress Hotel
USA, 2008, 85 minutes
Directors: Irving Saraf, Allie Light

Living in San Francisco, I’ve known for some time about Empress Hotel. Located in the notorious Tenderloin district, it’s a residential hotel that’s been converted into a shelter for the homeless and the mentally ill. For obvious reasons, I’ve not ventured into it, which this doc allows me to.

Directors Irving Saraf and Allie Light, documentary feature Oscar winners for In the Shadow of the Stars in 1991, use a candid home video approach to let the residents share their experiences themselves, choosing a variety of people from different backgrounds to illustrate how homelessness can afflict anyone for any reason, contrary to the popular notion of it being a product of substance abuse (thought there’s certainly that, too). Chilling and heartbreaking are the raw confessions of an articulate and once wealthy man who one day heard spiritual voices in his head that led him to almost kill his wife, or the ex-boxer struggling to curb his lifelong violent impulses. Though the doc itself at times feels more like a commercial for the Empress Hotel, it’s these stories that make it a compelling watch.

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Lake Tahoe
Mexico, 2008, 80 minutes
Director: Fernando Eimbcke

With static long takes, black screens and droll humor, the Jim Jarmusch influence is overwhelming in this peculiar but sweet Yucatan-set drama. A boy’s adventure to fix his crashed car slowly reveals a family’s anguish—effective with minimal effort.

Incredibly simplistic and lurking in the mundane details, yet somehow never boring. The mystery of the title isn’t revealed until the end, but by then we’ve met memorable characters who’ll help our young hero find his footing in this fun no-budget film.

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