The parallels to our quagmire in Afghanistan and Iraq are fast and furious in Neil Marshall’s brilliant Centurion, a superb sword ‘n’ sandals yarn that makes Gladiator look like the shitty chick flick that it is. Remarkably restrained performances, hyperviolent scenes that actually move the plot along, and sweeping cinematography make Centurion a top contender for best action movie of this year. Small wonder, coming from the director of Dog Soldiers, a hilarious and tense film made for about ten bucks. But with a modest budget, Marshall shines. Let’s give him another 10 mil, shall we?

The year is 114 AD, and the Romans have come up with the brilliant idea of subduing Scotland. The Scots haven’t even subdued Scotland, so you can imagine how successful this endeavor is going to be. A dramatic voice over informs us that these savage Picts fight a new war, a war without honor. Welcome to Guerilla Land, boys. Fancy armor and formations don’t do a lick of good against ambushes and hit and run tactics, and the common Roman soldiers are starting to wonder why the hell they’re stuck out in the ass end of the Empire. Centurion Quintus Dias (a rough and tumble Michael Fassbender, a poor man’s Russell Crowe and whole lot more tolerable) is the only survivor of a Pictish ambush, and one of the few officers who is fully aware of what the Picts are capable of.

Naturally, his platoon is sent on a punitive mission to subdue the Pictus, with the suspicious Pictish scout Etain to lead them. (Olga Kurylenko, simmering in mute rage). The platoon is ambushed in a stunning affair involving rolling burning fireballs down the hill, and only Quintus and few of his men survive. They must haul ass back to Hadrian’s Wall, with Picts in hot pursuit. It’s off the races in the gorgeous and treacherous Scottish countryside, in the middle of the winter. These are very bad odds, the Romans are way behind enemy lines, and things are looking bleak.

I don’t want to give away more of this fantastic film, with enough twists, turns, and derring-do to satiate your appetite for ancient high adventure. But let’s just say the Picts are not the only thing good Quintus has to worry about, just as crooked military contractors, paid off local police, and Dick Cheney are just as much the enemy of our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan as any of the so-called “insurgents” and the Taliban. The Pictish pursuers are also fully characterized, avoiding stereotypes. They are just pissed off locals sick and tired of the Roman occupation. But the Romans are not completely vilified either; most are just common soldiers sucked into Imperial glory games, and they’re just as overjoyed over the occupation as the Picts are.

The film does stumble a bit in an ill-advised idyll with some hot woman living all by her lonesome in the middle of the woods (yeah right) who agrees to hide the fleeing Romans. (Yeah, right). Still, this film is as timely as the remarkable Battle of Algiers, and should be required viewing for any pro-war chickenhawk who thinks our military adventures are a swell idea.

Atom Egoyan’s Ararat is essentially a film about a film, initially setting itself up as an illusion that eventually dissolves into horrific reality. Ararat is as much a comment on the structure of narrative, the art of acting, and the hard labor going into making a film as it is about the 1915 Armenian genocide. Comparisons to Schindler’s List are inevitable (Egoyan is of Armenian descent, and purportedly made this film to explore the genocide of his people as Stephen Spielberg did for Schindler’s List), but Ararat is markedly different in many different ways. The heart of this film’s success is Egoyan’s willful refusal to draw lines between memory and film production, between a film director’s artistic license and the hard reality of actual events.

Edward Saroyan (a stoic and philosophical Charles Aznavour, who vaguely reminded me of a latter-day Martin Scorsese) is directing a film about the famous painter Arshile Gorky, who fled Turkey in the wake of the genocide. He hires Ani (Arsinee Khanjian) to be an historical consultant, as she has written books about the painter. The film is at first focuses on the sharp contrast between Ani’s view of Gorky’s life and how the glossy, glamorous Hollywood sound stages are telling Gorky’s story. But the “fakeyness” of the seemingly overproduced costume-drama takes an unexpected turn as the production digs deeper into the horrors of the genocide. Ararat makes a nod at the hard craft of acting; two actors portraying an American doctor and a Turkish general explain at length how they immerse themselves into their roles. In its opening scenes, Ararat fools you into thinking this movie will be yet another drawing room drama of New York intellectuals musing over their insecurities; rather, Ararat evolves into a painful journey into Gorky’s memories as he creates his masterpiece “The Artist and his Mother.”

Ararat does not flinch with its depiction of the genocide; Turkish soldiers gleefully rape, torture, and burn alive Armenians left and right. I had to close my eyes after one officer explains how to methodically smash a person’s ankle, and then a child is hauled into a backroom for this operation. You don’t see the child being tortured, but you do hear his high-pitched screams. All of these horrors are witnessed by Gorky, alternately portrayed as a child by Garen Boyajian and as an adult by Simon Abrkarian. For me, the most fascinating actor was Ali (a slick, John Malkovichesque Elias Koteas), a Turkish-Canadian actor who confronts his own willful ignorance of the genocide. (To this day, the Turkish government refuses to acknowledge the Armenian genocide). In my favorite scene, Ani’s son Raffi (David Alplay)and Ali discuss how effective Ali has been in playing the evil Turkish general. Raffi admits that Ali was successful in inspiring unbridled hatred against the character. Both men share an awkward moment acknowledging Ali’s “successful” portrayal. And to me, that is what the craft of film is all about.

Other key scenes involve an aging customs agent (played by the reliably rock solid Christopher Plummer) interrogating Raffi about film canisters he is bringing from Turkey into the US. In another surprising turn, the interrogation evolves from a cat-and-mouse chat about whether Raffi is a drug smuggler to a meditation upon the nature of truth and belief. Each interweaving narrative serves to advance Gorky’s story, until the major characters eventually become minor characters in Gorky’s life, even though Gorky hardly utters a word in the film. Egoyan did a superb job in setting up the shifting perspectives of each character, tying them together into a series of uncomfortable truths.

A powerful but not at all sentimental film, I can see how some people would find Ararat almost too clinical in its detached tone. Yet I got a sense that the stoicism of Gorky perhaps mirrors the stoicism of Egoyan in contemplating the horror of the Armenian genocide. The director Saroyan poses the rhetorical question of how and why his people came to be a target of so much hatred; Ararat leaves you to answer that question on your own. Whether this film exaggerated or understated the horrors of 1915, Ararat makes an admirable effort in keeping the memory of Armenian genocide alive using subtlety, film-craft, and internalized pain.

I don’t want to write anything about the abhorrent Men Behind the Sun, other than a most basic warning. I consider this to be a community service.

Life as a Low Down staff writer isn’t all fun and games. Sometimes you come across a film like Vulgar that offends with its unique mixture of bad acting, bad directing, and clown-based anal rape fantasies. Then you have this propagandistic horror film dressed up with lots of condescending anti-war preaching.

Men Behind the Sun is truly evil, sickening dreck designed to “educate” the viewer about Japanese experiments on Chinese POWs during World War II. We have nothing but scene after scene of debasement, torture, gratuitous violence and human suffering. There isn’t even the thinnest attempt at a story because there’s none to be found. See prisoners die horrifically, see tears and blood, see the evil Japs try to destroy all evidence. There is no hiding heinous guilt from the Red Chinese! The special effects makeup is at a sub-Story of Ricky level, so hack director T.F. Mous must edit actual footage of a child’s autopsy into a pointless operation scene, otherwise made up of unconvincing stock footage.

Why, oh why, do so many “anti-war” films end up as nothing more than geek shows? Men Behind the Sun is the worst of the lot; even the rampant gore fetishism of Mel Gibson’s Braveheart and We Were Soldiers looks tame compared to some of the truly awful occurrences in this awful flick. It is not fun, funny, or remotely competent; its imagery is guaranteed to give you awful memories that no amount of internal repression can hold back. Some horror fans, such as those weaned on Faces of Death, might love it.

For those of you strong-willed folks out there, I’d offer one bit of advice: Go to fucking medical school if you want to see kids being surgically dissected. Okay, two bits of advice: Stop watching shitty movies like this one.

There is nothing more to be said. This film is truly appalling.