**Spoiler Warning Ahead**

Opium War came as a complete surprise to me. I was expecting some heartwarming and quirky tale about two American soldiers who come to be accepted by an Afghani family. Boy, was I off. Opium War opens with an Afghani boy peeing on a skeleton, saying “Motherfucker, you said you would keep the evil eye away from us, but we were cursed. The world is full of motherfuckers.” The boy eventually finds a crashed helicopter and two unconscious soldiers, and assumes them to be dead. He helps himself to some trinkets from the chopper. The two soldiers eventually awake, completely addled as they stumble towards the boy’s family dwelling. It turns out the family is living inside a ruined Russian tank set up by a dried up poppy field. And then the film starts to get strange.

Opium War is a black comedy and a deliberate Theater of the Absurd, at times resembling Acid Westerns such as El Topo and The Shootist in its gritty, nonsensical, and nihilistic atmosphere. The soldiers act as children in a weird shoot-‘em-up war, but speak in existentialist, despairing soliloquies. The hopelessness of the Americans ever winning the hearts and minds of the Afghani people is laid bare in the vicious infighting between the clan mothers. My favorite scene involved a group of little boys leading the soldiers through an international graveyard, gleefully pointing out “Here is where a Brit is buried. Here is where a Russian is buried,” with the soldiers not understanding one word of their language. The ending, which involves a helicopter raising the tank and the introduction of ballot boxes, is merely the last ridiculous scene in the series of increasingly ridiculous scenes.

Opium War is a savagely bitter, hilarious, and mind-bending film, and not just because the soldiers are hopped up on opium for most of the film. It’s a film only an Afghani filmmaker could get away with it in its mordant and sarcastic portrayal of the latest foolish Western foray in the Allah-forsaken land of Afghanistan. Director Siddiq Barmack offers no hope in this No Exit vision of Afghanistan, sandblasted and crushed by history. If you’re looking for some charming tale of the meeting of two cultures, Opium War is not for you. But if you’re in a need of a harsh shot of rotgut reality, give this film a shot.

The Hurt Locker is a film that probably should have come out four years ago, when at least half of America was still bloodthirsty enough to continue our debacle in Iraq. A tight, often claustrophobic film that follows the harrowing exploits of a bomb diffusion squad, Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days) skillfully shows the lethal tedium of 24 hour paranoia, justified and otherwise.

The film follows three-man squad as they confront roadside bomb after roadside bomb in the unending grind of the US military’s inability to deal with the “insurgency” against an invading force. Following the death of their team leader, Sgt. JT Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty) must contend with their new leader, hot dog bomb defuser Sgt. William James (Jeremy Renner) who seems to have a death wish.

But The Hurt Locker does not fall into easy, war movie stereotypes. All three men are coolly competent in their own ways, dealing with a near-impossible situation among a population that fears and loathes them. As JT Sanborn, Renner exudes the perfect balance of galling arrogance and humble friendliness of a man struggling to keep his sanity. He keeps mementos of his defused bombs in a locker under his bed. Mackie is also superb in his thankless role of trying to keep Sgt. James under some sort of control. Eldridge’s unsentimental goodbye to Sgt. William is hilarious and fitting.

The Hurt Locker is naturalistic and superbly lighted, and avoids any Apocalypse Now style hallucinatory scenes, relying instead on the fluorescent and grimy lighting of the Baghdad streets. The violence is sharp but never gratuitous or drawn-out; the war feels horribly real. In the film’s best scene, two sniper teams face off in a white-knuckle game of geometry and telescopic visuals, and here the cinematography of the film really shines. The harrowing realism of the bomb defusing reflects Renner’s extensive training with actual US Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal teams.

Yet The Hurt Locker is not shilling for the Department of Defense, as has been the case with many recent films (such as the moronic military product placement fantasies Transformers and Iron Man and the nauseatingly racist Rules of Engagement). My only criticism of the film is the utter anonymity of the Iraqi locals, but perhaps that was the point of the film. In the cat and mouse game of death between an occupying army and an urban and desert guerrilla forces, the notion of “winning the hearts and minds” of the locals is an absurd and long lost dream.

In this tripped out yet educational documentary, Know Your Mushrooms is a fascinating sojourn into the bizarre world of mushrooms. I have to give a full disclosure here, so I’d advise you to take this review with a grain of salt, preferably sprinkled over your favorite kind of mushrooms. I was a bit “under the influence,” to put it mildly, but in my defense, I wasn’t on mushrooms, so I believe I can give a somewhat impartial review and analysis.

Know Your Mushrooms is a very strangely presented documentary, accompanied with heavily distorted psychedelic guitars (courtesy of Flaming Lips). The film follows mycologists and veteran mushroom hunters/connoisseurs Gary Lincoff and Larry Evans as they reveal the astonishing variety and potential of fungi. Not only is the world’s largest organism a fungi, but a complex network of fungi are actually holding up the world’s crust and ensuring soil replenishment. Oyster mushrooms have been used to clean up oil spills, and cancer researchers are just starting to uncover the mushroom’s anti-carcinogenic qualities.

The film eventually ends up at the Telluride Mushroom Festival, a three-day mushroom bacchanal that features some of the most delicious mushrooms in the world. I also learned the sad truth that most mushrooms sold in supermarkets are of a grossly inferior kind, and that larger white mushrooms are often fraudulently sold as portobellos. Naturally, a portion of this film is dedicated to the psilocybin mushrooms, but I found the normal mushrooms just as bizarre as their psychedelic cousins. Highly recommended.