Top Five Movies about Iraq that I didn't See in 2007

Well, it has become obligatory that we take our experiences and rank them in a subjective order so that others can "discover" them. Here is my attempt at such a list.

2007 featured a lot of films unspooling which attempted to deal with our new long national nightmare, not be confused with the old one. When these films first started to appear, I would go and see them, leaving the theater feeling all topical and edgy. But then I saw Gunner Palace and realized you can make a terrible movie out of a terrible war very easily.

I did not attend these films as I do not think that popular entertainments about such topics have much of a chance of transcending the moment in which they were created. I will stick to Frontline, Bill Moyer's Journal, and other options to continue to explore the issues surrounding our nation's fantastic blunder.

1. Redacted
This Brian De Palma film, savaged by Film Comment, was given only a six day bow at the Landmark. It may represent the film industry hitting rock bottom when it comes to its depiction of the war. I would not know, since I avoided it as one avoids an open sewer.

2. No End in Sight
Now, this one I should have been seen, and I may still rent it and digest it (with the help of some form of hard liquor). This lauded documentary, about our new eternal war in the Middle East and the corporations sponsoring it, hit Baltimore in the dog days of August. At that time, I was confronting another cycle in the edu-mill. There I was, sweating to death, at a historic personal low, and Baltimore's film exhibitors ask me to go see a movie called "No End in Sight?" Sorry, guys.

3. Rendition
Why is Reese Witherspoon so emotively overacting in all the trailers for this film? I never found out. A serious and depressing topic made into a glossy Hollywood film. I chose not to Pick Flick, and I was not alone. This was one was technially not about Iraq, but what the heck...

4. In the Valley of Elah
Paul Haggis received an Oscar for his last film, which it did not deserve (ask anyone outside of LA). To not go to this film not only said you don't want to see any more lame movies about a deadly serious war, it also allowed you to have revenge on Paul Haggis. I, for one, could not pass that up.

5. The Kingdom
Jamie Foxx and the gang cook up another hot and sexy thriller, this time based on current events. This is the kind of film I often attend with my father on a lark, and even he didn't want to see this one.