2003 Shop Movies

For anyone who ever wondered just what was really going on in the minds of the Brothers Grimm as they penned their fantastic and phantasmagorical tales, New Zealand filmmaker Florian Habicht offers a highly stylized take on some of the most imaginative tales ever penned. Every good fairy tale is pregnant with perversion and rife with ominous subtext. In the land of Woodenhead, however, conventional fairy-tale logic is turned on its head as the human subtleties that often help children relate to these strange stories are forced into the rearview mirror by the overwhelming power of humankind's most twisted instincts. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

Made in the immediate wake of 9/11, this jarring sociopolitical documentary explores Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) action in the Jenin Refugee Camp circa 2002. This area, the program argues, functioned as a nerve center of terrorist activity that gave rise to over 50% of the suicide bombings against Israeli citizens in the years that immediately followed. The film claims that the IDF attempted to minimize Palestinian civilian casualties by fighting house-to-house. In the wake of this struggle, around two dozen men were killed by guerilla ambushes, booby-trapped houses, and snipers, while the Palestinians planted thousands of bombs and killed numerous civilians. Sensing that a new approach was necessary, the IDF decided to raze the terrorist houses with bulldozers - which led to the confiscation of obscene quantities of Palestinian weapons and explosives. This documentary presents evidence that the said events were grossly distorted and inflated by the Palestinians (and, in turn, the global media) to convince the public that the Israelis in fact massacred the Palestinians, when in fact the Israelis were only acting justly and responsibly to protect their citizenry and country - and kept the number of Palestinian casualties to minimal levels as a result. ~ Nathan Southern, Rovi