When I Came Home

There's a lot over coverage in the media right now over how VA hospitals are failing to adequately serve veterans returning from Iraq. When I Came Home is a documentary about this issue, but I think it inadvertently brings up another issue. It's the story a young man who is promised a better life by a large, faceless institution--the military in this case--and that institution falls short on its promise. But this film inadvertently brings up that most of these troops are not in Iraq for ideas of "love of country," but for a package of benefits promised them in army recruiting offices.

Stuck in my head

Six months after Telluride, these are the films still stuck in my mind: The amazing dance hall scene of Grémillion's Maldonne. The patient humor of Dodsworth. The final shot of Julia Loktev's Day Night Day Night. And teenagers sitting in a circle at a community center trying and failing to articulate feelings in Civic Life.