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Like many another political junkie, I have been diverted from my usual diet of movies by the ongoing soap opera of the election. This may go on for a while. So in the absence of serious film comment, I will briefly review my recent viewing and offer a few recommendations.

Top recommendation unquestionably goes to Generation Kill, the new HBO miniseries from David Simon and Ed Burns -- creators of The Wire -- that follows a Marine unit through the first three weeks of the Iraq War. When compared to documentaries like Occupation: Dreamland and Gunner Palace, it’s realer than real. Scripted word for word out of the nonfiction reporting by embedded Rolling Stone journalist Evan Wright, it is impeccably acted and utterly involving. As with The Wire, however, getting involved takes some work, absorbing a large cast in chaotic action, while gradually learning to make sense of the communal lingo and behavior of the hard young men. You are thrown into the midst of a situation and have to sort it out for yourself, much as the Marines themselves have to do. A tip -- visit the HBO website, where you can sort out the characters, their ranks and relationships, humvee by humvee. The glossary helps too. Though clearly critical of the unclear mission, and without blinking at the reality of their actions and attitudes, this series clearly supports the troops, in the sense of making us aware of exactly what we are asking of them. The view is intimate, but just as much admiring as appalled. For non-HBO subscribers, the dvd will be available in mid-December.

If you are on HBO, then one documentary to look for is The Black List, tremendously moving and informative, just twenty talking heads of well-known African-Americans from Chris Rock to Colin Powell, but extremely well shot and edited. Elvis Mitchell is the unseen and unheard interviewer, while Timothy Greenfield-Sanders directs. (Also, Alex Gibney’s Oscar-winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side, debuts on HBO Monday 9/29, one of the most painful must-see films ever. The dvd releases the next day. My review is here.)

It’s always nice to have at least one show to look forward to week by week, with soap opera immersion, and for me these days that show is Mad Men, now in the midst of its second season on AMC, with the first season available on dvd. The characters are as soapy as you could ask for -- you really want to find out what happens to them next -- but the real charm of the piece is its time-capsule capture of a particular period and place, a Madison Avenue advertising firm in the early Sixties. In a way, it’s like a tv spinoff of Billy Wilder’s The Apartment, a longtime favorite of mine.

For once in the 8+ years I’ve been a subscriber, Netflix is making money on me these days, minimizing their postage and processing expenses as I fail to watch and return the disks I have on hand. One I did get around to recently is Brand Upon the Brain (2007, MC-79). Guy Maddin certainly has an identifiable brand upon his brain, like no other, a herky-jerky black-&-white style that harks back to the heyday of silent films and surrealism. He grounds his flights of Grand Guignol fantasy firmly in autobiography (the main character is called “Guy Maddin”) and claims they are “97% true.” Well, maybe he didn’t grow up in a lighthouse where his parents ran an orphanage. And maybe his father wasn’t a mad scientist who distilled a rejuvenating nectar from the brains of the orphans, or his mother didn’t wield the lighthouse light to search out every sexual secret of her son and daughter. And maybe the son and daughter didn’t have polymorphously perverse relations with a boy and girl pair of twin teen detectives. But it’s all surprisingly plausible and coherent in a funhouse sort of way. If you have a notion to give Maddin’s retro avant-garde stylings a try, this is a good place to start. It’s plenty weird, but you can get into it.

The Counterfeiters

Winner of this year’s Oscar for Best Foreign Film, this German docudrama is a worthy successor to The Lives of Others in its historical evocation of the moral dilemmas propounded by authoritarian evil. Stefan Ruzowitzky adapts a nonfiction memoir into a story about inmates of a Nazi concentration camp recruited for their artistic, printing, or banking skills into a counterfeiting scheme to ruin Allied economies by flooding them with false currency. They realize that their survival, and even comfort, is bought at the risk of extending the war, so while they do produce more than 130 million pounds, subtle sabotage keeps them from perfecting the dollar, just long enough for their camp to be liberated in 1945. Karl Markovics is remarkable as the seemingly amoral artist and con man who takes to the task as to the masterpiece of his craft. The film is swift and continuously engrossing, while remaining even-handed and morally complex. It does not wallow in the awfulness of the Holocaust, but reveals it in short, strong strokes of heart-piercing sharpness, then gets on with the question of how and why you might survive in such a surreal situation of total risk. What it comes down to is the same wisdom shared by the wonderful characters of Bunk and Omar in The Wire: “Man’s gotta have a code.” (2008, dvd, n.) *7+* (MC-78.)

Sweet Land

This fine indie debut by writer-director Ali Selim wins my Truth in Titling award; it is indeed sweet and the land is indeed the dominant character. Making the absolute most of its tiny budget, the film recreates Norwegian immigrant life in 1920s Minnesota in a manner that is both believable and picturesque. Though there are some familiar faces in supporting roles (Alan Cumming, Ned Beatty, John Heard), the two leads were previously unknown to me. Elizabeth Reaser is beautiful and winning as the strong-willed mail order bride (like an unobnoxious Andie Macdowell), and Tim Guinee is stoic and hunky as the taciturn farmer for whom she is destined. Though utterly predictable every step of the way, this story of a slow-burning romance emerging from an arranged marriage still charms, with relevant subtexts of religion, xenophobia, and socialism. And it doesn’t hurt that this lovely film recalls two even better, particular favorites of mine: Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven, and Jan Troell’s magnificent diptych, The Emigrants/The New Land, starring Liv Ullmann and Max von Sydow and still criminally unreleased on home video. Sweet Land is a little film that plays big, and is worth seeking out. (2006, dvd, n.) *7* (MC-75.)