'The Counterfeiters' (2007) directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky

A fine, fine film. Go to the video store, borrow it now. It's pretty heavy going, but an excellent film. It's basically about a Nazi counterfeiting operation within the Sachsenhausen concentration camp where specifically skilled Jews were made to counterfeit money to fund the Nazis. It was a compelling and deeply affecting story. The performances are really strong and the film itself looks great; I'm not sure if it was shot on digital but it has a very grainy quality which actually works well for the film.

'JCVD' (2008) directed by Mabrouk El Mechri

A weird sort of film where Jean-Claude Van Damme plays a version of himself in a fictional narrative, a narrative that is a lot like 'Dog Day Afternoon', except a really dumbed down version. It's a postmodern take on a Van Damme film, I guess, although it doesn't really work. It has interesting moments in it, but these are chiefly when Van Damme is going about his mundane life - talking to his agent, posing for photographs with fans or just sitting in a taxi. Ironically, it's the central story about a bank robbery that that feels tired and cliched and almost superfluous to the film. It's clunky and pretty derivative and really detracts from what makes the film interesting, which is seeing Van Damme as the ordinary guy that he is. Similarly, the courtroom scenes are pretty cliched too. I guess the film suffers from some average writing, which ensures that what could have been a pretty interesting, perhaps even a 'Being John Malkovich' type film, is relegated to just B-grade action crap. Which is either really ironic and super-postmodern. Or just crap.