by MATTHEW HAYS

The Fog of War Though hardly an uplifting or cheery film, Errol Morris's latest qualifies as one of the can't-miss movies at this year's festival. Morris, considered one of the most respected non-fiction filmmakers in the world, has taken former U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's autobiography and transformed it into a profound reflection on war and peace. While watching, it's impossible not to draw parallels between the boneheaded warmongers in the JFK and Johnson administrations and the current nutjobs running the Bush II White House. McNamara's recollections of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War will send chills up and down your spine; it is alarming how close the world came to the nuclear brink, and McNamara bore witness to this madness.

Kitchen Stories Another treat at the festival is Norwegian Bent Hamer's engaging and off-kilter comedy Kitchen Stories. The director, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Jörgen Bergmark, calls humanity's relationship to technology on its sheer absurdity. Here, a man is asked to sit high above an aged widower's kitchen so that he can observe the widower's behaviour - all in an effort to gauge how to improve kitchen technology! The film is as funny as its premise sounds, and Hamer has drawn endearing performances from his leads, Tomas Norström and Joachim Calmeyer.

The Smith Family It was 10 years ago that the landmark feature Silverlake Life painstakingly documented the demise of one gay couple battling AIDS. Now, Tasha Oldman takes us into the lives of a Mormon family struggling with HIV. The family was seemingly straight as a board and button-down conservative; until one day, husband and father revealed he was a closeted homosexual. After Mrs. Smith began feeling ill, tests revealed she had contracted HIV from her husband. Through interviews and portraits of various family gatherings, Oldman indicates how father, mother, and two sons deal with their father's closeted duplicity, mom and dad's mortality and reconciling all of this with their church. Much of this film is very moving, however a great deal of it is marred by an entirely unnecessary musical score which is grating in its efforts to manipulate. When will documentarians learn that much of this material can stand on its own, without an alternately plucky and maudlin background score, telling us what to feel?

Proteus Based on a true 18th century story, John Greyson's latest film finds the filmmaker in top form. Despite taboos around homosexuality and the racial divide, two men embark on a decade-long love affair. When they're found out, they end up being tried on sodomy charges, leading to tragic results. Greyson collaborated on the screenplay with South African activist Jack Lewis, with glowing results. Proteus combines Greyson's keen storytelling skills with his penchant for political button pushing, making for a beautiful period love story.

La Face cachée de la lune (The Far Side of the Moon) Since his debut feature, Le Confessional (1995), Robert Lepage has seemed to struggle as a filmmaker trapped in a theatre artist's mind and body. With La Face, Lepage releases his inner theatrical director and actor, simply translating his famous stage work to the screen with minimal alteration. The results are an intriguing minimalism, a stark landscape upon which Lepage can explore his strange and otherworldly litany of ideas. Lepage groupies will swoon.

Ascension Montreal filmmaker Karim Hussain follows up his feature Subconscious Cruelty with Ascension, an equally strange and obtuse movie that will leave audiences with approximately two options: they can either work to tune into Hussain's wavelength or run screaming from the cinema. The filmmaker gets extra points for his fine casting; Barbara Ulrich and Ilona Elkin are joined by Cannes Best Actress award-winner Marie-Josée Croze. Hussain's narrative runs something like this: three women climb up some industrial-like stairs to the top of an abandoned tower, where they hope to lock horns with the entity that destroyed the creator of the universe (or so the press kit tells me). Some of Hussain's dialogue is intriguing, in an almost Pinteresque fashion, but, as Ascension unreels, one has to wonder what Hussain's pharmacist has been feeding him.

The Weather Underground A kickass doc comes in the form of The Weather Underground, an insightful look back at this fierce group of radicals, who went about planting bombs in an effort to overthrow the American government. While now largely relegated to footnote status in the history books, directors Sam Green and Bill Siegel have intelligently worked to portray members of the Weather Underground, without ever deifying or demonizing them. A fascinating glimpse into a time long gone.

Il etait une fois… Spag (Once Upon a Time… Spag) Montreal filmmaker and musician Sandro Forte has compiled a wicked montage of various scenes from famous spaghetti westerns, in this rousing hommage to the sub-genre. There are also a few interviews with fans, something we probably could have done without. (One person explains their love of the films' non-stop action and violence - isn't this obvious?) Still, Forte's obvious love and lust for Sergio Leone and Ennio Morricone will make this screening and live musical performance even more thrilling for Spag-buffs.

Collage d'Hollywood In a section I'd dub the short-but-sublime, Montreal experimental filmmaker and Concordia film prof Richard Kerr offers a tremendous short, in which he ingeniously recycles numerous sci-fi and horror movie trailers. When meshed together, said genre film trailers create an uneasy collage of the filmmakers' collective imagination, one overtaken with scenes of the Apocalypse, death and destruction. A mesmerizing film that demands to be watched again and again. Iconic images whiz by so quickly you'll be left desperate to identify which film the glimpses have been lifted from.

As well as offering a solid selection of films, the New Fest is also featuring various special events. The highest profile ones are well known, among them the Werner Herzog retrospective and the Peter Greenaway master class. But the fest should be praised for various lectures it's programmed; my personal recommendation would be to attend the talk of artist Rafael Lozano-Hemmer on Monday, Oct. 13, who will present and discuss his latest work, "Amodal Suspension." Lozano-Hemmer has been a trailblazer in developing art installations that transform public spaces through performance.

The New Film Festival opens today, Oct. 9, and runs until Oct. 19. Info: 847-1242 or www.fcmm.com

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