A lot of military stories ladle on audio-visual artifice, in an attempt to create an impactful audience identification with the disorienting nature of war or its psychological after-effects. “Return,” however, is a subjective document that plays out against the banality of everyday existence, wherein crisis unfolds in slow motion, and sometimes almost imperceptible strokes. The film stars Linda Cardellini as Kelli, a Rust Belt supply line soldier who comes back from a tour of duty and experiences a vague, free-floating sense of dislocation from her plumber husband Mike (Michael Shannon) and two young girls, and in the din of domestic homecoming dramas, the film is a striking, humane, low-fi offering….

Title: The Hunters Directed by: Chris Bryant Starring: Steven Waddington, Diana Agron, Chris Briant, Tony Becker, Terence Knox Running Time: 111 minutes, Rated R A group of men spend their weekends together at a little spot in the wilderness called Fort Goben.  It’s a place where men can be men, and hunt some humans who just happen upon their private sanctuary. Just a typical weekend with the guys. Director Chris Briant plays Le Saint, an Iraq war veteran suffering from PTSD who is trying to live a normal life, and is anxious to use his analysis skills in an investigation into several missing persons cases. When he chooses to meet…

Title: Under Fire: Journalists in Combat Director: Martyn Burke The drums of war, whatever the specific conflicts, almost always create an opportunity for much in the way of collateral damage. Director Martyn Burke’s “Under Fire: Journalists in Combat” takes the psychological temperature of those who would devote their lives to taking the sort of extraordinary risks that modern day war reportage entails. It’s an involving documentary look at a razor’s-edge occupation, as well as the coping mechanisms of the human brain under stress. Burke, himself a veteran of various warfields around the globe, unfurls his movie in a manner that is judiciously crafted to avoid imparting any sense of swaggering…

Title: Hell and Back Again Director: Danfung Dennis Not to suggest that the two are in any way equivalent, but wading through Afghanistan and Iraq war documentaries, whose prevalence and grip on the psyche of the fragile American indie filmmaker is evident at festivals across the nation, is often its own kind of special hell, because subpar storytelling technique is so often brought to bear upon legitimately heartrending stories. The deserving winner of both jury documentary and cinematography awards in the World Cinema category at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, “Hell and Back Again” belies those notions that a nonfiction effort on the subject can’t be artistically minded, and also…

Title: Blades of Blood (AKA: Like the Moon Escaping from the Clouds) Directed by: Joon-Ik Lee Starring: Seong-hyeon Baek, Seung-won Cha and Kim Chang-Wan Running time: 108 minutes, Rated R In 1592, Korea is threatened by Japanese invasion. Mong-hak Lee is a power hungry revolutionist who uses the rebel army to overthrow the government before Japan can take over. A blind swordsman Jung-hak Hwang, the bastard son of a nobleman Gyeong-ja and Lee’s former courtesan Baek-ji are trying to catch up with Mong-hak Lee with reasons of revenge for his wrongdoings, before Lee meets his fate with the impending invasion. I watched this DVD with the English dubbing, which I…

Title: 5 Days of War Director: Renny Harlin Starring: Rupert Friend, Richard Coyle, Emmanuelle Chriqui, Val Kilmer, Heather Graham, Johnathon Schaech, Rade Sherbedgia, Dean Cain, Andy Garcia There are those direct-to-video movies that somehow, rather inexplicably and seemingly unfairly, bypass theaters altogether and arrive on DVD with an entirely unearned stench of career desperation (this was to be the fate of “Slumdog Millionaire,” actually, until Fox Searchlight rescued it from the clutches of Warner Bros., who knew not what they had — or at least not how to market it), and then there are those straight genre programmers that feature a third-tier wrestler-turned-actor, and were never being made with theatrical…

Title: Tekken Directed by: Dwight H. Little Starring: Jon Foo, Kelly Overton, Tamlyn Tomita and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa Running time: 91 Minutes, rated R, available on standard DVD Based on world renowned fighting video games by Namco, the year is 2039 and the world has been ravaged by world war. Territories are now run by corporations, the largest of which is Tekken. The only event that keeps public morale going is watching the Iron Fist tournaments. When Jin Kazama’s mother is murdered, Jin volunteers in the tournament and is set to take vengeance upon the Tekken leader Heihachi Mishima whom he knows was involved. He discovers his mother was once a…

Julian Schnabel’s background as a painter and artist lends his films an undeniable quality lacking in not only many Hollywood studio films but most modern films in general — the ability to summon emotional connection through a sort of dreamlike, non-pandering visual subjectivity. He puts that same evocative stamp on his latest film, Miral, a look at the generations-old Israeli/Palestinian conflict, but it isn’t enough to save what is an inert, self-important script. Based on the semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Rula Jebreal, Miral opens in 1948, with Hind Husseini (Hiam Abbas) coming across and rescuing more than four dozen orphaned kids in East Jerusalem. In the midst of…

Title: In Our Name Writer-director: Brian Welsh Starring: Joanne Froggatt, Mel Raido, Andrew Knott, Chloe-Jayne Wilkinson, Janine Leigh, Shah Amin A British coming-home-from-war drama that toes the line between pedestrian and interesting, though tilting toward the former, ‘In Our Name’ connects chiefly as a gender-shift curiosity given its main focus on a female soldier. Joanne Froggatt’s engaging performance, which picked up the Most Promising Newcomer prize at this past year’s British Independent Film Awards, is the chief selling point of writer-director Brian Welsh’s sophomore outing, which otherwise cycles through the expected interpersonal difficulties of trying to readjust to civilian and married life. ‘In Our Name’ opens with Suzy Jackson (Froggatt) returning…

Title: Platoon – The 25th Anniversary Edition Directed by: Oliver Stone Starring: Charlie Sheen, Willem Dafoe, Tom Berenger, Johnny Depp, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Keith David and Forest Whitaker Running time: 120 minutes, Rated R, Available on Blu-ray It’s been 25 years since the world first experienced Oliver Stone’s Platoon; a raw and surreal depiction of one man’s experience during the Vietnam conflict.  Private Chris Taylor (Sheen) is a college dropout who volunteers for combat in Vietnam.  After facing death and destruction head-on, he deals with inner torment as he struggles to survive his tour and deal with comrades in his platoon after an illegal killing of villagers. Platoon…