A white room, a shabby desk, feeble light seeping through a window: The set of Alison MacLean and Tobias Perse's new documentary, Persons of Interest, is deceptively bland. But as 12 stories unfold within its confines -- the narrators are Arab and Muslim immigrants who endured the terror and confusion of post-September 11 detention -- the room begins to resemble less a blank stage set than an existential interrogation cell, a prison block, a waiting room out of Franz Kafka's The Trial.

As I staggered out of Zhang Yimou's latest epic, Hero, I found myself puzzling over a question bordering on blasphemy: Can a film be too beautiful? I felt a twinge of shame at the thought. After all this time banging my spoon over an unrelenting diet of grey, cinematic gruel -- this year's spate of political documentaries -- how could I whine about Zhang's dishy film? The murderous ballet of the fight scenes, the blistering beauty of the cast, the optic nerve–sizzling colors -- Zhang's art-house chopsocky flick verged on visual rapture, yes. But fickle ingrate that I am, I longed for my gruel, its gluey political convictions, the quiet devastation it wreaks on one's innards.