by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

ABSOLUT WARHOLA (2001)
*½/****
directed by Stanislaw Mucha

There is, believe it or not, an Andy Warhol museum in the remote Slovenian town of Medzilaborce; sadly, director Stanislaw Mucha can't scare up much of a reason to know about it. Essentially a stomp-the-hicks number, his film takes great pains to mock the residents of Warhol's ancestral home, who, though not quite sure why these paintings are supposed to be important, are nevertheless pleased to have such a famous relative and native son. But as Absolut Warhola heavy-handedly contrasts the guileless and homey Warholas–who prattle on about everything from the television and the relative merits of Lenin and Stalin–with the ultra-urbane art objects enshrined in the leaky museum, the film backfires on itself: it makes Warhol seem less interesting by showing how little he matters to people who live outside an urban cultural elite.

by Travis Mackenzie Hoover

THE LAST JUST MAN
***½/****
directed by Steven Silver

The Last Just Man is a conventional but engrossing account of the appalling UN SNAFU in Rwanda, told from the point of view of the scapegoat who tried to stop it. Canadian Lt. Gen. Roméo Dallaire had little field experience when he headed into Rwanda–he likened it to sending a fireman in prevention to a four-alarm blaze–and discovered, when the country was on the verge of erupting, that his superiors would refuse to get involved. Smarting from the debacle in Somalia, they were skittish about sending troops in, but as the ruling Hutus take out their historical animus against the Tutsis (manufactured decades before by brutal Belgian colonists), their self-protection left Dallaire and the Tutsis at the centre of the apocalypse.