Shot in the rough, 16-millimeter style of a low-budget documentary, Tigerland marked director Joel Schumacher's welcomed return to simplicity after a slew of bloated blockbusters such as Batman & Robin. In revitalising Schumacher's directorial talent, Tigerland--which is partially inspired by the Danish Dogme 95 movement of no-frills filmmaking--suggested that one solution to Hollywood's moribund "product" was to abandon excess, focus on essentials, and assemble a fine cast of unknown actors to make it all worthwhile. To that end, Tigerland also marked the deserving arrival of Irish actor Colin Farrell as Hollywood's hottest new discovery.

Its story never leaves US soil, so Tigerland differs from such in-country Vietnam films as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. Instead, it's about the anxieties and moral dilemmas that arise from the anticipation of death and killing. These roiling emotions are focused on the character of Private Bozz (Farrell), whose insubordination betrays a singular knack for leadership during infantry training at Fort Polk, Louisiana, in 1971. Part RP McMurphy and part Cool Hand Luke, Bozz is a defiant maverick, barely tolerated by his superiors, challenged or revered by his fellow grunts and ultimately honed into a soldier of remarkable promise. An intense final week in the live-ammo training ground nicknamed "Tigerland" galvanises the platoon and Bozz's place in it, and although the film (partially based on co-writer Ross Klavan's own experience) lacks the emotional impact of Platoon, it deals quite poignantly with the internal conflicts that must be waged before external warfare can be endured. --Jeff Shannon, Amazon.com

Til Human Voices Wake Us is a ghostly romance from Australia. Guy Pearce plays a brooding psychiatrist who must go back to his family's summer home to bury his father and settle some lingering childhood traumas. Helena Bonham Carter is the mysterious woman he meets on his journey, twice: once in a fleeting encounter on a train, again as she takes a dive off a trestle into a river. By the way, she's amnesiac--Guy Pearce just can't shake that Memento feel. For viewers susceptible to this kind of thing, director Michael Petroni's lofty literary tone might just work (the breathless pauses are broken by quotations from TS Eliot); otherwise, it will look like a skeletal take on a potentially interesting subject. The two fine actors give it a go and they're always good to look at, but finally one wonders what they saw in this very slim proposition. --Robert Horton