If Noujaim does have an agenda, it may have to do with debunking the conventions of objectivity and absolute truth to which mainstream journalism still pays lip service. She comes from the cinéma-vérité tradition of D.A. Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus (she co-directed "Startup.com" with Hegedus). Although that documentary style is obsessively interested in depicting reality with as little directorial interference as possible, that's quite different from offering some unitary version of the truth. The more you watch "Control Room" the less certain you feel that you know what really happened during the invasion of Iraq; the one thing you do feel sure of is that television viewers on different sides of the conflict saw different wars. When one Al-Jazeera producer -- a woman who wears Western-style clothing and speaks English with a distinctly North American accent -- tries to explain to an airhead U.S. TV reporter that journalistic objectivity is a kind of "mirage," it's a thoroughly confusing moment: Someone from the Arab world, so notorious for its despotism and intolerance, is lecturing an emissary of Thomas Jefferson's homeland on the value of unfettered freedom of expression. (And is right to do so.)

Amid the chaos of "Control Room," a story emerges that is at once tragic and hopeful. When an Al-Jazeera reporter is killed by U.S. forces in Baghdad, in an incident that has never been adequately explained, CentCom journalists from all parts of the world come together for a heartrending memorial service that makes you feel the profession may still have a mission. Unlikelier still is the friendship that gradually develops between the wisecracking, cynical Ibrahim and Lt. Josh Rushing, the boyish U.S. Army officer who ladles out official spin to the press corps. Gradually, the inherent mutual mistrust of their official capacities gives way to an unmistakable warmth, and the avuncular Arab begins to see the young lieutenant as a sweet, curious and gentle young man (who experiences a remarkable epiphany I won't give away). By the end of the film, Ibrahim has invited Rushing to join him and his wife for dinner -- in Jerusalem. Now that sounds like a movie.

Reeling around: "Twentynine Palms," "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring," "People Say I'm Crazy"

Beyond the Multiplex has been on hiatus for the last month or so (thanks to the two newborn art-film geeks currently slumbering on the couch at BTM world headquarters), so I never got a chance to weigh in on the two short-lived movie controversies of the season, Lars von Trier's "Dogville" and Bruno Dumont's "Twentynine Palms." Oh, darn!

What's striking is how quickly both of those movies disappeared, meaning that nobody cares what I think. For the record, "Twentynine Palms" represents a familiar pattern we'll call the Zabriskie Point Complex, when some art-damaged Euro filmmaker comes to America, gets seduced by the grandeur of the Southwestern desert, and forgets that movies need something more than empty space. It does get credit for combining Wim Wenders' "The State of Things" and Wes Craven's "The Hills Have Eyes," something that hadn't been done before. I still haven't seen "Dogville," but trust me, I'm really excited about the DVD. (Guy Maddin fans, I promise to catch up with "The Saddest Music in the World" by next time, too.)

One of April's movies that hasn't disappeared, and for good reason, is Korean director Kim Ki-duk's "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter ... and Spring," which sounds in the abstract like pure spinach-cinema, but turns out to be among the most wrenching, and most rewarding, films I've seen so far this year. It takes place entirely on and around a tiny Buddhist monastery on a raft floating in a remote rural lake, but the thing is, that makes it seem like it's going to be slow and contemplative. It's actually not. This story of a young monk's journey into manhood encompasses grief, torment, lust (including some really hot sex), murder, death and spiritual redemption. It's what "Crime and Punishment" would be like if Dostoevsky had been a Korean poet.

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