SpunkySelfTwitter It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Brooklynn There's a more than satisfactory amount of boom-boom in the movie's trim running time.

JohnAU1965 Reading some reviews on this, I'm a little confused. The subject matter was dealt with effectively. The interviewees spoke frankly (if not specifically honestly) about their experiences. Was there some deep resolution to this? Hardly. The little fish fried and the middle- sized wandered away to promotions and congratulations, whilst the biggest (Rumsfeld, Bush & Cheney) avoided everything.Beyond that, the thing I found the most interesting was the personalities involved. After watching Camp X-Ray, some reviewers said that Kristen Stewart's character was impossible to have been that of a military person. The vulnerabilities and flaws she displayed as a human being apparently aren't SOP for the US military. Well folks, here's a reality check for you. Stewart's failings were nothing compared to those interviewed.From Brigadier General Janis Karpinski down to PFC Lynndie England, I saw a whole bunch of whining, simple cowards intent on mitigating their own crimes by dropping hellfire onto anyone else in their range. Not quite the shiny, perfect robots that some people seem to think should be present in movies regarding the US military.This doco was a critical piece in the puzzle that was the debacle of Iraq, the excesses of Bagram and Gitmo and all the other less publicised 'detention facilities' spread across the world. The 'world police' need some Internal Affairs action it would seem.The most amusing thing of it all was the oft-repeated line of 'I was only following orders'. Where have we heard that before? Oh yeah, that's right. 1946, Nuremberg. Lucky these were the 'good guys'.

dan697 'Standard Operating Procedure' is a hard-hitting doc made by famed non-fiction American filmmaker Errol Morris. Morris has been making documentaries since the late 70s and has since become synonymous with the form of filmmaking. His latest film covers events that occurred in 2003 in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, which saw American soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners in a number of humiliating and torturous ways.Morris' authorial stamp is made very clear on the film from early on through the use of talking head interviews and reconstructed footage. One of his more famous films, 'The Thin Blue Line', was actually rejected from consideration for the Oscar category of non-fiction film because it has too much reconstructed footage in it. The most important facet of the documentary, though, is the inclusion of a great number of photographs that depict all the heinous acts that took place in the prison – all taken by three of the soldiers in the prison of their own free will. In short, the photographs depict naked Iraqi men in sexually humiliating circumstances with the American soldiers smiling with their thumbs up right next to them. Other photographs include a dead Iraqi man in a body bag, a picture of a bloodied prisoner after being attacked by a dog and more.The photos not only exposed the whole scandal but they were hard evidence that it actually happened. This is something that's often spoken about in the documentary with people saying that the photographs are an objective representation of what happened and everything you need to know is in the frame. But this logic is then complicated when we discover that some photos have been cropped and manipulated. One interviewee even states that the photographs are taken out of context and you need more information to understand what the photo's representing. The whole idea of objectivity and representation seems to interestingly reflect the function of a documentary (to re/present 'reality') which is undoubtedly a sub-text Morris was going for. The big question, though, is why did these people take these incredibly condemning photographs of themselves?To be clear, this was a ridiculously stupid thing for the American soldiers to do – it's like a bank robber taking a picture of themselves robbing a bank. When you're actually watching the talking head interviews with the people that committed the acts you can't help but feel they're confused. They try to justify themselves saying that they were taking the pictures with the intent on exposing the mistreatment of these people, but it certainly didn't pan out that way. And the limp excuses for the thumbs up and smiles were 'I never know what to do with my hands in pictures' and 'When someone takes a photo, you smile, it's normal'. It's as if they don't understand the grand severity of the ethical injustices they've just committed, it's really incredible. Morris presents their shallow and ignorant defences on a plate, letting the viewer independently judge these people.There's quite a spread of interviewees throughout the documentary and it doesn't take long before you're able to distinguish who's smart, who's reliable, who's experienced and so on. One that stands out is Brent Pack who was in charge of going through the hundreds of photos and creating a timeline out of them. He is a seasoned, ex-Desert Storm field agent who, from experience, tells us that the ethics and rules during war time become 'fuzzy'. He explains that these soldiers were being shelled day in and day out whilst they witnessed fellow soldiers come back scarred from the horrors of war. The anxiety and frenzy of war clearly resulted in contempt towards anything Iraqi and Pack puts this forward as a sort of quasi-justification.But the real shock of this documentary has yet to be revealed. It comes in a short sequence nearing the end when pictures are showed on screen and Pack labels all of them either 'Criminal Activity' or 'Standard Operating Procedure' (or S.O.P.). Many of the pictures are identified as 'Criminal Activity' because they depict a soldier sexually humiliating a prisoner or something similar. However, there was one scenario in particular covered in the film about a prisoner that was told to stand up straight or else the wires that were tied to him would electrocute him. Except the wires had no electric current running through them, so this was deemed 'S.O.P.' – in other words 'legal' and 'just', because it was a means to extract information from a prisoner. This was just one instance of prisoner treatment that was deemed S.O.P. and it's a truly stunning revelation made by the film. It's further exacerbated by the fact that some of the prisoners weren't even terrorists, they were bakers or welders taken from their homes.The unethical acts committed by these people is the focal point of this film but I feel that Morris wants the headline to be that some of these things are actually permitted by the U.S. military. I can't help but feel that's the take-home truth from this documentary. Overall, this film really hits you in the jaw with some excruciatingly heavy subject matter but it's worth it by how well-crafted, expositional, and informative it is.My Rating: 7.9/10I have a bunch of other film/music reviews up here: https://somespiltmilk.wordpress.com/

MacAindrais Standard Operating Procedure (2008) ***1/2 What's in a picture? They say its worth a thousand words, but how many words are what's not in a picture worth. How about thousands of pictures? That conundrum is one of the major foci of Errol Morris, the eccentric genius documentarian's new project, Standard Operating Procedure. Although I was not engaged as I was with Morris's other works, Standard Operating Procedure is still a brilliant and fascinating look at the Abu Ghraib photo scandal.Morris interviews through the interrotron numerous members of the staff at Abu Ghraib prison. They give their thoughts on their complicity in acts of torture, and reflect back on their experiences. One of the film's major attractions is Lynndie English, that now infamous young woman so maliciously captured on film.What comes across most intently is that they were just doing what they were told. Those orders always come from off camera left or right. No one above Staff Sergeant was ever charged with anything. This is a point the documentary tries to drive home. In any bureaucratic structure, the big dogs never take the fall. You always sacrifice your little men, your pawns. If people knew what was really going on at the top, they would most surely revolt, or at the very least make a stink, and that would be it for you.Morris interviews one person who claims she took pictures because she knew it was wrong, to show the world. Is she telling the truth? Well she also discusses how it was "kinda fun" sometimes. She is probably guilty and innocent on all counts.Morris delves into his subject matter with his usual detective style. He says very little, and of course never ever dares show his face on camera. He only prompts from time to time. He has a style that is uniquely his own in the documentary world. I did not find Standard Operating Procedure to be on the same level as say The Fog of War or Gates of Heaven. But then again how many are? This is a more than worthy addition to the Morris repertoire.

rdgreid What a crashing bore of a movie on a topic that deserved a much better treatment. Morris displays his customary heavy handedness in driving home the trivial and obvious points with excess, unneeded imagery. If you want to see a compelling story on this issue, told with much more flare and skill, see Taxi to the Dark Side. Don't waste your time on this, unless you need a good snooze. On display are Morris's usual techniques, employed to similar head-scratching ends as in Fog of War. At least there, we had an interesting character at the heart of the story and Morris lucked out with some poignant on-screen moments from McNamara. Here, he demonstrates that he has no intellectual or critical filter with which to sift facts. So, when one interviewee mentions the three cameras used to take the pictures at Abu G, we get a special effects image of each camera model floating in space as if this were some revelatory moment. When it is revealed that during an amnesty period after the Abu G scandal was revealed many photos and other documents were handed in a shredded, we get, not just a slow mo of shredded paper falling through the air, we get also get an entire cell block filled with bits of paper. In other words, every moment is punctuated with Morris's subtext: you're just too dumb to get what you just heard and I'm so enthralled with my movie making skills that I'm going to beat you over the head with this. This is not documentary film-making. This is rampant narcissism.