Very seldom am I greeted with an opening scene so shocking that I look on open jawed at the vision I am seeing. To Arabic pilots are flying a plane whilst having a debate about how upon completing their mission they will receive a certain amount of virgins, while one claims to have been offered a thousand, the other was just offered a hundred. How would they get to the bottom of this? By a phone call of course, then it's straight on the phone to Osama , "How many virgins will we get for completing this mission?" No more than 20 between you comes the reply. Debating the reality of what they have just been told, the pilots announce over the intercom that there has been a change of plans and that they are now heading for the Bahamas. Sadly this falls on deaf ears and a mob of angry passenger break through the door, and you realise (after some pretty strong hints) that this is supposed to be the first plane to hit the World Trade Centre. If you want to cause controversy, why not make fun of one of the most known disasters of recent years?

Uwe Boll a German film-maker makes no apologies with his opening and moves on to cause further offence, this controversial character jests with disasters and later in the same movie makes a strong statement to two other American disasters, Waco and Columbine; cult followers are massacred, as are children. Of course he changes the scenes slightly delivering the child massacre into a Nazi World theme park in which he is one of the central characters. Not only does the director cause general offence, he goes on to imply that he gets aroused by reporters and children, does this man have no shame?

I'm sorry to confess I actually rather liked this atrocity of a movie, I'm not advocating any aspect of the film, but in a case of being so bad it's good you kind of have to make some allowances. Every fifteen minutes I was pretty much given reason to smile and look away from the screen trying to tell myself I really do not like this movie.

The movie follows several strands that all connect together as the movie progresses, chiefly following Postal Dude (Zack Ward) who discovers his incredibly overweight wife is having sex with pretty much anyone who just so happens to walk past their trailer. At the same time we see the rise in power of a terrorist cluster, and the finally a cult that is in trouble for tax evasion. All of who descend upon the Nazi Theme Park to celebrate the launch in the US of Krotchy dolls. Involved in the celebration is celebrity midget Verne Troyer.

If you are the sort of person that has stern views of American politics, then no doubt something about Postal might appeal to you. But it's pretty far off the genre of conventional humour, and as many people that will enjoy the movie, twice as many will hate it.

Postal is an incredibly sick and adult movie, with scenes of gross out sex, unusual sexual relations, slandering of religion, and odd pairings of key real life characters. Combine with this the fact that the movie is clearly very low budget. Then try to understand the casting, Zack Ward has been in a string of popular movies for over 20 years beginning with A Christmas Story and more recently Transformers. Then you have one time A-Lister Michael Pare, Austin Powers Verne Troyer, Seymour Cassel an actor who's movies include Indecent Proposal and The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou; when you have dealt with the familiar sounding names then there are the oh so familiar faces, nearly every scene has someone you recognise from another movie or popular TV show, there are no unknowns here, none at all. How does Boll manage to garner reasonable cast to appear in bad movies?

Despite the fact that I laughed on several occasions, I admit I'm a bit sick; and for the normal everyday movie viewer this far too far off whack to make enjoyable viewing for most; and rather like most other Uwe Boll movies this one is probably best avoided.

I watched the two men trying desperately to survive under all that rubble, their bodies crushed by the debris, and I was moved to tears by two lives struggling to hold on. I had heard the story of these two men before, but a story you read is different from a movie where you get to experience it first-hand with the actors. Now I fully understand the tragedy in a way I never could before. The acting in this film was perfect, and honest to a fault, and the story played out as very real, except for one tiny point that bothers me.

After the policemen arrived at the Trade Center, they were walking, not running through the corridors between the towers, practically strolling as if on a casual Sunday walk in the park. This may or may not have been the real-life situation, but it did not strike me as particularly real. If I had been one of those cops beneath those towers at that moment, I would not have been walking to assist people, I would have been flat-out running. However, in real life, there were moments of powerful confusion on that day, that may have caused these officers to be unaware of the severe dangers they faced at that moment.

The film displays those moments of confusion very well. For instance, in one scene, people were speculating that Israel had been blown off the map, when of course we all know that it had not. People thought that only one tower had been hit, and until they saw the double damage, they would not believe it to be true. These confusions made the movie more real because there actually were confusions in the real life events, at least until it was all over with anyway.

The horrors experienced by the families of these two men really helped make this movie come alive, with an excellent supporting cast, special FX that was obviously top of the line, and that ever-present, ominous smashing sound that represented the bodies of jumpers hitting the pavement. News footage from the actual day was perfectly intertwined with the film footage, in a seamless marriage of movie and reality. If ever I wanted to see an ultra-realistic film, this had to be it.

We often look at our own lives, and our daily trials and tribulations, with the "poor me" mentality, but the old adage about there always being someone worse off than me, came to life in this movie with startling clarity. It seems that there really is always someone worse off than myself, but I cannot help but wonder who could possibly be worse off than those two men were that day. All in all, I find this to be an extraordinary movie depicting a horribly tragic event in world history. I give it a perfect ten on my film ratings scale, even with that tiny problem at the start of the film, and I fully recommend this movie to anyone who remembers 9/11. It is a genuinely moving experience showing us a heroism that you will not soon forget.

So in that unrequited state, I settled in to watch “ World Trade Center ” hoping to find the door to the club, walk through it and become a New Yorker. Unfortunately, it was nowhere to be found. There was no collective emotion to connect with in Oliver Stone's movie.

“ World Trade Center ” tells the story of human spirit and emotional turmoil that plays out for both the direct victims and their families when enormous tragedy strikes. Shortly after rushing into the burning world trade center, Port Authority Policemen, John McLaughlin and Will Jimeno found themselves trapped underneath the rubble of the buildings. In the immediate aftermath of the collapse, their families are tortured for agonizing hours waiting for word on whether their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons are alive or dead. The scenes alternate between the families and the two heroic policemen who are using every bit of spirit they can muster to stave off death. Stone's device of displaying the emotions of the policemen and their families as mirrors of each other was effective, but did nothing to connect me to 9/11.

The surprising failure of “ World Trade Center ” is that it didn't actually need 9/11 as its backdrop. The same story could have been told about the miner that was stuck in the Sago coal pit or any other human drama where the emotions of the victims and their families are explored. To that end, “ World Trade Center ” certainly was a poignant movie, but it fell completely short of what it should have been.

As a point of comparison, I did get a taste of the collective emotional experience I have been yearning to share when I saw “Flight 93”. As opposed to “ World Trade Center ”, I felt anxiety, fear, sorrow, rage and even some vengeance when the heroes of Flight 93 took control of the plane and drove it into the ground. For a couple of brief hours, I was there in New York , in Washington , on the planes, on Flight 93. I was sharing a tragic emotional experience with all Americans that day. The difference was that “Flight 93” told the 9/11 story from the perspective of the all encompassing enormity it was, rather than from the perspective of individual victims.

As heart-wrenching as McLaughlin and Jimeno's stories are, 9/11 is too big and touched too many individuals, to limit the scope of this story to 2 families.

"United 93," helmed by British director Paul Greengrass (The Bourne Supremacy, Bloody Sunday) is a chilling account of what transpired during its fateful flight. The San Francisco-bound Boeing 757 plane (Flight 93), through the courageous act of its crew and passengers, was the only (out of four) flight that was able to thwart its captors' grim intent of turning planes into hurtling missiles.

The film, which features little-known actors and real-life figures (who are playing themselves in the movie) as well as airline and military personnel, was shown to the public with little bombastic fanfare that usually accompany big-budget Hollywood movies -- perhaps a more fitting and more respectful tribute to the plucky crew and passengers of U93, who were unwittingly thrust into the ghastly business of grappling with terrorists while everybody else was still struggling to understand the magnitude of that day's horrifying events.

My friends and I had planned to watch a different movie (at the time I had no firm idea about U93's play date) but when I saw U93 was on, I knew this was one movie I needed to watch.

With all that's going on these days (e.g., the failed terror plot in UK, unfinished business in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, etc.), U93 -- which runs like a documentary -- hardly offers its viewers an opportunity for closure. But like everybody else, I was curious to see what directors would do to cover the grim events of that day. Greengrass' spare, no-nonsense approach offers no sugarcoating nor does it attempt to milk blatantly sentimental, cinematic or righteous mileage out of the movie's grim subject. The cast was effective and the story inescapably gripping.

Another notable point was the way both sides were presented: the desperate passengers and the frantic hijackers locked in a deadly battle to wrench control of the plane -- and with that the chance to survive or to die for a reprehensible cause. Shots of terrified crew and passengers (praying, saying their goodbyes, crying, hatching plans to fight back) are interlaced with glimpses of anxious hijackers uttering fervent invocations as they struggle to bring their plans into fruition.

It's also interesting to note that, based on RottenTomatoes' tomatometer, U93 scored well among film critics (90%), with a few declaring U93 as one of the best features they seen so far this year (2006). Although some critics haven't checked in yet, WTC's rating is pegged at 72%.