Now a famous film-maker a while back said something about 'Everything you need to know about film you can learn in a week.' He was being generous. You can learn it in 10 minutes.

The following 10 films are chosen because they shed light on the forces at work within our lives, this very moment. They use satire and metaphor to approach the truths that would otherwise be too difficult to understand, or too terrifying to comprehend.

FLOW: For Love Of Water, a new film by Irena Salina, highlights the local intimacies of an emerging global catastrophe: African plumbers reconnect shantytown water pipes under cover of darkness to ensure a community's survival; a Californian scientist forces awareness of shockingly toxic public water sources; a

In M. Night Shyamalan's film Signs, the protagonist suffers a crisis of faith so deep that it takes an alien invasion of Earth for him to work it out. In Shyamalan's latest movie, The Happening, which opens today, the protagonist suffers a crisis of reason. Unfortunately, this time not even the looming extinction of humanity resolves it for him.

The Vatican has banned the makers of Angels & Demons, the latest Dan Brown thriller to be filmed, from shooting scenes not only in the Vatican but in any church in Rome on the ground that it is "an offence against God" and "wounds common religious feelings".

The Japanese obsession with cavorting ninjas, cunning hardware and comely young avengers in abbreviated plaid skirts reaches some kind of climax with

Flatland: The Movie is an animated film inspired by Edwin A. Abbott's classic novel, Flatland.

A Gaia Film is a movie that inspires us, lifts our spirit, or transforms our lives. A Gaia Film makes us feel more hopeful, more thankful, more connected, more passionate, and better about life in general. We identify with a Gaia Film's characters on a deep, emotional level, and are motivated by their stories to pursue positive change in our own lives. A Gaia film honors the belief that simple choices can change the world and inspires us to make a difference.

John Rennie, Michael Shermer and Steve Mirsky all watched Ben Stein's new antievolution movie. Here's what they had to say about its design flaws.

The film "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" gives the impression that "Big Science" is suppressing "smart new ideas" in America's classrooms - that is, ideas claiming that features of the natural world are so complex they had to be the work of an intelligent designer. The movie also reportedly follows up on efforts to blame evolutionary theory for much of what has ailed the world since Darwin, including Hitler and the Holocaust.