Soldiers: The Desert Stand

Description
In Joshua Aaron Weinstein's amiably cartoonish wartime satire, 12-year-old Toma Singerson beats the last level of a combat-fetishizing video game, which turns out to be a stealth military-recruitment tool, and finds herself in a real-life shoot-'em-up. It's difficult to parse which side anyone is on at any given moment or what the “sides” even are. But that seems to be part of Weinstein's critique: In the current politics of power, there's always someone behind the curtain of whatever we think we represent. Madeline Long's all-in performance as the foul-mouthed, lisping, violence-crazed preteen does her country proud.—KV