If a film about the effects of Hurricane Katrina ought to disturb viewers, then Sabin and Redmon have done the job twice, documenting the victimization of people who were likely enough to victimize themselves, along with anyone else in the vicinity. This choice of subject may cause discomfort among moviegoers who want only the upright and worthy to suffer, and always from afflictions imposed from above. (Such audiences would have squirmed even more if Kamp Katrina's characters hadn't been predominantly white.) But Ms. Pearl and Cross didn't squirm. Their guests' behavior pissed them off, but I see no evidence of surprise.

With similar worldliness, Sabin and Redmon refrain from commenting on the jackasseries they recorded, other than to insert a brief text noting that every lawful diversion in Bywater had been shut down, except for a convenience store and a liquor store. Meanwhile, as we see, the crack merchants across the street from Ms. Pearl's house were open for business. Speaking with the ardor of a convert--like her husband, she is a recovering addict--Ms. Pearl warned her guests away from these dealers. For the camera, she also pointed out the bullet holes in her house, explaining that the drug sellers had not been happy when she and Cross moved in, intruding into their marketplace. It took time, she says, for decent people to re-establish themselves on these blocks.

Kamp Katrina shows the consequences for decent people--as many of them as remained--when these same blocks were left ruined and stinking of death. More to the point: It shows what happened to wayward people, such as those camping out in the yard, when nothing was left to straighten them out. Ms. Pearl and Cross alone, however admirable and street-smart, were not enough--which is why they sent the screw-ups packing without apology, all except for Kelley.

As the film records the dreadful last section of her story, you may notice an unexpected artfulness in Kamp Katrina. Though obviously shot on digital video, on a budget equal to whatever Sabin and Redmon were carrying in their pockets, these scenes (and others) use cutaways among multiple camera setups, giving the action a movielike smoothness. Very often, documentarians achieve this effect only by staging scenes or combining shots that were taken at different times--tricks that are widely thought to be dubious, even though they've been used since Nanook of the North. According to Redmon, though, "Asking people to do or repeat scenes of horror is where we draw the ethical line." The reason he and Sabin seem to have been everywhere, he says, is that each operated a camera, with two others sometimes joining in. Thanks to hard work and nimbleness on location, plus cleverness in the editing room, Kamp Katrina provides you with excellent views of the last of its platoon going to her special hell.

You're left with the question that hangs over all platoon movies: Was the battle worth the pain? Only Ms. Pearl can answer; and she seems to have no regrets for having tried to help Kelley and the rest. You look at her tough, drawn face and realize she knew what she was getting into. You listen to her final words and know why she made the effort. She scans the wreckage of her neighborhood, bullet holes and all, and says, "You wouldn't believe how beautiful this used to be."

After a special screening at the Museum of Modern Art on August 23, Kamp Katrina will run in New York at the Two Boots Pioneer Theater, August 24-September 4.

* * *

Of all the odd tasks people have undertaken in the movies--from setting the speed record for visiting the Louvre to building an opera house in the Amazon jungle--none is stranger than Jørgen Vig's project in The Monastery. An octogenarian bachelor, long retired from a career as a university librarian and priest, Vig has installed himself in a crumbling, leaky, unheated castle that he bought cheap many years ago in Hesbjerg, far out in the Danish countryside. Now, he thinks, maybe he'll hand this property to the Moscow Patriarchate so his castle can become the first Russian Orthodox monastery on Danish soil.

It's all true. Directed and photographed by Pernille Rose Grønkjær, The Monastery is a sly, quiet documentary about Vig's scheme and how it changes him, once the Patriarchate sends Sister Ambrosija as the head of a small delegation to live in his castle. Did Vig offer the property just to have such companionship? If so, he'd never admit it. Thin, stooped and toothless, with his face entirely circled by a wispy mane of white hair and his oversize eyeglasses propped far down his nose, Vig claims never to have felt love, or to have wanted to feel it. "I suppose I'm deformed in some way," he says, with the frankness of a curmudgeon for whom all questions are settled. But you can sense his excitement as he cleans up in anticipation of the nuns' arrival. (He does all the work himself.) And you see how respect, curiosity, gallantry and resentment mingle in him when the much younger Sister Ambrosija walks in and starts giving orders. She is taking charge of two wrecks: the building and Vig.

With its perilous castle in the forest, its creaky old wizard and intrepid heroine from a far-off land, The Monastery has been likened to a fairy tale. Grønkjær herself has made the comparison--but she's had the wisdom to let those in the audience enter the enchantment gradually, in their own time. A popular selection on the festival circuit, The Monastery begins a US theatrical run on August 29, at Film Forum in New York.

And now for some cinema: The camera gazes down as if from a second-story window, where an anxious woman waits with her baby. Then, without interruption, it floats to street level and skims along the deserted road, to the place where four dangerous strangers have gathered. We see dark glasses, spiked hair, a leather jacket, a raincoat like a cowboy's duster. A cigar falls in slow motion from one man's fingers. Curtains billow in the wind. With grim deliberation, two of the killers push open the street door and mount the stairs.

This is just the first three minutes' worth of Johnnie To's explosive, outrageous Exiled. A yarn about gangland camaraderie, turf wars, recent Chinese history and a hell of a lot of gold--the usual stuff--Exiled gives you To in knockabout mode, compared with his more brooding films, such as Triad Election. That's all right. If you're looking for a real movie, knock here.

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