This movie is everything one could want from a movie where David Bowie plays an alien...

I don't really get why people haven't written off Von Trier's movies as unwatchably sexist. Dogville and Dancer in the Dark had some interesting formal things to partially make up for the fact that they are astoundingly offensive, but this movie really only has Emily Watson's acting... and you can get that elsewhere. Still Trier will always have a place in my heart from "The Kingdom."

This movie got a lot of good reviews from people who enjoy "monster movie with a message" type films. In reality the reviewers seem to have confused Anti-Americanism with a message. Grates on anyone less lazily prejudiced.

It would be a decent movie, if not for the heavy dose of racism. Its good to see that French movies can be as closed minded as any country's cinema.

I wrote an essay on this movie in relation to Japanese documentaries on WWII for a Japanese history class. You can read it here: http://likeanoldfilm.blogspot.com/2007/02/afterlife.html