In January 1952, a 23-year-old medical student named Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (played by Gael Garc((iacute))a Bernal from Y tu mama tambien), set off from Buenos Aires on an 8000 mile motorcycle trip across South America with his friend Alberto Granado (played by Rodrigo de la Serra). On the trip the two encounter exploitation, injustice and poverty, and Guevara freely offers his medical skills to those who cannot afford it. Ernesto Guevara would later become better known as "Che", who played a key role in Fidel Castro's Cuban revolution, who died a left wing martyr's death in front of a Bolivian firing squad, and who continues to live on as a pop culture icon. The premise of the film was that Guevara, who was from a wealthy middle class family, became radicalised by his journey. Of course, this is a romanticised over-simplified piece of myth-making, but myth is the stuff of great cinema. Politics aside, this film is worth seeing for the performances and Eric Gautier's breathtaking cinematography, which was shot on location in Argentina, Chile, Peru and the Amazon. The screenplay was based on Guevara's "Travel Notes" and Granado's "Traveling with Che Guevara".

Robert McNamara's earliest memory is of Armstice Day 1918, opening a life that was to be intimately associated with war, power and politics. He was, most notoriously, US Secretary of Defense during the Cuban Missile Crisis and much of the Vietnam War. He became a hate figure for the anti-war movement. He was also a Harvard lecturer, and his school of rational analysis influenced the firebombing of Axis cities in World War 2. Less viscerally, it proved successful at the Ford Motor Company after the war, where he was named President of the company (the first non-Ford to achieve that position), before Kennedy asked him to join his government.

Film-maker Errol Morris captures McNamara talking unflinchingly about these things and more; marrying period footage, whispery taped recorded conversations from Cabinet meetings and Presidential phone calls, and a Philip Glass soundtrack into a masterful and thoughtprovoking series of lessons on conflict, the use of power, and human fallibility. It deservedly won the 2004 Oscar for best documentary. More than for political junkies alone, the contemporary resonance of McNamara's ideas is obvious. And if nothing else, you will come away hoping to be as sharp and articulate at the age of 85.