Filmmaker Ross McElwee turns his cameras inward when his proposed documentary on Northern Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, perhaps the single most hated Union officer in the South, becomes a witty and unexpectedly engaging meditation upon his own ailing love life. As McElwee retraces Sherman"s 19th-century march through the South, where his blazing trail left smoking ruins of Georgia"s cities and towns in his wake, he can"t seem to help but train his camera on a succession of Southern women he meets along the way, using the documentary as a sly method of meeting girls. (Aspiring filmmakers take note: it works surprisingly well.) Sherman"s March evolves into an introspective meditation on love, happiness, the fear of nuclear holocaust, and the meaning of life. McElwee"s light touch and relaxed, deadpan offscreen narration gives this genial documentary tour of his soul a rare kind of insight. --Sean Axmaker