How to Survive a Plague (2012)

Queer history is one of those things we keep meaning to learn more about; since it's essentially a modern civil rights struggle that's run parallel with our lives. We were born in the 80s, came of age in the 90s, and we remember well the fear and stigma (as well as the activism) surrounding HIV/AIDS. The narrative has shifted now, with HIV/AIDS being primarily seem as an "African problem", a problem of international development and public health.

This wonderful documentary, though, is the story of the early days of HIV/AIDS, when it was little understood and terrifying - and its epicenter was Greenwich Village, New York. This was a time when to be diagnosed was a death sentence. We were nudged to watch it after reading about some of the ignorant hysteria and attendant racism gripping some people in the US due to Ebola scares last month; a few people likened this climate to the panic that swept the city during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and its attendant homophobia.

The documentary charts the tireless work of ACT UP, an AIDS research advocacy group. Many of its members were gay men living with HIV/AIDS, and we focus on a group of them - Peter Staley, Bob Rafsky, Spencer Cox, and Mark Harrington - who seemed to have formed the leadership, and also branched off from ACT UP to create the Treatment Action Group (TAG). The doc is plainly presented, with little stylistic embellishments: Most of it is taken from a huge multi-year archive of grainy VHS footage; background music is subtle and low-key. We watch impassioned, town hall-style meetings as the activists debate their strategies. We watch acts of civil disobedience: marches, storming into medical conferences, draping huge banners over the awnings of pharmaceutical companies or the NIH. Sometimes, we zoom in on the personal life of one of the activists and learn more about their story: we at the PPCC were particularly struck by the story of the soulful Bob Rafsky, who had a wife and daughter, came out at 40, and quit his PR job to work full-time with ACT UP. There are a number of scenes which show the family together, happy and celebrating Bob's birthdays, year after year, while his daughter grows taller and he gets thinner. What we rarely see are modern-day interviews (the usual trope in documentaries); and, indeed, this mystery (where are they now? did they make it?) is left as a powerful reveal towards the end of the doc.

We at the PPCC can't stress enough how incredible this doc was, and how it should be essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand activism and civil rights. Sometimes, when you see the giant block of a cell phone, or the fashion, its world feels very different - and it feels so long ago, more than 20 years. Yet in many ways it wasn't so long ago. Many of those cultural symbols - we see a young Bill Clinton on the campaign trail - are still around today. The tentacles of that world reach straight into today. And, unfortunately, much of the same stupid bigotry is around today (the fight for marriage equality in the US seems to regularly progress only to get knocked back; the immoral and narrow-minded intolerance of legislation like Uganda's shameful "kill the gays" bill). The fight's not over yet, neither for gay rights nor for eradicating HIV/AIDS. And it is a fight; one of the most heartbreaking moments in the doc is when Peter Staley, who is alive and well today, reveals the survivor guilt he feels, and likens it to being a war veteran.

"How To Survive a Plague" answers its own titular question in the final half of the film: there's a powerful sequence when we see some of the activists in the present day. They're older, grayer, weary - but they're alive. They made it. And there we have it: the way to survive a plague is to agitate, to fight for your rights, to learn, and to never give up. Highly, highly recommended.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011)

We've missed International Worker's Day by a week, but so be it! We are here today with an excellent film for you: a film about work, and Zen, and sushi.

Jiro Dreams of Sushi is, on the surface, a documentary about a Michelin-star sushi chef working out of his legendary sushi restaurant at a subway station in Tokyo. Jiro Ono is nearing 90, an implacable perfectionist who creates symphonies with raw fish. We meet some of his entourage: his elder son, Yoshikazu, who is the eternal chef #2 at the legendary joint, and younger son, Takashi, who's opened up a second outlet in one of Tokyo's upscale neighborhoods.

Throughout the documentary, we learn about Jiro's upbringing, his philosophy on work, we follow Yoshikazu as he goes to the fish market every morning, we have a few musings on how to cook the perfect rice or the perfect egg sushi, and, in general, there are a lot of loving shots of glistening sushi settling on the plate in gloriously narrow focal depth. With, we should note, a gorgeous score by Philip Glass and other minimalists.

So, it's very nice. Definitely.

But that's not what the documentary is really about, not for us. Because the doc is really a Zen meditation on the glorious pointlessness, the non-passionate passion of pursuing work - any work. Any thing really. This doc - and Jiro's life - is like zazen (a seated meditation style used in Zen). Just as the Sōtō Zen school thinks that - you know - wanting Enlightenment is a big mistake, and maybe there's nothing beyond this, there's nothing beyond just sitting, so too does Jiro advocate working just to work. That is, you just sit. You sit for the sake of sitting. Not for any reward, not for any benefit. You make sushi just to make sushi. You try to make the best sushi you can, not because your father was a master sushi chef (Jiro's wasn't), or because you dreamed since childhood of fish (Jiro didn't), but because - now that you find yourself behind the sushi counter - you just do it.

It's a powerful message, and it's refreshingly austere and refreshingly anti-"do what you love". The "do what you love" mantra is a very post-1980s American work ethic which claims that everyone should, step 1, identify something which they're passionate about (ideally involving poor African children), step 2, pursue this passion with all their energy and zeal and drive while in their nomadic 20s and 30s, and, step 3, bask in their pure feel-goodness. The "do what you love" mantra manifests itself in, for example, a friend of the PPCC's guffawing when the PPCC (very seriously!) mentioned "salary" as one of the reasons she does her job (seeking a good salary is, after all, antithetical to "doing what you love"). It also manifests itself in the abuse of zero-wage labor, the ridiculousness of the academic job market, and the abandonment (suppression, even) of traditional labor rights issues. It's also, we think, very much perpetuated by those who benefit from The System - i.e. old, rich, white dudes.

Oh, we at the PPCC have MUCH TO SAY ON THIS ISSUE. But we'll spare you.

"But Jiro seems quite passionate!" you might cry. And there's the difference. It's about which comes first: the passion to do job X, or job X. Jiro's philosophy seems to be: find job X, pay bills, do job X well. There's no "finding yourself", there's no thinking about what you "really" want to do. There's just doing. Just sitting. Such Zen! We love it.

Anyway, even if you disagree with our labor rights philosophy (which we will, from now on, call Zen careerism), you will still enjoy Jiro because, well, everyone loves Jiro. Seriously, this is a hit with everyone we've ever seen it with. We've never met anyone who doesn't love this doc. You will love it too. Just sit back, relax, and enjoy the fish.

Highly recommended.

A Separation (2011)

The superb Jodaeiye Nader az Simin (A Separation, جدایی نادر از سیمین‎) is a layered, humanist take on some pretty sad domestic drama. Following two Iranian couples - the intellectual middle-class Nader and Simin, and the struggling working class Razieh and Hojjat - we learn about modern-day Tehran, the difficulties of growing older, your parents disappointing you, and the danger of assumptions.

The film begins with a brilliant long take of Nader (Peyman Moaadi) and Simin (Leila Hatami) at the family court. They're arguing about getting a divorce, and we're going to be spending a loooot of time in these low-level courts, arguing particulars and details while characters attempt to tell the truth, but maybe not the whole truth. Nader and Simin are here to argue about their divorce: she wants to leave Iran, taking their 11-year-old daughter, the owlish Termeh (Sarina Farhadi), with her. He is refusing to leave the country, and is willing to accept a divorce instead. "You know I can't leave because of my father," he laments. (His father (Ali-Asghar Shahbazi) is suffering from Alzheimer's and needs near-constant care.)

When Simin moves in with her parents, Nader hires a caretaker for his father - the exhausted-looking, chador-wearing Razieh (Sareh Bayat). She arrives with adorable daughter in tow, but immediately there's problems: religious guilt plagues her when she has to take care of Nader's father soiling himself, and she's also anxious not to let her husband know that she's working here. When, one day, Nader comes home to find her and her daughter absent, and his father, unconscious, tied to the bed, things spiral out of control.

You've probably already got a bunch of assumptions running through your head, just from the way we mapped out the plot: about patriarchal husbands refusing to leave Iran, of poor, put-upon wives struggling to make ends meet. And so on and so forth. The genius of the film is how subtly and realistically we see our assumptions for what they are: bias and ill-informed prejudice. Like Revolutionary Road, you can deeply sympathize with each character, and you can see that they're essentially good people trying to deal with an increasingly complex, messy situation.

The film lightly jabs at those who are a bit too smug in their self-righteousness: Nader being the case in point. He's a calm, measured man with a great relationship with his daughter. Early in the film, we see him insisting that she gas up their car and get the change - teaching her to be independent, even forceful. "Dad, they were all staring," she whispers anxiously. Let them stare, my little emancipated daughter! Indeed, Nader is led by a moral clarity which is at first admirable, but increasingly erodes as the conflict with the other couple gets thornier and thornier. That clarity turns into a high horse. And high horses - they are hard to get down from.

Iranian cinema is famously good, and we're embarrassed to be a PPCC who's only seen this Iranian film. Because, gosh, it's good. Gosh, wow. The acting by everyone is top-notch, with perhaps Shahab Hosseini as the greatest revelation. His performance is brutal, tragic, often hard to take in. And it's maybe the most interesting: as he struggles against the stereotypes that threaten to submerge him. "I swear on this Quran, we're human just like you!" he says at one point, and it's scathing.

Highly recommended. Maybe a perfect film. And please leave reccs for more Iranian cinema in the comments.

Milk (2008)

(Disclaimer: So it's been like donkey's years since the PPCC updated, and this is because life had us in its sweaty, meaty hold. Which is a good and bad thing, 'cuz creative endeavors, such as movie reviewing, are so good for the soul, na? But life is also important too, other-na? What to do! Anyway, we're back for today!)

One of the PPCC's Alternative Life Plans includes becoming mayor of some progressive, fun, thriving town such as Berkeley, New York, or Pittsburgh. You know. A place that has post-industrial art renaissances and such. And to be at the nexus of it all! Making decisions! Taking action! The throbbing inner workings of City Hall, the immediacy and passion of local politics, the feeling of being an active member of your community. And one of the deeply satisfying things about the already very satisfying - actually, basically perfect - Gus Van Sant film, Milk, is that it pays its proper respects to City Hall horse trading and regular old politicking/civic action. When Harvey Milk (Sean Penn; brilliant) stands in the back hallways making compromises and strategies with his fellow San Francisco City Supervisors, we plain glowed from the joy of it. And you can sense that Harvey's glowing from it too. When he organizes Pride marches, when he strategizes with his team, when he celebrates his political victories and mourns his losses... it's just fun.

Of course, that's what makes this film exhibit such deeply-felt highs and lows: this modern myth-making of a man who made an impact, and then had everything tragically cut short. For those that don't know, the story of Harvey Milk is a sad, strange, inspirational piece of American political-social history. In 1978, he was the first openly LGBT elected official in America, becoming City Supervisor of the hip and happening Castro District, San Francisco. After less than a year in office, Milk was murdered by fellow City Supervisor, Dan White. White's lawyers managed to get White a conviction of manslaughter using the much-derided "Twinkie defense" (short version: the junk food made him do it). And Milk meanwhile lived on as an icon of the LGBT movement, and an icon of San Francisco.

Sean Penn's performance really makes the film: Milk is warm, funny, a little neurotic, snarky, intelligent and joyful. Even though he works for a struggling cause - this was an America where leading an openly gay life carried significant threats, where gay men and women were unable to get jobs or homes, and where homosexuality was regularly conflated with bestiality or pedophilia - even in this place of oppression, and even coming from a life of challenges and pain (when Harvey, for example, describes his past relationships, it's heartbreaking), Harvey is all action and all optimism. The film leaps forward with him, its narrative arc coming fast and clear. Even the relatively obscure or esoteric niches of the political scene are illuminated efficiently and cleanly, so that you get a good sense of the world that Milk lived in: both politically and personally. His loves - from the mellow, reliable Scott (James Franco), to the volatile and dependent Jack (Diego Luna) - are likewise painted in efficient but broad brush strokes.

And then director Van Sant does that particularly Gus Van Santy thing of slowing everything down, bringing the impressionistic canvas a little closer, so that you notice the evocative, beautiful, pastel details. Scenes like Will Hunting's contemplative rides on the Red Line up from Southie to MIT. Or the rambling rural highways in My Own Private Idaho, or basically all of the elusive and powerful Elephant. The Very Van Santy moment in Milk comes during the early dawn hours on the day of Milk's murder. We see both Milk and Dan White, at home, taking highly vulnerable, personal moments. It's a classic highly detailed, pre-climax, warriors preparing for battle scene: like the lingering shots of Hector putting on his shin guards before fighting Achilles, we watch as Milk and Dan White experience the last normal morning of their lives. It's surprisingly tender that White's character is given this treatment as well - indeed, he begins to resemble Judas; someone you both fear and pity. Or maybe that's just because Josh Brolin is a wonderful actor. Either way, it's powerful, and it's sad, and we basically didn't stop crying until the movie credits had wound their way down.

It's THAT GOOD. Definitely deserving modern classic status; highly recommended.

Orgasm Inc. (2009)

Orgasm Inc. is a wonderful documentary pulling together the big issues of Big Pharma and feminism. It explores the medicalization of female sexuality, and the intense race by pharmaceutical companies to get FDA approval for a "Viagra for women" that will "cure" them of female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Whether FSD is a real illness, or the "hysteria of the 21st century", is still hotly debated - but Big Pharma plows on, preparing pills, patches and nasal sprays aimed at helping women achieve orgasm. 

The documentary is brief (80 minutes), informative and fun. It swings from hilarious (the San Francisco Museum of Antique Vibrators was particularly wonderful) to tragic (the women who've undergone vaginoplasty or invasive procedures where a tiny vibrator is put in their spinal chord (seriously, W.T.F.)). And, overall, outrage. Outrage both at the medicalization of everything in America (America and New Zealand are the only two countries where pharmaceutical companies can run ads), and at the punitive gaslighting of a culture that tells women they're not "normal" and need to be "fixed" if they don't always orgasm during sex. Indeed, the tragedy is hearing how often the "bad guys" (those scrabbling to find a corrective pill/patch/spray to "cure" women) invoke "normality" - and how internalized that language is. Consider the poor clinical test subject of Orgasmatron-inventor, Dr. Stuart Meloy. This woman, happily married in her 50s, describes "humiliation" at feeling like she's not "normal" because of her FSD diagnosis. Dr. Meloy tells her that "over 80% of women" have FSD. (And did we mention that the original academic article from 1999 basically asked women if they ever didn't feel like having sex? Or didn't enjoy sex?) Just this contradiction was astounding: something that, purportedly, a majority of women have, and it's still classified as abnormal? Something that needs to be labelled and chemically altered? 

The amount of misinformation regarding female sexuality is also, we think, outrageous - and a glaring symptom of our patriarchal, sexist culture (yes, in America). When the Vibrator Museum's curator mentions little old grannies not knowing where their clitoris is, we wanted to laugh and cry. Or the scene where the filmmaker pays a visit to the Dr. Berman's Chicago clinic, where - for the modest price of $1,500 - you too can be shown a porn film while a medical assistant uses a vibrator on you, and then they tell you what you did wrong. For the love of God! Arghhh! 

The documentary's narrative eventually culminates in an FDA hearing over a new testosterone patch by Procter & Gamble - a patch that found, in a clinical study, to increase sexytimes and orgasms for its test subjects. Leaving the issue of publication bias aside, the study was performed on a select subsample of the general female population. When the FDA makes its decision, in the final minutes of the doc, we almost whooped for joy. But we would have appreciated some of the focus to shift more to the sex-positive talking heads: people like Dr. Tiefer and New View, who work to combat both FSD and its products; or the hilarious and wonderful Good Vibes (with a shout-out to Toys in Babeland); or Ray Moynihan and Dr. Kim Wallen, who just talked a lot of plain sense about the whole pseudo-science of it all. 

As it was, the doc was infuriating - but, showing more of the work of these people, we think it would have been inspiring. (We also wanted more on the history of vibrators, since that was hilarious - oh well, onto Sarah Ruhl and Jonathan Pryce now!) A must-watch.

Deadwood (2004): Season 1

Deadwood is one of those things that defies description. Ostensibly a lurid Western with cable TV swearing and cable TV nudity, it is vast and strange and powerful. We think it's about the rise of America's Americanness, the Henry Ford-inspired winners and Howard Zinn-lamented losers as they hack, drink and scrabble their way "from sea to shining sea". It's really difficult to review long form TV shows such as this, but we'll give it a go - if only to spread word of its magnificence!


Hu-fucking-zzah!

Deadwood aired on American TV from 2004 to 2006. Three measly seasons, two pitiful years! Anyway. The brainchild of the fascinating David Milch, whose previous credits include NYPD Blue, the show is an ensemble piece centering on the violent lives in the lawless, frontier town in what is now South Dakota. The Western genre staples are all present: the noble, handsome and reluctant hero, Seth Bullock (Timothy Olyphaunt), his reliable buddy and fellow hardware salesman, Sol Starr (John Hawkes), his arch-nemesis, the vile, exploitative pimp (and informal town chief), Al Swearengen (Ian McShane), the hooker with a heart of gold, Trixie (Paula Malcolmson, from Caprica), some snobby New York opium-addicted lady, Alma (Molly Parker), and her Scandinavian-Minnesotan semi-mute ward (Bree Seanna Wall), and the cranky old frontier doctor, Doc Cochran (a brilliant Brad Dourif). Oh yeah, and historical figures such as Wild Bill Hickok (Keith Carradine) and Calamity Jane (an excellent Robin Weigert) show up too.

The point of Deadwood, though - and we're not entirely sure this is the point, or the only point, at least - is to challenge, subvert, reinforce and then smash up these Western movie stereotypes while exploring some of the darker historical currents of America's cultural heritage. In particular, capitalism, expansion, exceptionalism and a can-do attitude! Huzzah! Throughout Deadwood, you can't be entirely sure if it's praising or criticizing these American foundational myths; it's certainly giving us a much more ambiguous West, where racist and sexist exploitation are used as regularly traded economic chips. Where power is ad hoc and maintained via brute force and sweaty-palmed corruption. Where everyone needs a bath and a change of clothes, as they dream bonanza gold rushes while wallowing in filth and poverty.

The characters are divided into two camps: the damaged and the damaging. The former - Doc Cochran, Calamity Jane, Trixie, the preacher - are variously healers and helpers, each deeply vulnerable and almost childlike because of that. Life is especially hard on them. Early in the first season, the preacher (Ray McKinnon), with his beatific, vacant, yellow-toothed smile, develops a brain tumor. His long, slow, ugly decline is harrowing. The various cobbled-together attempts to contain and aid this suffering - Al Swearengen kicks him out of the saloon with a sad look in his eye, Calamity Jane hectors him about hiding his symptoms from the Doc, the hookers mock him - only emphasize the setting's ability to strip away all dignity. Get thee back to civilization, for the love of God! This sense of helplessness - both existential (i.e. the Nietschzean "God is dead" symbolism of having your preacher die!) and practical (dude, it's 1871 in the middle of nowhere) - is acute.

The damaging characters, instead, are the driving forces of the town - and, by allegory, the expansion of America. Embodied in Seth and Al, they play out the conventional narrative of good and bad - mostly by both being very ugly. (OKAY, IT'S A WESTERN REVIEW, WE HAD TO MAKE THAT JOKE.) That is: just like the Jedi and the Empire, what, exactly, is the difference between these two? They both have nasty tempers. They both bully and coerce, when they need to, and exhibit great tenderness and conviction as well. They make hard decisions, usually involving killing or beating someone up. They exact justice. They build the town - Seth as its work, Al as its play - and leave various victims along the way. Presumably the only existential difference between these two is that Seth feels bad about all the bloodshed; but even that could be attributed to his youth. As Al says, you learn to fucking move on!


A blunt Janus shot: the "good" side.


And the "bad".

So the founding pillars of Deadwood/the West/America - Seth and Al - pretend to be in tension, because it's part of the standard story we tell ourselves about Luke and Vader, Clint Eastwood and that other guy (OK, we never actually saw that movie), the post-Enlightenment landed gentlemen in Philadelphia in 1776 and the post-Enlightenment landed gentlemen in London at the same time; but they're really just two sides of the same coin. And they could stand in for any number of such false dichotomies: the Republicans and the Democrats, for instance! What matters is that they are the hegemony. And, in Seth and Al's case, they thrive in the lawless pre-Hobbesian setting where everyone's lives are "nasty, brutish and short". Mostly because they're macho men. And this is a setting that rewards testosterone.

Of course, for we at the PPCC, our sympathies lie with the underdogs, the alternatives, the non-hegemonics. The ones who get churned up in Seth and Al's machinations and who don't fit in. In particular, we are inordinately fond of Calamity Jane and Doc Cochran. Calamity Jane, brilliantly performed by Robin Weigert, is an enigma: a gender role-breaking, child-like misfit who gets drunk (OK, everyone gets drunk in this show) and then naps by resting her forehead against a wall. She is hilarious, endearing, bizarre, contradictory and difficult to understand. The real Jane was similarly enigmatic; especially her manufactured (?) relationship with Wild Bill. What was that about? Tell us more, history!

For the good doctor, we have a soft spot for him because he ticks all of the boxes - grumpy humanist frontier doctor a la our beloved Doctor McCoy (or Hawkeye Pierce!), sci-fi pedigree (dude, Brad Dourif was in Duuune) and, we have just learned in these last few episodes, a Civil War vet. Not many know that we at the PPCC are something of a Civil War nut. And this new fact of Civil War veteranship, coupled with the Doc's total meltdown re: the preacher's awful, moribund state, confirms his victimhood - another person damaged by the great machine of American progress. The other side of the brave new world, that has such people in it!


Sing the praises of Brad Dourif! He is so good in this show. We haven't been this unexpectedly impressed with a sci fi actor knocking it out of the park in a long form TV series since David Warner blew our socks off in the Wallander series.

And this is barely scratching the surface! Season one is complete, now onto seasons two and three. We haven't even mentioned all the other magnificent creations of this show - the vile toady-turned-mayor Farnum (played by another sci-fi vet, William Sanderson), the buffoonish media rep/paparazzo, Mr. Merrick (Jeffrey Jones) - because they merit blog reviews of their own. Suffice to say that this is fantastic, stimulating fun. Strange, sad, touching. We often found ourselves laughing, then crying, then even getting that rarest of movie-evoked emotions: tears of joy! Don't be put off by its vulgarity or its Westernness or its whatever. To quote a period poet, Walt Whitman: "O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul, O I say now these are the Soul!"

Highly recommended.

Groundhog Day (1993)

Seasonal PPCC is seasonal!

Yes indeedy, folks, it's Groundhog Day! And what better film to review than the wonderful Groundhog Day! One of those Perfect Films that is not only technically perfect, but also tremendously lovable.

Groundhog Day, for our non-American readership, is the peculiar American festival that takes place every February 2nd. On this day, the groundhog - "Prognosticator of prognosticators!" - crawls out of his hole and either sees or doesn't see his shadow. Based on this, we know whether we'll be getting six more weeks of winter or not.

Groundhog Day, the film, is a relentless avalanche of wit and wisdom, as misanthropic weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray, in one of his best performances. eva.) gets stuck reliving the same Groundhog Day over and over... and over... and over again. And again. And again again again. While everyone else seems to be experiencing the day for the first time, Phil is stuck in a time loop: he moves forward, time does not.

At first, Phil runs wild. He gorges on sweets, punches the annoying insurance salesman Ned (Stephen Toblowsky), picks up ladies and has zany car chases with the police. He spends an indeterminate - but no doubt inordinate - amount of time trying to pick up his gorgeous producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell, in a fresh, light performance). When tiring of all that, Phil despairs. He stops shaving, stops getting dressed for work, starts killing himself day after day after day. But it's only when Phil starts shedding his cynicism and helping others that things start to look brighter for him.

This film has been claimed by various religious groups - most often Buddhists. The cyclical story with its spiritual overtones certainly lends itself to such an interpretation. And the writing by Danny Rubin is clever enough - with layers upon layers of symbolism and parallels and just plain puns - that there certainly must have been an ulterior, philosophical motive.

But the genius of the film is its wit: it is deep message bottled up in a light and frothy champagne. The comic timing is perfect - just watch the repeated sequences as Phil perfects (and perfects and perfects) his pick-up lines. In fact, Bill Murray's performance is notably good here as well: lots of laugh-out-loud moments. It was also zany and meta to watch the actors repeating their lines; a commentary on filmmaking, perhaps? Or our own chats at work? OR LIFE?!

Whatever way you want to take it - as a deep dharma text or as a bubbly comedy to brighten up dreary Pennsylvania Februarys (or Massachusetts Februarys, for that matter) - this is a great film. Highly highly highly recommended, regardless of the time of year.

Shakespeare in Love (1998)

Shakespeare in Love is a grand celebration of the creative drive and the pleasure of fiction. It's also what we consider a Perfect Film - much like Rashomon or Ladri di biciclette.

Fictions layer over each other in Shakespeare in Love - and the way we approach this fundamental deceit is explored. Are we like the enraged, indignant preacher, waving his hat at the fact that "vice is in the show!"? Or are we like the passionate theater-goer Viola de Lesseps (Gwyneth Paltrow), who admits that her love affair with William Shakespeare (Joseph Fiennes) "is not life - it is a stolen season", or, even better, is a "flattering dream - too sweet to be substantial", but revels in it nonetheless?

Because fiction abounds - fiction as the transformative, cathartic, passionate release for our transcendental drive. The fiction of Viola as "Thomas Kent", an actor for the down-on-his-luck Henslowe (Geoffrey Rush) and his struggling theater company. The fiction that Shakespeare is writing Romeo and Ethel the Pirate's Daughter - no, Romeo and Rosalind - no, whatever - and that this play is for Henslowe… no, his competitor, Burbage (Martin Clunes). The fiction of Viola and Will's love for each other - she, already bound to the blunt, unimaginative Lord Wessex (Colin Firth); and he, exiled from his wife and children in Stratford. The fiction of the final play - Romeo and Juliet - and how it interweaves with the stolen romance Viola and Will enjoy.

You could call it lies or deceit, but everyone is definitely living in a fantasy in this film - deception, masks, costumes and dissembling abounds. Yet - just like in the Neopolitan underworld and its circus-like, surreal atmosphere in Mi manda Picone - this essential non-reality is accepted by everyone. It's like structured play. Everyone agrees that this isn't real, and everyone still operates within these bounds of non-reality.

The result is priceless: whimsical, funny, heartfelt and, ironically, very true. Early in the film, Queen Elizabeth (Judi Dench) accepts to judge a wager between the hard realist Wessex and the dreamer Shakespeare that true love could never be captured in a play. In the end, even though everything on which that love was built was a lie, we see that the love indeed was true. It's a cunning meta turn. And, just like Will and Viola or the audience of the play, the audience of the film - i.e. the PPCC - suffers a big letdown when we leave Narnia and return to reality. The dreamscape was so much… realer. At least, it felt so! (Ironically?)

Of course, the strength and intelligence of this film relies almost entirely on the strength and intelligence of the script by Tom Stoppard. The actors are all uniformly strong; it's a veritable tour of RADA talent. The music and direction support and give accent to what is essentially an emotional story (much as dreams have their own emotional logic!) and, of course, it's great as just a celebration of Shakespeare (expect lots of puns and references). It also does something which is rare, but delightful, to behold: it shows us the creative process at its most fluid and prolific. Like Amadeus, this film captures the verve and alive-ness of producing something creative, especially when that something just pours out of you. As if you were a conduit to something greater. The best part of being human? We'd wager Wessex his fifty pounds on it.

Highly recommended.

Star Trek: The Next Generation, episode "Genesis" (1994)

Image source. Yeah, FYTNG!

Oh man. Sometimes we expect the Enterprise crewmembers to look up at the camera, break the fourth wall and just scream, "OMG AM I IN THE BEST EPISODE EVER?!"

Star Trek: The Next Generation's season seven episode, Genesis, is one of those Best Episodes Ever that made us squeal and squawk with pure delight. And it just goes to show you that, for every awesome and hilarious sci-fi idea that you can possibly think of, there's probably already a Star Trek episode for it.

One day, one of the Enterprise's torpedoes went shooting off into an asteroid field, irritating Lieutenant Worf (Michael Dorn) and Commander Riker (Jonathan Frakes) immensely. While Captain Picard (Patrick Stewart) and Data (Brent Spiner) took a shuttle to go retrieve it, everyone back on the Enterprise starting acting very, very bizarrely. Worf suddenly feels hot all the time, while Counsellor Troi (Marina Sirtis) starts to feel cold and parched. Riker can't focus on anything, and hypochondriac Lieutenant Barclay (Dwight Schulz) becomes manic. What could possibly be going on?! Is it the flu or something?

Well, sort of! They're all DE-EVOLVING! Because it's the best episode of a TV show ever!


Amphibian Troi. Most hilarious ever?! POSSIBLY. Pic courtesy Wikipedia.

When Picard and Data return to the ship, they find it a steamy, Amazonian mess of jungle shrieks and predatory roars (that would be Worf, who de-evolves into the Shrike - shout out to Dan Simmons!). Picard immediately contracts the virus, and it's only another twelve hours before - according to Data - he will de-evolve "into either a lemur or a pygmy marmoset."

Let's take a moment to let that sink in. This man, Picard,

= A

LEMUR.

OR A


PYGMY MARMOSET.

.....

!!

Of course, leave it to Picard to become the most squirrelly and adorable of primates - while beefy, seven-foot Riker turns into a Neanderthal (okay, australopithecine). While he goes all anxious and twitchy (and kudos to Patrick Stewart's Royal Shakespearean training - who else could so fully encapsulate Terrified Lemur Man? With such pathos?), Data saves the ship. Again.

Ahh, this was the best of a very strange show. We've been overdosing on Next Generation for the past few days, ever since discovering WatchTrek.com, and we've often found episodes so overstuffed with insane ideas that the audience (or characters, for that matter) has no time to fully digest what the hell just happened. Soul-sucking aliens from another dimension… your accidentally-created double wooing your ex using tai chi-inspired interpretative dance… finding out someone amputated your arm and reattached it while you were sleeping?!! It's all in a couple episodes' work for Commander Riker, for example. And that's just one character! The show is packed with this sort of stuff. We love it.


A gratuitous shot of a typical TNG episode, wherein everyone is jumping around and falling over. Pic courtesy FYTNG.

We loved this episode because it captured that atmosphere of bizarreness, hilarity and horror - an intoxicating cocktail, and not something that's easy to do. When Picard and Data run into their former crewmates who are, one by one, presented as a gaping amphibian, a roaring australopithecine, and, well, the Shrike - it's hilarious, weird, and scary. It's like Slither, or The Fly, or the Evil Dead series. That is, sort of disgusting - but in a really awesome way. And the cat-lizard! THE CAT-LIZARD!?

Buy this now. Buy it.

Eight Men Out (1988)

Man! Make it John Sayles Week at the PPCC, this guy is on fire. New favorite rediscovered director!

So much is going on in Eight Men Out, the layered look at the 1919 Chicago "Black Sox" Scandal, but the first thing we thought of was: has any economist written a paper about this? Because this whole story is just screaming for a game theory model.

It's also, like any really good sports movie, an allegory for something much bigger - here, pragmatism versus transcendentalism/faith - and, like our other favorite sports movie, The Damned United, it is fundamentally about defeat. Heck, this movie could be called The Damned Divided.

Back when anyone really cared about baseball - that is to say, back in 1919 - the best team in the country - the Chicago White Sox - were enjoying a powerhouse season, and they were shoe-ins for the upcoming World Series. Betting on baseball games had also become a strong undercurrent to the sport's culture, and this film follows the story of the White Sox's notorious choice to throw the World Series in exchange for $100,000 per player (about $1.3 million in 2010 terms).

The eight players "out" came from a variety of backgrounds and did it for a variety of reasons. Sayles, ever the efficient storyteller, weaves their stories together and gives us fully-fleshed out characters even in one or two scenes. "Shoeless" Joe Jackson (D.B. Sweeney) is the team's star and an illiterate innocent. "Buckie" Weaver (John Cusack) is the team's passionate heart - he plays for sheer love, and is the only player to hear of the conspiracy and refuse to take part. Pitcher Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) is - as usual for David Strathairn characters - an older player, and a sympathetic, damaged has-been who is struggling to make ends meet for his family.

When the slimy-in-a-strangely-adorable-way gamblers, "Sleepy" Bill Burns (Christopher "1.21 Gigawatts!?!" Lloyd) and Billy Maharg (Richard Edson), approach the more crooked player (and by that, we mean the one that should have been an economist), "Chick" Gandil (Michael Rooker, of Slither!), the conspiracy to throw the Series is hatched.

"I always figured it was talent made a man big, you know, if I was the best at something. I mean, we're the guys they come to see. Without us, there ain't a ballgame. Yeah, but look at who's holding the money and look at who's facing a jail cell."
-Eddie Cicotte (David Strathairn) commenting on risk exposure - he may as well be talking about the financial crisis of 2007

As in Sayles' other film, Limbo, a Greek chorus is present in the form of two reporters, Ring Lardner (John Sayles himself!) and Hughie Fullerton (Studs Terkel!!!! The Pultizer Prize-winning historian!!! OMGWTFBBQ!!!). You can think of Ring and Hughie as a number of things: at the meta/Brechtian level, they are Sayles and Terkel, real-life commentators watching history happen. They are also the Statler and Waldorf of the film (whimsically cynical), and the C3P0 and R2D2 (OK, well, Sayles is really tall and Terkel really short). Honestly, it was just so amazing on so many levels to have them in this film.

What's great about this film is how it clearly and carefully examines the tangled complexity of the scandal - the exploited, underpaid players, the team warring against itself (John Cusack's role was particularly poignant in this regard), the multiplication of risk and the invention of wealth as the conspiracy goes up the ladder to Big Money (God, it's the mortgage-Wall Street-entire American economy crisis all over again!). But a nice theme that kept popping up throughout the film was the impermanent transcendence of a gloriously good ball game. Like Michael Sheen's doomed Henry V Brian Clough in The Damned United, these players hanker at immortality - and they're on the edge of it. There's a touching scene when Buckie talks about the pure bliss of playing a good game. And indeed, some of the younger players - and their young fans - still dream these dreams. The older wash-outs like Eddie Cicotte and Abe Attell (Michael Mantell), a crooked boxer-turned-crooked gambler, have given up on these dreams and chosen to embrace mammon instead.

The film doesn't demonize mammon, though - instead, largely through David Strathairn's role as Cicotte, the need for financial security is given great weight and sympathy. It's practical, he has a family with young children, he's at the end of his career, and the "straight" path is exploiting him. The film really questions whether the transcendental can put food on the table, and it agonizes with the characters. There's a great exchange between Big Money, as embodied by the investor Rothstein (Michael Lerner), and boxer Atell:

Arnold Rothstein: Look, champ. I know guys like that. I grew up with them. I was the fat kid they wouldn't let play. "Sit down, fat boy'. That's what they'd say "Sit down, maybe you'll learn something." Well, I learned something alright. Pretty soon, I owned the game, and those guys I grew up with come to me with their hats in their hands. Tell me, champ, all those years of puggin', how much money did you make?
Abe Atell: The honest fights or the ones I tanked?
Arnold Rothstein: Altogether, I must've made ten times that amount betting on you and I never took a punch.
Abe Atell: Yeah, but I was champ. Featherweight champeen of the world!
Arnold Rothstein: Yesterday. That was yesterday.
Abe Atell: No A.R. you're wrong. I was champ, and can't nothin take that away.

The terror of becoming a has-been is real: it's on Abe Atell's face when he sees Rothstein's waning interest in him. It's in Eddie Cicotte's strained right arm. Money lasts.

Sayles lets us tread the ambiguity for a while, but ultimately, the film sides with transcendentalism. There's another great exchange between the two crooked pitchers, Cicotte and "Lefty" Williams (James Read), when, after a string of thrown games, a listless Cicotte confesses he doesn't care about the money anymore. Lefty agrees: "Peculiar way of finding that out."

Another highly recommended one.

Limbo (1999)

Oh man. We forgot how incredibly good this movie is.

Limbo, a moody, intelligent film by John Sayles, is set in present-day Alaska. The state stands in for Limbo itself - if you define Limbo as a state of in-betweenness that goes on forever and ever. Because Alaska is struggling between its past and its future (with a present that tries to market one to the other), between being a frontier to the existential vacuum (visiting retirees and drifting non-people populate the state, and murder-suicides occur regularly "when people get too bored") and being a real home, a place to settle. What it most certainly is not is definitive.

This state of floating, anxious in-betweenness extends to the characters as well. Donna de Angelo ("woman of the angel", an excellent Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) is a lounge singer living in her own purgatory - too good for total obscurity, not good enough to make it big, she lives a non-life traveling around the country and singing in anonymous bars. Her dark, teenage daughter, Noelle (Vanessa Martinez), grudgingly accompanies her. When the de Angelos meet "Jumpin'" Joe Gastineau (David Strathairn), both are smitten. And we learn that the perpetually cautious and, well, jumpy Joe is drifting along as well - wounded from long-festering survivor guilt, he broods as a dark fixture at the town's main bar.

Limbo, the film, is presented in two distinct acts. The first act is a complex, layered (and often very funny) introduction to the characters and the world they live in. Sayles layers cross cuts over each other, playing with dialogues to create one strange, cohesive monologue about the State of Alaska (which might as well be the State of Being, considering how existential the story is). The scene in the bar, with all the seemingly unrelated conversations, is a great example of this. Also weaving in and out of this noise is a tour guide, who serves as a Greek chorus. When Joe's half-brother, Bobby (Casey Siemaszko), and his dubious drug dealing past show up, the tour guide walks by telling her retiree audience (and us) about "desperate men" that come to Alaska, ready to kill and be killed.

The second act has its own Greek chorus as well - now embodied in the mysterious, 19th-century frontiersgirl diary that Noelle finds, once she, Donna and Joe end up stranded on a remote, uninhabited islet after a very, very bad mix-up between the Gastineau brothers and some other drug dealers. Noelle reads from this diary every night, and the parallels between the previous inhabitants - a family of three, scraping out a frontier life by fox pelting - and the current trio are obvious to the point of being blunt. That bluntness is OK, though, because of how poignant and universal the feelings are. Joe, Donna and Noelle may be literally stuck in a suspended state of existence, a no man's land, but we are all prone to existential angst and asking the big questions. Why? What?

The movie is ultimately philosophical, but it can easily be enjoyed as a quasi-satirical, Altman-esque character piece of America's forgotten corners, as a touching romance between Joe and Donna, and as a Cast Away-type survival adventure. The three leads are very strong. Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio is charming, vulnerable and, frankly, amazing when she belts out those bar tunes. David Strathairn's "tall, dark stranger" persona is very well-used - he seems perpetually uncomfortable, visibly tormented. And Vanessa Martinez was great - it's so rare to see teenagers (and teenagerdom) portrayed intelligently and realistically, without caricature.

Highly recommended.

A Month in the Country (1987)

If there is one movie that is terribly, tragically underrated and unknown, it is A Month in the Country.

It's ironic because J.L. Carr's novel of the same name, on which the 1980s movie is based, is also terribly, tragically unknown. It just missed a Booker back in 1980, and instead won the Guardian Fiction Prize - a lesser trophy and, it seems, a punishment to anonymity. The movie, in the meantime, stars everyone's favorite English actors, Colin Firth and Kenneth Branagh, as young World War I veterans struggling to cope with their traumatic experiences in the first, Elysian summer after peace is declared. It's great. Really beautiful. And there's no DVD for it!?!!


Colin Firth as Tom Birkin and Kenneth Branagh as Moon, both so young!

It's terrible, tragic and ironic, but it also makes sense - in a weird, double-agent-ironic way - that this small, understated story of remembering and loss should be on the verge of falling into the vacuum. The story is, after all, an extended meditation on nostalgia, grieving and renewal. It's about preserving yourself against the abyss; carving a space of light in a world where all seems dark. When Tom Birkin (Colin Firth) arrives in the tiny Yorkshire hamlet of Oxgodsby, he suffers from a stammer, a facial tic and terrible nightmares. He's also freshly divorced and still pining for his ex-wife, Vinnie (never shown on screen). He arrives in Oxgodsby in rainy twilight and makes his way to a gloomy church. His job for the coming summer months is to restore a decrepit, hidden 14th-century fresco from the church's ancient walls.

The pace is slow, matching the drift of motes in sunlight. Birkin meets another young vet, Moon (Kenneth Branagh), who has been paid to dig up the lost grave of a rich townie's ancestor. Moon is, like Birkin, still damaged from the war, though the quality of his suffering becomes an unexpected parallel with the mysterious artist's life. Birkin, when not drinking tea with Moon or brushing turpentine onto plaster, falls into quiet, intense love with the vicar's wife, Alice Keach (Natasha Richardson).


Love with the vicar's wife (Natasha Richardson)! The bit when she explains her apple savantness is so good.

Colin Firth recently waxed nostalgic about director Pat O'Connor's confidence in making this film: the story was allowed to breathe, actors were allowed to be silent. Indeed, the whole point of the film is the profound, emotional intensity that underscores this pleasant facade, and the uselessness of words. The trauma of World War I still lingers like a ghost in the landscape: and O'Connor does a brilliant job of never gazing directly at the war, but rather coming at it sideways. The most explicit war scene we see is the opening shot of Birkin struggling through the mud and barbed wire: the camera is zoomed tightly on him, we have little sense of context, and there's a sense of claustrophobia and horror. The haunting church hymns underscore the usual aphorism: war is hell (in the religious and literal senses). Similarly, Birkin and Moon's PTSD is a smothered suffering that we see only through the cracks of Birkin's twitch or Moon's nighttime howling.

But this story isn't about dwelling in the horribleness of World War I - rather, it's a realist, poignant look at slow healing. Oxgodsby's warm fuzziness is the perfect restorative for the broken vets, even if that healing is fragile and tentative. And the narrative is a looking back, so nostalgia is thick. The greatness of this story is the way it captures ephemeral beauty, a feeling that is vibrant and impermanent. Quite spiritual. And, like all art that does what it's supposed to, it captures and transmits an emotional quality.


We should probably mention that this film is, actually, in color.

The film is also a marvelous companion to the book - they both really enrich each other. And experiencing either is like breathing in purified rural gold. People, get thee to this film - or rather, get thee to preserving this rich work! We can't let gems like these disappear. Ahh, Angleterre. Where's good ol' William Blake when ya need him?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

(the book!)

Planet of the Apes (1968)

What a classic! And what an underrated work of genius.

Like all good sci-fi, Planet of the Apes is an imaginative and entertaining commentary on major parts of our current society. Or, in this case, 1960s American society. Segregation, anti-intellectualism and creationism are all dissected via the lens of one unlucky space explorer, Taylor (Charlton Heston), and his misadventures in a civilization where apes enslave humans.

Taylor, along with his two cosmonaut friends, Landon (Robert Gunner) and Dodge (Jeff Burton), are heading to Earth after a brief mission to space which has dilated time over seven centuries for the Earthlings. But after they bump something in the ship, they end up way off course: thousands of years wrong, and crash landing into a planet where the few humans are primitive mutes who are rounded up by troops of gorilla soldiers wielding muskets and flash photography.

Things quickly spiral into the surreal as Taylor and the others end up imprisoned by the apes. Already we see clear segregation: the orangutans are the scientists, the gorillas are the soldiers, and the chimpanzees are just trying to get by (especially after the "quota system" has ended - Affirmative Action?). After a wounded Taylor regains his voice, all hell breaks loose. He befriends two chimpanzee progressives - Dr. Zira (Kim Hunter) and Cornelius (Roddy McDowall) - who liberate him and send him off to discover the truth about this crazy planet's great mysteries.

The setting is rich and vivid. There's a great moment, for example, when Taylor is fleeing the guards and he ends up in a natural history museum - taxidermied humans are exhibited in various scenes "from the wild". The characterizations are also fascinating; Taylor and his astronauts chat at length about their old habits as misanthropes and lotharios. And we just loved the cheeky nudges to 1960s (counter)culture - at one point, Taylor shaves and tells a young sympathetic chimp that where he comes from, "only kids your age wear beards". The kid cocks his head, "Beards? I don't go in for fads." Cornelius chimes in: "Somehow, [clean-shavenness] makes you look less intelligent." Later on, Taylor jokes with the young chimp, "Remember: never trust anyone over thirty!"

A lot of a fun (and a lot better than the 2001 remake); it was clearly made with passion and intelligence. And some of the dialogue - especially Taylor's liberal use of "Damn you, damn you to hell!"s - is delightful. Now get your stinking paws off me, your damned dirty ape, and watch this damned film!

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

Ghost in the Shell blasts onto the screen with haunting, Melanesian-esque choral music, post-human spinal tubing and lots and lots of arching breasts. We were kind of terrified in the first few minutes, but eventually settled down to really enjoy this innovative, brilliant, bizarre cyberpunk anime.

They say there are no new stories to tell, but surely all that 1980s early Internet sci-fi and Singularity stuff was new! Designing our own evolution for a transhuman future, etc. Because while Ghost in the Shell is talking about ancient Descartesian problems of defining consciousness in a world of epistemological doubt, it's also approaching those 17th-century questions with very 21st-century post-human answers. In particular, in a world of networked computers and biological augmentations, the division between meatspace and cyberspace is blurred. And this redefines everything - as Battlestar Galactica's philosophizing Cylon, Caprica Six, put it: "Are you alive? Prove it." Because, for all you know, you're a machine brain living in a virtual reality. Everyone thinks they're human.

Major Motoko Kusanagi (voiced by Atsuko Tanaka), she of the arching breasts which we will be seeing a lot of throughout the film, is a fully cyborg, detective-type badass killing machine (literally). She works for the Japanese government's Section 9, a sort of cyberpunk police squad. Their current target is the criminal hacker, the Puppet Master, who hacks into people's "ghosts" - that is, their consciousnesses, which these days are often embedded in brains permanently connected to the Internet. The Puppet Master's motives are nebulous, and some havoc is wreaked on the garrish, dilapidated, rainy downtown streets. That is, until a rogue cyborg claiming to be housing its own ghost appears. And then everything - especially the definition of life - is thrown into question.

But not before we squeeze in some evocative, meditative sequences. Even in moments of crisis, such as during a high-tech/high-speed car chase across nighttime Tokyo, director Mamoru Oshii slows the emotional pace down with somber, spacey music and lingering shots on the details of this very strange, brave new world. Though there are some grisly moments of violence (is this rated R? it should be!), the tone of the film is more cerebral than action-oriented. Characters often spend their time expositing the themes and ideas. This is excusable as they are running an investigation, and so explaining things to each other makes sense. It's also excusable because those ideas - do you grant human rights to a thinking machine? how did that ghost appear? - are so clever.

We really enjoyed it. We liked that, while there is the token human male character (sporting some very 1980s hair and shoulder pads indeed!), the film is brave enough to keep our focus on the non-human female protagonist, Motoko. Motoko's existential angst is resonant. It feels real (point of the movie, maybe?). When she talks about how being some biomachine superlady with access to infinite bits of data only makes her realize her limitations, we were moved. Oh, Pinocchio! Or as Rudyard Kipling once said, in a quote which has already been pilfered by sci-fi people for post-human themes, "Let them fall, Mowgli. They are only tears."

Is this THE cyberpunk movie of all time? Can it be topped?! We don't think so. It's more cyberpunky and smart than the oft-cited Father of the genre, Blade Runner! Highly recommended.

Children of Men (2006)

Back when Children of Men came out, a lot of people took it as an incoherent parable for the modern day problems of Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib; Western paranoia of encroaching terrorist agendas leading to a Big Brother lockdown, etc. We were surprised that what we considered to be the driving symbolism of the movie - that is, orthodox Christianity - was instead downplayed or ignored completely. Did no one get it!?

The year is 2027 and Britain is a dark, crummy dystopia that no one likes. It's still better than the Rest of the World, which lies in literal ruins - fire, rubble, AK-47s. "Fugees" - i.e. non-British - are detained in filthy prison colonies on the southern coast of England, and meanwhile a terrorist organization calling itself the "Fishes" is planting bombs in downtown London coffee shops. What a mess.


Various scenes of wreck and ruin and... Bansky?

But the main problem is humanity's sterility. For 18 years, not a single baby has been born. The film opens then on Theo (Clive Owen), a rumpled bureaucratic drone, never too far from some liquor, who lives a wretched half-life in this childless purgatory. One day, Theo is contacted by his former flame, Julian (Julianne Moore), who asks him for some rare "transit papers" to help a friend get off the isle (and the Casablanca bell goes CLANG! hooray!). Theo reluctantly agrees to help, even though Julian is mixed up with the Fishes and their charismatic (well, we think so) leader, Luke (Chiwetel Ejiofor, always great). Of all the gin joints! Theo is then shocked to learn that Julian and the Fishes are secretly protecting none other than the World's Only Pregnant Woman, Kee (Clare Hope-Ashitey), who is in her eighth month (she thinks - everyone's sort of forgotten how this pregnancy thing works). Theo, Julian and the Fishes are now all competing to help Key get to the "Human Project" - a rumored Eden where humans aren't stuffing each other's heads into black bags and pushing them into detention centers. Insert also one extremely off-the-grid, pot-growing, old hippie Jasper (Michael Caine, always lovable) and shake well.


Clive Owen and Danny Huston, in a brilliant "brick in the wall" scene. We're starting to think no one on Earth appreciates Danny Huston the way we do. The man is AMAZING. Just watch The Proposition and you'll see.

Much of the film is, as you would expect, an exercise in dystopian misery. The tone is perpetually bleak, and the slightest levity is only the cynical, sarcastic kind. This film is also very self-aware; i.e. it knows its roots. For example, a brilliant scene featuring the brilliant and underrated Danny Huston as a "Noah of the arts", living alone with his deranged 20something son in a revamped Tate Modern, manages to throw in a Pink Floyd cover. And there are the obvious allusions to 1984 or Brave New World, what with the government-approved suicide rations and overbearing bureaucracy.

But the film is mostly about the Bible. We think. This is a very classical, orthodox Christian story, stuffed full of allusions: Theo, underground fish and miracle babies. Director Alfonso Cuarón is only using these Abu Ghraib-type aesthetics in the same way he uses the 1970s acid rock (King Crimson!): as a familiar, modern idiom to get across a very ancient story of miracle and saviors. When Kee reveals her pregnancy to Theo, she's in a manger. Theo's last words in the film are, "Oh, Jesus." Danny Huston's character could be Pilate. And one of Jesus' titles was the Son of Man - just pluralfy that and you get the title. Indeed, it's a very fun story to pick apart, as the Christian symbols are layered everywhere. Personally, we felt like Indy at the end of The Last Crusade (remember: there is no "J" in Greek).


Ahem, "Theo", meets the, ahem, "Fishes".

Another notable feature about this film is Cuarón's use of really, REALLY long takes. There are three in particular, each lasting as much as ten minutes (!). That's ten minutes of a single shot. The most impressive of these, by far, is the one in the car. This is an early climax in the film, and it begins when Theo wakes up from a nap, the camera slowly zooming out from him. Watch out for it. The entire thing is filmed on a single camera, spinning deliriously within a cramped, cluttered car. And from that single shot, we manage to witness the build-up, climax and after-effects of a chaotic action piece. It's a testament to everyone involved - Cuarón and the actors, especially - for making such an impressive, uninterrupted piece of movie magic.

Oh yeah, and it's based on a (waay more obviously Christiany) book by P.D. James.

Evita (1996)

One of the most curious things about the film adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Evita is that nearly all the scenes featuring Political Power, such as the famous "Don't Cry for Me Argentina" moment, are filmed off-balance.


The Old Guard, off-balance.


The rise of the Peróns; the tilt worsens.


Vertiginous heights!

It's a clever visual reminder of both the delirious heights Eva and Juan Perón find themselves in by the halfway mark of this movie, as well as the unsteady base they've founded their power on. It's a castle built on quicksand, and - amid the eerie, minor-chord chanting of "Perón! Perón!"/"Eviiiita!" - the spotlight reels drunkenly and the framing is permanently off-kilter. This famous sequence is then gloriously bookended by "And the Money Kept Rolling In (And Out)", which is a montage of the Perón government hemhorraging funds - into hospitals, into infrastructure, into bread and circuses and their own pockets.

A confession: we watch Evita with the same regularity that some people go on holiday. We kinda like it. (Kinda big time.)


Our favorite "oligarch". We look out for him in all the snobby, rich people numbers!


Though when the chorus sings as a big crowd, or line of military drones, it's scary.

For economists, Argentina is a strange beast. One hundred years ago, it was poised to be one of the next great powers, growing fast and making money. By the 2010s, it had fallen far below that potential. And in between? The Peróns. (Okay, and a lot of other stuff - like the crisis in 1999 - but saying "The Peróns." sounds a lot more dramatic and exciting.)

Yet this musical acknowledges the magnetic charisma of Juan and Eva. Following Eva Duarte (Madonna), who later became known by the loving diminutive "Evita", as an ambitious social climber, we begin in the poor town of Los Toldos, quickly move to the heady nights of Buenos Aires as Eva sleeps her way onwards and upwards, eventually landing in the bed of Juan Perón (Jonathan Pryce, in a big fake... nose). Perón, an influential military man, is slowly making his way up the ladder as well. They agree - in the jazzy number "I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You" - to team up, and, well, Jonathan Pryce and Madonna are an unlikely and unexpectedly hot duo.


Love!

Or so think the screaming crowds (and the PPCC), who - as governments topple, riots break out and buildings burn down - catapult the Peróns and their new, labor-friendly rhetoric into the Casa Rosada.

This film is all about glory, legends, cynical politics, big promises that kind of ambiguously follow through, and, of course, crowd control. So it's a lot like Webber's other PPCC favorite, Jesus Christ Superstar. As in JCS, the mob - amorphous, impatient, demanding and, above all, LOUD - is more than spectator. It is the important third character, getting in the way between the Father and Son, between Juan and Eva. If we were Žižek, we'd say it was the id to Juan's/God's superego and Eva's/Jesus' ego - the mob is unmanageable, impulsive, dangerous and hypnotic. It is the ugly, scary, Dionysian part of being human.


Juan and Eva as the superego and ego, respectively, trying to manage...


Their fickle id.


(Note: these two moments are separated by practically the entire film. Such is the genius of the editing.)

In Evita, that crowd is also represented by none other than Ché (Antonio Banderas, not a cat here), ultra-popular populist icon. Ché is forever pushing and shoving his way between people, getting beaten up by policemen, standing in factory lines, gazing cynically at the lather everyone is frothing around in. Literally, he stays grounded. And so often voices Jiminy Cricket-like asides, meets Eva in dreamscapes where they discuss what the hell she thinks she's doing, and sometimes - for the help of those ignorant of Argentine (Argentinian?) history - summarizes things.

Ever since reading about Pablo Escobar building hospitals in the marvelous Cocaine: A Definitive History by Dominic Streatfield, we've been interested in the politics and economics of Latin America. However, since we spend most of our spare time these days updating this blog, it keeps getting pushed down the list of General Things To Do. Can anyone suggest a good primer on, er, modern Latin American history?


This guy getting torn down in Parliament reminded us of Italian parliament, circa 2008!

About the impact of the film. Well: as we said above, we watch it a lot. It's one of our favorite things (apart from packages wrapped in brown paper tied up with string). When Madonna tells us not to cry for her, we do - oh, how we do. It's a spectacle. When Jonathan Pryce's vibrato voice bellows into the microphone - "Arrrrgentinos! Arrrrgentinos!" - we get goosebumps. "Descamisados! Mis companeros!" Webber's music is as easy and Puccini-fied as it's always been. Transferring the musical from Broadway to film naturally lost some of the excellent original cast - Patti LuPone as Eva and poor, beautiful Mandy Pantinkin (!) as Che - in favor of bigger names. Madonna is fine, as is Jonathan Pryce - duh, they're professional singers. Antonio Banderas strains a bit, but he makes up for it by playing an obese cat 14 years later (so funny! so cute! oh, fat cats lolz!). We try to dress up our long-simmering, low-fi crush on Jonathan Pryce by saying that we like him because of Brazil, Terry Gilliam's 1980s dystopian classic. We reckon that sounds cooler than admitting that we just think he's sexy in an arched eyebrow, vibrato, Welsh way. In a big fake nose way.

Now someone Christian Dior me! Lauren Bacall me! Machiavell-me!