Halt and Catch Fire: Season 2 (2014-)

Halt and Catch Fire's second season is a smart, compelling take on modern Silicon Valley's origin story. And, given the incredible economic and cultural power Silicon Valley holds in today's world, our origin story.

It follows four people - three makers and one suit - as they scramble, squabble, and build our brave new world amidst much blood, sweat, tears, shoulder pads and cyberpunk squalor. The fact that two women are portrayed as the central hardware and software geniuses is a sly criticism of Silicon Valley's current Vile Sexist Problem. But what's a real relief is that tech sexism takes a backseat to the real core theme of this wonderful show: the creative spirit, as mediated by modern, late capitalist work.

In 1980s Texas, the "Silicon Prairie", companies are just waking up to the economic and social potential of networked computers. While season 1 introduced us to a Dallas electronics company, Cardiff, getting whipped into digital shape by Ayn Randian ubermensch, Joe McMillan (a divine Lee Pace), it was - well, mostly boring. The three makers - cyberpunk riot grrrl Cameron Howe (Mackenzie Davis), hardware genius Donna (Kerry Bishé), exasperated wife to frustrated goober Gordon (Scoot McNairy) - felt a little flat, and Joe's American Psycho with a heart of gold thing was, yeah, whatever.

Season 2 underwent a radical change in tone - and it pays off. Suddenly, the tired Mad Men stuff was gone: replaced by smart commentary on our earliest digital roots (online communities, copyleft, brogrammers). Donna and Cameron have now joined forces to launch Mutiny, an online gaming/chatroom startup. Leading an army of slobbish brogrammer stereotypes, they clash over visions of the future (will online text-based chat be the future? or multi-player role playing games? ding ding, both!) and clash against the reluctantly ruthless corporate shark that is Joe.

What really impressed us about season 2 though was the incisive looks into modern work. We see modern American work in all its incantations: the "garage startup" aesthetic of protracted adolescence (pizza boxes, action figure office decor, geek fun aplenty), the genteel humiliations and scrabble of cutthroat corporatism, the desperate attempts to preserve the creative under the onslaught of capital. And once again, we at the PPCC are reminded: oh, how we wished work was organized along Renaissance Italian 15th century lines, and we would have bottegas dedicated to great masters created their art, and we would have apprenticeships with great masters, and the wealthy would be patrons of the arts, and we would dedicate our lives to seeking knowledge (science) and beauty (art). WE CAN DREAM.

Anyway. Here's a scene which captures the mood:


They're going to California next (season 3), and we can't wait. We at the PPCC have a long meditation on California festering in our minds, perhaps ready one day for the Internet. Suffice to say, it'll be about Californian secession, Californian arrogance, the way a Whole Earth Catalog + VC bros culture is exported throughout America, "please don't deport my redneck ass", and the fact that this Dead Kennedys song is still so darkly, hilariously true. Mellow out or you will pay. MELLOW OUT OR YOU WILL PAY.

The Intern (2015)

A spiritual sequel to Working Girl, The Intern is a moral, feel-good fantasy that touches on two of our favorite topics: the changing nature of work, and BUSINESS FEMINISM (yyaaaayy). The Intern is more earnest and optimistic than Working Girl, but its scope is also more expansive.

Jules (Anne Hathaway) is the smart, impassioned founder of an exploding, StitchFix-like fashion tech company in Brooklyn. She's firing on all cylinders and her company is a spot-on caricature of today's tech world: giant, open plan warehouse office, army lines of iMacs, endless screens of fashion clothing and code, code, glorious code! Also Millennials, every which way! Millennials being awkward and snarky! Oh, the youths. Oh, you sillies.

Into this silicon spritz world steps 70-year-old Ben (Robert DeNiro), the company's first "senior intern". The film opened with Ben, and he's basically the Platonic ideal of a senior citizen: hale and hearty, handsome and active, there just isn't enough to do for this uber-mensch out to pasture. Wise and funny, warm and gentlemanly, he carries the best parts of a bygone Golden Era where men groomed well and treated women chivalrously - but he's also, magically, unicornly, completely updated in his feminist thinking.

He is - and we hate that we can't find it on Google - what Jungians? Freudians? some psychoanalysts would call the Empathetic Sage Fantasy. You know when shit is tough and your life seems to be sucking and you JUST WISH Obi-Wan Kenobi or Gandalf or some other kindly grandfatherly type would just be in your corner for a while? Fighting your fight for you, calling you "champ"? Ben is that guy. He is that archetype. And while Jules starts drowning under her mountain of work (there are only so many hours in the day!), juggling a young family at home too, she quickly recognizes that Uber-Gandalf has just walked into her life - and everything will now be OK.

The main themes of the film center on being a smart, energetic businesswoman in a world where the glass ceiling is still there and women need to worry about "having it all" and dying alone - and that certainly hit us right here - but there are some very deft sub-themes about what work used to mean, and what it means now. Of course, Ben brings only the best of the bygone era: he is diligent, organized, methodical, and has a laser focus. No nagging notification bells for him; no Internet-eroded attention span! This man knows how to work. He is also humble, gracious, excited about having A Job. It's touching - it's heartwarming - it sets itself as a counterpoint to the (myth?) more modern ideas of "finding your passion". Of course, Jules is following her bizniz passion - the whole movie's about that - but we still appreciate any tiny ways we can find those narratives. (See our Jiro Dreams of Sushi review for much more on Labor Stuff.)

Anyway. Ben also knows how to flirt (just groom!), and there is much gentle mockery of the extended adolescence of Millennial men ("Boys! Boys?!" Jules cries in one scene).

It's indulgent, it's less edgy than Working Girl (which remains primero in our Business Feminism sub-category), but it's joyous and presents a world where we get it all: endlessly scrolling code, free beer in the fridge, the zing of good business, and - as DeNiro says in one wonderful moment - that "bright, beautiful thing" of creating a great biz. On to Warren Buffet next!

Mission Blue (2014)

Sylvia Earle is the reason we stopped eating fish two years ago. Well, that, and learning how to scuba dive. Man - Teddy Roosevelt (or was it John Muir?) was right: exposing yourself to a heavy dose of Mama Nature is really going to shift your perspective. And our scuba diving/marine conservationist/eco-warrior journey followed three distinct steps:

1. Holy shit, is this going to kill us?! Oh my God, we have to cough, how does one cough with a regulator in one's mouth?! (Hint: The magic of regulators is - you just do!)
2. Oh wow, those Pixar people really did their research.
3. FISH ARE FRIENDS, NOT FOOD.

So, back to Sylvia Earle. She is amazing. HUHHHH-MAZING. She is also completely under-known, under-rated, under-appreciated. She is a kickass boss woman marine scientist who headed NOAA (pow pow!), has logged thousands of dives (kaplow!), and now fights for the ocean's right to live, LIVE, LIIIVE. She wrote the wonderful The World Is Blue, delivered a TED talk, founded an ocean conservation org and is both inspiring and fascinating. Mission Blue, a documentary (on Netflix!) by Fisher Stevens (where do we know him from?), follows the evolution of Sylvia Earle from beach-going Florida kid scientist to marine eco-warrior. There's a scene reminiscent of Greenpeace-style activism where Earle, in her late 70s, dons a wetsuit and jumps into the water near a fishing boat. The fishermen - all men - are shouting at her and the other cameramen, and she swims up, taking pictures, filming, as the giant industrialized fishnet pulls an entire school out of the ocean. It's amazing - horrible - inspiring. WHERE DOTH MY WET SUIT GO, I SHALL JOIN THEE!

Another moment in the doc notes that Earle never recognized or acknowledged the glass ceiling. She just did what she did. And, indeed, there's a refreshingly straightforward directness to her. Never is the F-word (feminism) uttered, but her entire life is testament to it: she wanted to do science, dammit! Now she wants to goddamn save the whales! AND SAVED THEY SHALL BE.

Another jarring moment: when Earle wanders the Tokyo fish market. It's the exact same shots as in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, except now our perspective is radically different: rather than the hedonistic, aesthetic appreciation of all that fine, dead fish, we have Earle's tortured gaze at all that over-fished, unsustainable, dead fish. The scenes with the shark fin hunting - where fishermen sliced fins from still-living, writhing sharks and threw them, gushing blood and panicky, back into the water - left the PPCC shaken, horrified.

We loved this documentary, and it's important, and we thought about it for days afterward. But we're already converts: 30+ hours at depths between 15 to 30 meters will do that to you. Will it appeal to the proto-eco-warriors out there? To those that have yet to have their "this blue planet!" peak experience? We don't know. But we do think Earle should be celebrated as the special, inspiring lady she is. Into the hall of heroes you go, Sylvia!

The West Wing (1999-2006)

As is our wont, we're joining a party 17 years late to rush in and say: OMG, guys, have you seen The West Wing? It's so good!

Just like Jesus Christ Superstar and Evita are about mobs; just like Star Wars is about false dichotomies; West Wing is about systems. Systems, systems, systems. And - since it's so goddamn optimistic and cleverly written - we find ourselves swept along: God bless America, indeed; God bless good institutions!

Told mostly via lively walk-and-talk dialogues between a core group of intellectual idealists (the White House staff), led by the most intellectualest of them all, philosopher-President Jed Bartlet (a born-for-this-role Martin Sheen), The West Wing unpacks both the quotidian chaos and overall chaos of Politics in America with glee and gusto. This stuff is fun and fascinating, episode by episode by episode by SWEET GOD IT'S BEEN TEN EPISODES WE NEED TO GO TO BED NOW.

One common, overarching theme is the clash between dumb humans, lofty ideals, and our institutions - and how that clash is constant, sometimes exhilarating, often painful. We're often reminded how much the President is a prop and a position, distinct from the individual currently wearing the suit, currently sitting in the egg-shaped office:

Father Cavanaugh: I don't know how to address you. Would you prefer Jed or Mr. President?
Bartlett: To be honest, I'd prefer Mr. President.
Father Cavanaugh: That's fine.
Bartlett: You understand why, right?
Father Cavanaugh: Do I need to know why?
Bartlett: It's not ego.
Father Cavanaugh: I didn't think it was.
Bartlett: There's certain decisions I have to make while I'm in this room. Do I send troops into harm's way. Which fatal disease gets the most research money.
Father Cavanaugh: Sure.
Bartlett: It's helpful in those situations not to think of yourself as the man but as the office.

Indeed, another thing we're often reminded about is that this group of idealistic, intellectual liberals are just one group in a long, long line of Presidents and staff: 44 such groups, so far!

King George III: They say / George Washington’s yielding his power and stepping away / ‘Zat true? / I wasn’t aware that was something a person could do / I’m perplexed / Are they gonna keep on replacing whoever’s in charge? / If so, who’s next?

We see systems come slamming down on the individuals when - for example - President Bartlet is shot (er, spoilers for season 1 stuff, whatever, we're like the last ones to have seen this). Everything goes batshit insane; Secret Service professionalism struggling to keep the blood and adrenaline and vomit from splattering onto everything (it does get on the cars). There's a wonderful quick moment - amid the assassination crazery - when the Vice President (Tim Matheson) is physically manhandled out of a low-stakes schmoozefest by a group of burly Secret Service officers: the look of fear on his face, marching with all those Secret Service hands on him, is - mwah - such perfect! Such writing! Such direction!

This trifecta clash - humans, ideals, systems - runs big and small. Such as the problematic charm of newspaper journalist Danny (Timothy Busfield) rom-com courting the White House Press Secretary, CJ Cregg (Allison Janney): doesn't this violate some sort of check or balance? And yet - it seems so innocent! So soft and fun! And then there's the unfortunate byproduct of these glorious, insane systems: politics (ughh). That is, the cynical political machine: the machine that worries about polls, reelection, and popularity - often at the cost of ideals. It's wrenching to watch CJ struggle to disentangle the personal from the political in the wake of a gruesome homophobia-driven murder in season 1: and she's the face! She's got to keep a lid on it!

And now: a loving paean to Toby. Oh, Toby Toby Toby. Like Season 3 Tigh, Toby is the heart and soul of the show for us: a hangdog Eeyore driven by seemingly limitless depths of feeling and intellect. And all conveyed with NOT ONE, BUT TWO, INCREDIBLE ACTING EYES. We doff our hats to Richard Schiff, who follows a Luigi Lo Cascio-esque style of acting: mostly stares (lots of staring), monosyllables, and lots of DEEPLY MEANINGFUL YET MUMBLED "okays" and "yeahs". Ah. So good. Incidentally, The West Wing Weekly podcast covered both the eternal shades of meaning in the show's abundant, Miles Davis-esque verbal tics ("yeah... okay."). Incidentally #2, the same episode has Richard Schiff co-hosting and confirming the eerie quality of hearing lines that weren't even said (INCREDIBLE ACTING EYE, I am telling you). And, frankly, we were touched by Schiff's still-fresh emotional resonance with the show's ideals.

Phew. Okay. So it's amazing. Watch it. We'll keep watching. Five seasons to go, wooo. What's next?

Tournée (2010)

A lot of things are going on in Tournée (On Tour), though not much happens.

We follow a burlesque troupe of Americans, led by a wiley, scrabbly French manager named Joachim (the wonderful Mathieu Amalric), as they "skirt around the edges" of France (meaning, coastal towns). Things end much as they begin, with existential despair sometimes leavened by a little lovemaking and a little champagne. Joachim is a scraggly has-been TV producer, now running a self-described "girly show". But, much like a slew of Giancarlo Giannini characters (especially this one), it's unclear who's lording it over who in this sexist/feminist mish-mash. The burlesque performers - Mimi Le Meaux, Kitten on the Keys, Dirty Martini, and others (all real-life burlesque performers) - assert that the show is led by them, for them; it's a liberating experience of women taking ownership over their own bodies. It's an emancipation, even as Joachim herds and frets and stresses over logistics and booking venues.

When Joachim is not fretting over the tour, he - ahem - tours through his old French life (fresh, as he is, from an indeterminately long sojourn in the US). We meet old lovers (male and female), old colleagues, and his two kids. And everyone, okay, totally hates his guts - though we never find out why. These ancient grudges lead to some of the comedy's few actually funny scenes, such as when Joachim's son runs away in the middle of the night and then pretends not to know him in front of the police.

The film's about the show, but it's also about the tour of life, and we mostly get a classically French look at existential despair. Joachim and the girls are living a picaresque life on the edges of society - sometimes liberating, sometimes alienating. (This is best exemplified in Mimi le Mieaux, who has moments of coming apart at the seams.) 'Cuz, gosh, don't it all just make you feel so mortal! Boobs sag, eyelashes are fake, and there's a general sense of glitzy decay, of desperate grasping and of fizzling hopes. Joachim himself is a bit of a crumply sad-sack (though we felt Amalric was too young for the part), mostly trafficking in self-pity.

That said, as is usual in these "oh, the abyss!"-type stories, there's a redeeming humanism throughout. You love these characters, even if they sometimes worry about being unlovable. The girls tease Joachim, he yells at them, but there's a real affection as well. It might be senseless grasping across the abyss, but - hey - it's something!

Anyway, Mathieu Amalric directed this as well, but it was really his performance that made us want to watch, and that is the best part of the show. Miranda Colclasure (as Mimi) was touching, and there were some minor roles - the lady in the gas station! or the lady at the grocery store - that were memorable and well-done.

Half of a Yellow Sun (2013)

Half of a Yellow Sun is a fascinating, likable look at an interesting (and definitely under-cinematized) period in Nigeria's history: from independence in 1960 to the Nigerian civil war in Biafra in 1967 to 1970. Told through the perspective of a bunch of super-mod bourgeois intellectuals getting lost in the conflict, it's a stark, smart, sympathetic portrayal.

We start in 1960 with the fireworks and flash of Nigerian independence from the British. Twin sisters Olanna (Thandie Newton) and Kainene (Anika Noni Rose) are sparkling and soooo bourgeois: speaking with posh British accents, rocking glamorous 1960s dresses (and hair!), and being all like, "Oh, thanks, Dad, but I actually already got a job." At one of the "1,001 soirees" the girls head to on independence night, Kainene runs into Richard Churchill (a handsome Joseph Mawle) - "unrelated to Winston" - who is our Resident White Guy Orientalist and falls for Kainene hard. Despite a wife? Possibly a wife. Ambiguity!

Assisted by helpful maps (a la Indiana Jones), the girls go off to start their careers: Olanna heading north, where she'll take up a teaching position at the university, and also hang with a bunch of fiery 1960s intellectuals of the Aimé Césaire/Frantz Fanon variety. One of which is the crazy handsome Odenigbo (Chiwetel Ejiofor, or as we like to call him, Chiwwweeeeteeellll we loooove you). Odenigbo, mockingly called "The Revolutionary" by the other twin, is, okay yes, kind of your standard 1960s post-colonial leftist, what with the Malcolm X glasses and occasional rants about white guy's being racist and Americans being Cold War paranoid. And, yes, he's a bit all over the place sometimes. But he's also? Got a heart o' gold, of course.

Here begins a bit o' Pants Drama, which we'll skip over. It's melodramatic and kind of ridiculous and provoked lols, but made us - also - love them all so much more. Y'all with your pants problems.

After Pants Drama is mostly resolved (lots of "Don't sleep with my wife!" and driving off in a huff), societal shit really hits the fan, and we're celebrating another independence, this time for the new state of Biafra, seceding from the rest of Nigeria. The film had been efficiently peppering in all the intra-tribal tensions throughout, with people being all like, "Oh, but you can never trust Igbo folks, ya know..." and "Gosh, those Yoruba!" and so on and so forth. You wouldn't really notice it, until it explodes shortly after the Biafran secession into full-blown civil war. Things quickly go downhill. VERY VERY DOWNHILL.

Based on the popular novel by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, it's true that the film feels a bit rushed and abridged. Major points are left hanging, which could either be evocative anti-exposition, or just the need for speed. The newsreel interjections are a blunt way to Explain History to non-Nigerian audiences, but we appreciated them, since we honestly don't know much.

THAT SAID, gosh, we liked this movie. The performances were all charismatic and touching, even stupid ol' Richard, who really wrecks the party by being such a useless Orientalist (when asked why he's in Nigeria, he responds with, "Well, gosh, I always just loved Africa! You know, explorer stuff!" OH COME ON). Chiwetel Ejiofor and Thandie Newton were phenom, though, and often much better than the material. John Boyega, who played the put-upon servant Ugwu, was also a revelation. The music and cinematography was eminently likable, with one scene of domestic escape from local war being particularly well-executed: a bunch of long takes, tracking shots from the left to the right of the dining room with a minor-keyed, discordant background score (similar-sounding to this) as the family runs around worrying about what to pack and put in the car while OMG BOMBS AND SOLDIERS.

A note about Chiwetel, also: oohhhh, Chiwetel. We've loved you since Serenity, so long ago. Chiwetel is put to good use in this, as his wide-eyed tempestuously humanistic vibe is a perfect fit for the role of fiery intellectual. That moral conviction would serve him well in any number of Gandhi-type roles, though it's the Gandhi-gone-bad ones - the people with the moral conviction, aimed slightly off - that are his best. E.g. his role as Luke from Children of Men. Even The Operative from Serenity was a man driven by an inner moral clarity. Too bad it was crazy!

Anyway, there ain't enough good movies made about Africa, especially recent history, especially complex stories that don't revert to poverty porn stereotypes where White Guy Explains Africa to you, as he stands amidst sunsets and acacia trees (ahem, cough). Thank God this one avoided that (even slightly subverting that stereotype by having Richard (a) be generally useless and peripheral, and (b) having thankfully only one White Guy As Witness scene, which was genuinely horrifying and felt not too cinematic). This film thankfully let Nigerians talk about themselves, let them tell their own story. THERE JUST AIN'T ENOUGH MOVIES LIKE THAT. So this film is valuable in and of itself. But! It's also a great film, one of those History Happens OMG epics that we would have enjoyed if it had been about 1960s France or 1960s China or 1960s wherever (because the 1960s? right? oh man). Recommended.

Then She Found Me (2007)

Then She Found Me is a lemon tart of a film; sweet, tart, small (90-ish mins). It breaks a lot of rom com conventions by following slightly older people with slightly older problems: biological clocks, baggage, ingrained imperfections. And, because of that, it feels refreshingly honest and it's unexpectedly touching. Honestly, this film really hit us right here. It had a romance that moved us in ways that movie romances haven't moved us in a long, PPCC-saturated time. Oh, you people.

April (Helen Hunt; appropriately named for themes of love and fertility) is a kinda high-strung, kinda devout, kinda nice elementary school teacher in New York City. She's "39 and a half", and feeling the strain of her biological clock. She desperately wants a baby, and has been trying for months. Things go sour (lemon tart!) when her husband, Ben (Matthew Broderick), decides he doesn't "want this life" and walks out (taking the dog!). Things pick up a bit when she meets Mr. Darcy - aka Frank (Colin Firth, in almost permanent smolder). Things go back down when April's biological mother turns up unexpectedly, and reveals herself to be Bette Midler playing a slightly less Bette Midlery Bette Midler. But still big! Still vivacious! Still faaaa-aamous!

And so forth. The movie follows April as she stumbles and hesitates and grasps through the ups and downs of her messy, complicated, not unlikable life. Her growing romance with Frank is tender, almost to the point of making us feel invasive of their intimacy (something which hasn't happened since a Raj Kapoor-Nargis film, so kudos to Colin Firth and Helen Hunt for generating such chemistry!). Her mother-daughter rapprochement with Bette Midler Starring Bette Midler always threatens with turning into madcap farce - but never does.

There's an interesting meta quality, as the movie establishes and subverts a lot of the New York City rom com tropes: New York, for example, looks drab and pedestrian. This meta extends to its casting, with each member of the pretty great cast playing a character who's like a warts-and-all "real life" version of their best-known roles. Helen Hunt is the typically New Yorker New Yorker - except her Jewishness is real and tangible (she prays often), her neuroses are strange and unsightly, and she has a tendency to anxiously talk over other people. She calls to mind an edgier version of her roles in As Good As It Gets or Mad About You, if that idealized New Yorker lady actually existed and actually aged and actually had problems and insecurities. Likewise, Matthew Broderick is like an aging, Peter Pan-type Ferris Bueller.

And Colin Firth! Ah. What to say of lovely Colin Firth. Who doesn't love this man? No one. We all know him as Mr. Darcy (which, wow, was 20 years ago) - smoldering, aloof, a man full of English passion. That is, passion that courses deep and silent under a buttoned-up surface. So it's interesting that Frank is, yes, also a smoldering, aloof, tortured stranger from across the pond. Yet the film's hyperrealism subverts even these Trademark Colin Firth Things: he's disheveled, shabby even, with tempestuous moments of insecurity and general capsizing. It's raw and unpleasant, rather than being sort of comfortingly Byronic. (The New York Times review has some interesting thoughts on this in particular.)

So we'd definitely recommend this film, even though the characters are sometimes annoying in their imperfections, the plot is sometimes frustrating in its refusal to adhere to standard narrative arcs, and, oh God, is the music hokey. We're actually quite a bit worried this - like the gorgeous nugget that is Cairo Time or the smart, funny, and surprising Leap of Faith - will be forgotten and disappear into the ethers in just a few years' time because it doesn't fit anyone's mold. Don't let that happen, people! This is a strong, solid, touching film with an awesome cast in very real performances. It deserves to be preserved.

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.

Gattaca (1997)

Just like Kramer vs. Kramer - a sexist movie about sexism - Gattaca is a prejudiced movie about prejudice.

Yes, it's also very slick and stylish and clever (check out everyone's names - e.g. Eugene, "you gene", GET IT?). Yes, the music by minimalist composer Michael Nyman is cosmically evocative (indeed, his this inspired us to make our this). And yes, the set/costume design, with its sleek, clean lines and 1950s jagged angulariness, is very beautiful too.

But!

Well, maybe the plot first.

The plot!

We begin our tale following Any Dystopia's Requisite Bureaucratic Drone, Jerome Morrow (Ethan Hawke), and his clinical, fussy morning preparations. This man's breakfast includes placing tiny tiny vials of blood into tiny little fingerprint pads and then methodically gluing them to his fingers. Among other things. We soon learn that Jerome is actually named Vincent Freeman, and he is an In-Valid. That is, he's not a genetically modified super-person. He's just a guy with bad eyesight and big ambition.

Vincent's world is a semi-Fascist gene-obsessed dystopia, where inequalities are perpetuated via parents investing in their kids' DNA. Being "Valid" - i.e. having been designed for success since fetus days - ensures you the best jobs, the best credit rating, the best life. Vincent, who dreams of joining the Gattaca Corporation and becoming an astronaut on one of their space missions, eventually finds - via a swarthy underground gene dealer (Tony Shalhoub!) - a way in: he steals the identity of a good-gene has-been, Jerome Eugene Morrow (Jude Law). Jerome - the real Jerome - was recently paralyzed in an accident, cutting his athletic career short and, it seems, his will to do anything. He's now all too happy to lend his now "useless" advantage to the under-privileged Vincent.

The rest of the film is basically about Vincent trying to hide his identity, especially as an unfortunately-timed murder and attendant investigation come down on Gattaca Corp.

Of course, this is all intended to be a clever commentary on our real biases and prejudices, and the actual moral issues around, for example, designer babies. Taller, beautifuller people have been shown to get higher salary offers, after all. (Too lazy to find the citation - but you can confirm-bias your way through the Google and find it.)

What then undermines this whole thing is how deeply, subconsciously prejudiced the film is. Some examples: well, the most glaring one is the fact that the hero(es) of the film, Vincent and Eugene, are polished, Anglo, white dudes. And that the only woman in the film, Irene (Uma Thurman), has no personality and is only present to be a love interest. So that's one prejudice in Gattaca: sexism. Let's see if we can keep count.

Next example: The sordid underworld gene dealer is coded as a swarthy foreigner, played by the Lebanese-American actor, Tony Shalhoub. This, coupled with only one black dude in the entire film, gives Gattaca its second strike: Racism.

And perhaps the most insidious example: Jude Law's performance was lauded and celebrated, and, indeed, it includes a number of "For Your Consideration - Academy Voters" scenes meant to elicit strong feelings. His character, Eugene, spends most of his days drinking away his obvious sorrows (cuz, you know, WHEELCHAIR). He is a self-destructive martyr whose only joy - he explicitly notes - is by living vicariously through the able-bodied Vincent.

And that's the third strike, and it's a big one: Ableism. Oh my Lord, we hated this aspect of the film. It played into the most insidious, seedy stereotypes about being able-bodied or not, and basically gave the message that, "If you're in a wheelchair, the best you can hope for is to transfer your earthly ambitions to someone who can walk. And then just die." His entire characterization was meant to evoke some sort of sickly pity, we were meant to see him as a tragic figure. Lest it not be clear, we don't think wheelchair = pitiable tragedy! And it's completely ridiculous to say so! And, ahem, completely undermining of the film's whole point, which is about overcoming perceived physical challenge to, nonetheless, come out on top. And the film's other big point, which is that prejudice based on those perceived challenges is stupid and semi-Fascist.

For these reasons - especially the last - we really kinda hated this film. Not recommended.

Kramer vs. Kramer (1979)

Kramer vs. Kramer deeply troubled us.

Ostensibly a liberal film from the late 70s, about a New York City couple undergoing a painful divorce and custody battle, it ended up being insidiously sexist. How did it win so many accolades back in the day? Were people really so blind? Was this meager bone tossed to women, with its MARROW OF SEXISM (ahem), really meant to be progressive?! Come on! While it was nominally about the women's lib movement, it was basically about how that movement could become a vehicle for one man to become closer and more emotionally open with his son. The women in the film (of which there are two - and, no, they don't talk to each other) are sidelined, their women's lib movement regularly mocked. The finale seems to say: after emancipation, there's no place for women.

Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman) is a young, upwardly mobile New Yorker. On a day when everything in his professional life is going great, his personal life falls apart: he comes home to find his wife, Joanna Kramer (Meryl Streep), with a packed suitcase. Without much explanation, she walks out - and leaves him to care for their rambunctious, adorable 5-year old son, Billy (Justin Henry). The film then becomes essentially a father-son buddy film, as Ted learns to juggle work and homelife.

Numerous social threads are woven throughout: Ted cites feminism as the cause of his wife's antics, he has trouble performing against "all the other mothers" at PTA meetings or play-dates, and his office is basically intolerant of anything less than "110%". Big client, you know.

Of course, Ted stumbles and bumbles, but eventually emerges triumphant. And it's very much at the expense of, well, women and women's issues: Joanna is villainized, even in Meryl's capable hands, and she's presented as a trembley, flakey cipher with only one setting: timid, borrowed rebellion. It's really painful to watch.

(We also couldn't stand Ted (and that's saying something, since we normally appreciate Dustin Hoffman): his violent outbursts seemed waaay too normalized, as if calling your kid a "little piece of shit" or throwing a wine glass past your ex-wife's head are somehow understandable moments of weakness rather than, well, crossing an important line. Dude just seemed like an abusive asshole, to put it bluntly.)

It's interesting to compare this film to another period divorce, The Squid and the Whale. That film's tortuously-divorcing parents were well-rounded, understandable people. They were weak - and Jeff Daniels's Bernard was perhaps more bluntly odious than Dustin Hoffman's Ted - but one could still sympathize. The Kramers, unfortunately, just felt like straw people in a straw world.

Saving Mr. Banks (2013)

Disney movies, and Disneyism in general, share a couple defining traits:

• First, orphandom and the destruction of the parent/protector. Most Disney hero/heroines we can think of have been parentless or violently orphaned (Mowgli, Dumbo, Bambi, Simba, Aladdin, Nemo), and this is usually a big part of the plot (and legend-ness of these characters - e.g. the death of Bambi's mother, or Simba's father, are epically remembered childhood proxy-traumas - seriously, we at the PPCC can't watch this scene without choking up).
  
• Second, manipulation. Oh my Looord, manipulation.

So it shouldn't come as a surprise that Saving Mr. Banks, a Disney film about Disney films, should feature - at its core - parental detsruction and consequent trauma. It follows a prim pedant named P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), author of the Mary Poppins books, as she battles over creative control - and life philosophies - with the sunny, Zen Fascist-ish forced optimism of the Disney Empire. SMILE, DAMN YOU, SMILE. Or, as the Dead Kennedys put it, ALWAYS WEAR THE HAPPY FACE. MELLOW OUT OR YOU WILL PAY.

It's a tolerable film, though not nearly as self-aware and glorious as the other Disney-on-Disney film, Enchanted. Where Enchanted snarkily lampooned common Disney tropes - most centrally, the Relentless Optimism stuff - Saving Mr. Banks, instead, is fully (blindly?) behind them. As a result, it feels a little lifeless - even a little dishonest. We're meant to believe that the power of Disney - the plush toys, the California sun, the well-manicured everything - will eventually break into and heal even wintry P.L. Travers's heart. A heart, mind you, that was broken long ago by a charismatic, boozey dreamer of a dad, played (ineffectually) by Colin Farrell.

It's also partly a UK-versus-US thing, with each side (Travers and Walt himself (played distractingly by Tom Hanks as Tom Hanks)) being an embodiement of the national caricature: "terminally enthusiastic American"-ness (as the PPCC was once called!) versus drab, rainy, pessimistic Britishness. It's the triumph of southern California optimism therapy (redemption! forgiveness! pat endings!).

What's annoying is that the manipulation does work. We at the PPCC ugly-cried at this, sobbing as Emma Thompson sobbed, choking up as Paul Giamatti (!) the Soulful Driver choked up. Damn you, Disney! But this saccharine emotionalism leaves a bad taste as well, and it can't hide some of the film's flaws. Many characters are only rough, one-note sketches. Both Hanks and Thompson - both very loved by the PPCC - are unable to muffle their starshine: they seem like themselves, not like Disney and Travers. The childhood flashbacks are needlessly protracted: we know that "Mr. Banks" - Travers' father - is meant to, somehow, need saving. Watching his slow decline is (1) very slow indeed, and (2) a little difficult to sympathize with.

One interesting point was the link back to Travers's father's Irishness, and his adherence to a mystical, dreamy philosophy. Oh, Ireland. Oh, Erin.

This world is just an illusion, Ginty, ol' girl. As long as we hold that thought dear they can't break us, they can't make us endure their reality, bleak and bloody as it is. Money, money, money, don't you buy into, Ginty. It'll bite you on the bottom.

It's ironic - tragic even - then that this story is essentially about that daughter giving into that corporate, "money, money, money" spiral. Or maybe the film is a marriage between money and embracing (even manipulating) the illusion? That'd certainly be Disney in a nutshell.

Out of Africa (1985)

Romantic and uplifting, Out of Africa tells the true story of Karen Blixen, Baroness and Badass. Watch! As Karen whips lions in the face! Stare aghast! As she sharpshoots more lions in more faces! And be amazed! At how she macks on aaall the fine, handsome men of colonial East Africa.

Beginning in snowy Denmark in the early 1910s, Karen (a wonderful Meryl Streep) realizes that things with Random Danish Hunter Man are not working out, and so she'll settle for Hunter Man's Brother as her husband-to-be. That is, the sardonic Swedish aristocrat, Bror Baron Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer) - at least, we think that's his name. The newly-minted Baroness Blixen then sails down to East Africa, where - still reeling from the X-hour journey - the Blixens are officially wed and welcomed into Your Favorite Expat Group. Except this expat group is quite fun, what with the adorable British dinosaur, Lord Delamere (Michael Gough), the sexy Oxford Orientalist, Berkeley (Michael Kitchen), doing what all good Oxford Orientalists of Times Past did (learn the local language, love the local people, and march around conquering things), or the also sexy American, Robert Redford (Robert Redford).

Actually, Redford is supposed to be playing another British aristocrat, Denys Finch Hatton, but - after reading Finch Hatton's Wikipedia page - we've decided he's actually just playing Robert Redford.

Anyway. So many men to choose from! And so much work to be done! Karen immediately establishes herself as Badass Fem Lady, thus dispelling some of the immediately problematic aspects of this film for a PPCC's tender, post-colonial, feminist soul. When Mr. Bror Baron tries to throw his weight around, Karen throws it right back at him! When Bror Baron confronts sexy Robert Redford, demanding to know why he wasn't consulted that they should get all up to the lovemaking (uh, spoiler? but come on, you know what this film is about!), Redford said he "did ask... and she said yes." YES! When colonial noob Karen stumbles into the "Men Only" bar of the colonial club, and is promptly thrown out, we realized this movie was actually going to throw us a few feminist bones now and again. Indeed, it passes the Bechdel Test! And the bar scene is eventually reversed in one of those great Bar Scene Where -Isms Are Challenged things.

What we found surprising (and refreshing) about this film is that - kinda like a few other sweeping colonial-revival 1980s epics - this actually feels like a relatively even-handed, sympathetic and smart portrayal of early 20th century East Africa. We see intelligent details, such as the way Nairobi subtly changes over the years that Karen is in Kenya. Or the presence of the Indian Kenyan community. Or the burgeoning development projects, such as Karen's school. Or the commodification of the safari. We have interesting musings on the glamor of the Maasai, the issue of land grabbing, and - best of all - the opportunity Kenya provides for Karen to break out of her conscripted gender role and, well, whip a lion in the face if she has to. Damn, girl.

The performances are uniformly strong, with Meryl Streep obviously reigning supreme. This movie really is hers, and she is lovable, inspiring and smart. We found Robert Redford a bit stale, he's essentially just a beefcake (though his liberal attitudes towards relationships - we're all just free birds! - were interesting). Much more intriguing was actually Klaus Maria Brandauer as the adulterous Baron Blixen. This could have easily been a straight villain role. Indeed, when we read the wiki article about Karen Blixen long ago, we read him as such. For the love of God, he gives her syphilis! So it was surprising and surprisingly tender to see how honest, adult and even caring their marriage of convenience is portrayed to be. There was a real energy between the two actors. Another intriguing, though small, role was the somewhat tragic, but oh, so charming, Michael Kitchen as Berkeley. Indeed, though Redford is on the cover, much of the film has Karen (and us!) gazing lovingly at Berkeley. Given that some homies on the Internet have created animated GIFs of Berkeley scenes, we take this to mean we're not alone.

BUT! BIG BUT OF CONCERN. Isn't this all very problematic?! We loved the uplifting, positive spirit of the film. This is an East Africa which is beautiful and kind, with lots of love and warmth. Thus, it's already a MUCH nicer portrayal of the region than, say, this or this. But - well, is it legit? Or is it all just whitewashing colonialism!? Let me know, Internet!

Out, Out (2008)

There aren't many films made about international development work, even though it's a field ripe for beautiful things to look at and complex things to think about. Sure, there's the relatively meager sub-subgenre of Troubled Diplomat (see A Constant Gardener), the somewhat more entertaining Conflict Journalist films (The Killing Fields). And then, of course, there's the huge Hollywood narrative about Africa - usually depicted as a place full of conflict diamonds, sprawling, Dickensian slums, and lots and lots of Djimon Hounsou.


Oh, Djimon. We love you, you know we do. Also, you should have totally played Anakin Skywalker.
So what's nice about our friend Matt Collins's short/medium-ish film, Out, Out, is that it's one of the few films to tap into this rich, complicated landscape, peopled as it is by the idealistic and world-weary and very well-traveled, where billions of dollars churn hither and thither, and very big promises are made (if rarely kept). Matt zooms into one particular subset of the Development Set, and that is the young, 20something economists who (as Leo rightly noted once) grab their malaria pills and laptops and journey from their Ivy/Oxbridge cocoons to "the field" - Lilongwe, Nairobi, Delhi.

There's an obvious disjoint that happens when you throw these relatively sheltered, relatively wealthy young people into a place like Lilongwe - where Out, Out is set. The constant power dynamics are subtle and powerful; they are hard, it seems, for these people to fully articulate or resist. In Out, Out, we follow a group of expats doing, at first, their usual expaty things. Going away parties, Land Rovers, weekend trips to beautiful resorts and anti-burglary bars on the windows. The characters are quickly sketched - the naive Mark (Andrew Stevenson), who has trouble tying his tie on his first day to work; the sleazy, shifty-eyed Peter (Matt Gordon), preparing to leave Lilongwe for his next assignment; the relatively upstanding couple, Alice (Cynthia Eldridge) and Jeff (Alex Pienkowski).


Peter (Matt Gordon) and Mark (Andrew Stevenson).
Underlying these benign expaty doings is a troubling, constantly compromising current: early in the film, Mark listens to two other expat development workers tell stories about car accidents in Malawi degenerating into mob violence. Already, the way these stories are presented is both strikingly realistic (a friend of the PPCC's was almost a victim of mob violence following a motorcycle accident in India last year) and strikingly removed. These are stories of manslaughter, poor infrastructure, corruption and opportunism. They are told with a sense of remove; a frightened spectatorship. These are "their" problems, and "we" just have to figure out how to stay safe and stay out of it.

Indeed, coming from a protective shell of privilege and well-functioning, paternalistic governments, the shock of facing daily inequality in such a stark way leaves these young people bewildered. The idea that expats should be complicit in this inequality - even actively complicit - is never really brought up (the post-colonial white man's burden of modern-day development work is not often questioned).

Anyway, following their short trip to a nearby resort, the group is - foreshadowed! - involved in a car accident-cum-manslaughter. Suddenly, all the theories dissolve: it's time to make real decisions. Do they stay and see to the victim, and risk becoming victims themselves of the soon-to-appear mob? Do they flee, abandoning the man and, it seems, basic decency? Do they report it to the police? Trust the police? Bribe the police?


The best moments in Out, Out come when a Malawian detective, Ganda (Wavisanga Munyenyembe), arrives at the house to question the group - in particular, Ganda's exchanges with Mark are both illuminating and touching.

Following Ganda's arrival, harsh truths suddenly spill out fast in frantic, hushed conversations behind closed doors, and the group's tenuous sense of moral righteousness - or even friendship - fractures. Newcomer Mark is left to entertain Ganda while the others figure out their next move, and their exchange is brilliant.

GANDA: So, what do you think is wrong with Malawi?
MARK: A lot, I suppose.

Oh, come on, Matt. So blunt!
Obviously shot on a shoestring budget, the film is rough around the edges (and most of the middle too). Establishing shots are rare, and we're often treated to tight close-ups of the actors. This creates a claustrophobic, disorienting feeling: where are we? Who's he looking at? This technique, along with the pacing and slow rise in tension, gives the film a Michael Haneke feel: you know, lots of meaningfully-held, silent shots of an empty road. Lots of dissembling. You're kind of always waiting for something horrible to happen (and it does).

The actors are all non-actors, mostly development workers playing filmier versions of themselves. Nonetheless, they do reasonably well. Things kind of fell apart in the PPCC's head at the end, when the plot really started taking Haneke turns, and we lost the string of what everyone's motives were (especially Ganda's). But the overall message resounded loud and clear; and it fell on the slight-damning end of the spectrum (damning for "us", that is).

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.

The Four Season (1981)

Alan Alda's The Four Seasons is a typically Alda-y trip through comfortable, bourgeois domesticism. It's homey, almost to the point of blandness, and there's nary a plot to be found. But that doesn't necessarily make it unappealing.

Following three middle-aged married couples (a very sweet Alan Alda and Carol Burnett; Len Cariou and Sandy Dennis; Jack Weston and Rita Moreno) over four vacations (hence the title), the film is mostly about all the tiny quirks and peccadillos that make up very intimate friendships and marriages. The tone of affectionate annoyance is widespread; even as the audience, you feel like you've already lived a life with these people, and you kind of hate them (and love them). The only plot point with any real narrative drive is Nick's (Len Cariou) divorce from his first wife (Sandy Dennis), a spacey, inscrutable photographer, and marriage to his second (Bess Armstrong), a bouncy blonde half his age. Yet even this - a relatively tired tale of midlife crises - is upended by Alda's warm, humane treatment of the characters. As much as they're all neurotic, 1970s Me generationists, they're still three-dimensional and capable of surprise.

Indeed, while some of the climactic moments feel like inorganic set pieces for stereotypically Freudian breakthroughs, some were still quite engaging: Bess Armstrong's grief at everyone's resentment, Alan Alda's unexpected meltdown. And the gimmick of seasonal check-ins was nice. That said, another 1970s Alan Alda film does this much better: Same Time Next Year, in which a pair of lovers meet every year for an adulterous tryst, and we live the 50s, 60s and 70s with them. That film had the same amount of cheese, but often felt truer and more urgent.

Margin Call (2011)

Margin Call is a satisfying, humane film about the financial crisis of 2008. It hits all the usual bases - the absurdity of Wall Street salaries, the social cost those salaries impose by wooing our best minds to work on making up new financial products, the bloated complexity of the products themselves, and the fact that no one often has any idea what they're selling. What it also does is humanize (even satirize) the very imperfect beings that got us all into this mess.

Briefly, the plot centers around a single, enormous Wall Street firm (a stand-in for Lehman Brothers) over one hectic, harried night. At the close of business, all seems well. But then, MIT (!)-educated rocket scientist (!)-turned-financial underling, Peter Sullivan (a divinely beautiful Zachary Quinto), discovers that something is amiss. Actually, that's putting it lightly. He discovers that the company's books are rotten to the core: its risk position exponentially more awful than anticipated, the firm - which thought itself nestled deep in the trunk of glorious fortune - is actually hanging out on a limb. A limb that's just about ready to snap. News travels up the chain of command - from Peter's immediate bosses, Will (Paul Bettany) and Sam (Kevin Spacey), to the very top of the food chain, billionaire CEO John Tuld (Jeremy Irons). In hasty 3AM meetings, they plan to liquidate everything - despite serious misgivings that this will both end their careers and kill the market.

The rest is, obviously, history. And you can read about it in wonderful books such as Diary of a Very Bad Year, Too Big to Fail, The Big Short and a number of others (which seem to be still coming out - e.g. Griftopia).

A.O. Scott likens Paul Bettany's character to a sergeant in a war film - and it's a brilliant stroke of insight (then again, everything A.O. Scott think/says/writes/does is a stroke of brilliance; we love you, A.O.!). The war film metaphor could be extended to the entire cast: from the thoughtful protagonist-grunt (Zachary Quinto), to the naive/cheeky grunt (Penn Badgley), up to the war-weary and possibly demented colonel (Kevin Spacey) and further up to the definitely demented, corrosively corrupt king-general (a crusty and wonderful Jeremy Irons). It just feels like a war film. This is a man's world: unreconstructed, macho, predatory. (The only female character, Demi Moore, is pilloried - both by the film's narrative, and by the firm itself.) The lines of computers spouting complicated, intimidating graphs could be trenches; Wall Street, a battlefield for the conquering. This isn't the bright, bubbly business whizzing of Working Girl (interestingly, a feminist film) - oh no, the heady, halcyon days of those 80s are over. As are the even headier, halcyoner 90s. It's now a post-2008 world, and watching this house of cards collapse feels both painful and inevitable.

A note about the performances: the film doesn't try to curry sympathy for these people, instead portraying them as over-ambitious, fallible and sometimes even silly. The only noble man is the recently-fired, genius Eric Dale (a self-pitying Stanley Tucci), but he's off-screen for much of the film. Yet, despite the general vibe of soul-sucking David Mamet-style corporatism, you eventually come to feel for these people. There's a lot of absurdity in their office culture, and there's an obvious vulnerability in their idiocy and/or guilt. Indeed, Paul Bettany does his usual swing from swish and sleazy to red-eyed and harried. Kevin Spacey plays along the ambiguity of his character's grief: his dog dies, and he murders the market, and then he cries. But about what? (Note: movies where Kevin Spacey cries can sometimes be God-awful or just barely tolerable. This was the only time where it worked quite well. Cry on, brother!)

Even the cameos are great. For example, Mary McDonnell - Roslin!!! - appears very briefly as Kevin Spacey's ex-wife, and her steely-eyed compassion is a perfect coda: yes, times are hard. And yes, you are allowed to cry about it - for a bit. But then it's time to buck up! Seriously, if anyone can save us, Roslin can. We felt better already.

The Endless Summer (1966)

The charming, hypnotic documentary, The Endless Summer, features a lot of surfing. Surfing. Surfing Surfing.

It also features a pair of globe-trotting 1960s Californian surfers, Mike Hynson and Robert August, as they paddle their way out from Senegalese, Ghanaian, South African, Australian, Kiwi, Tahitian and Hawaiian beaches: always and forever in search of the "perfect wave". In the meantime, director/writer/narrator Bruce Brown provides a Beach Boys-esque commentary: sly asides, self-deprecating humor, complete political incorrectness ("Sharks and porpoises in South Africa," Brown notes while filming a pod of porpoises behind the surfers, "have yet to integrate."). The boppy 1960s music, mixed in with some questionable stuff meant to sound "tribal", along with Brown's cavalier painting of surfers as hubris-filled daredevils to be revered - all of this sounds like it would make the 1.5 hour film excruciatingly narrow and kind of annoying.

Instead, thanks largely to those soothing shots of surfer after surfer after surfer, as well as those meditative, lingering shots of a slow sunset, or those beautiful moments using a camera on the board, or the smashing waves in Tahiti: it's all very beautiful. And fascinating. Fascinating because of the sheer adventure of Mike and Robert, as they paddle around, always in a boppy good mood, assessing the water temperature and perfection of the curl. In Lagos, Nigeria, Brown notes that the air and water are so hot, it almost "melts the wax off the boards". Near Durban, South Africa, the boys find the "perfect wave" - little "pipelines" of water, curling smoothly and perfectly from a promised seven miles away. Brown notes that these waves provide surfing so lengthy that you have a "nervous breakdown". "It's the kind of wave," Brown says, "that makes you talk to yourself."

The physicality, naturalism and pop mysticism of the sport bubbles under the surface throughout this film, perhaps explaining its status as an enduring classic. What is it about surfers? Why do we all like them? Why are they so Zen? They always seem to have predilections towards spirituality, especially the really laid back kind. Or did we absorb that awful-yet-nostalgically-wonderful surf spirituality feel-good teen flick, Airborne, way back in the day? And is that why we can forgive them anything?

Suffice to say, despite the grating treatment of poverty by Brown (Africans are "natives", ready to "massacre" each other; Australians are "local residents"), as well as the increasingly dodgy boasting (Brown jokingly emphasizes all the various ways surfers can die), this film is... well, definitely appealing. It's also a perfect little gem of American history: what it was like to surf in the 1960s; what that south Californian landscape that The Beach Boys later immortalized (and Weezer later post-modernified, or proto-hipsterized, or whatever) looked like, as described and shot by people from that place. Gnarly, man.

Recommended.

Strange Days (1995)

The pulpy, B-grade cyberpunk film, Strange Days, is sleazy. Very, very sleazy. It's also completely hypocritical, or completely meta, we're not sure.

It's Los Angeles, and we're gonna party like it's 1999. Except, in this 1999, LA is a cesspit of near-constant rioting, corruption, sweaty grime and limp confetti. Clearly, it's only twenty years away from this LA.

Into this cyberpunk fest steps our usual anti-hero, the excellently named Lenny Nero (an excellently maned Ralph Fiennes), who indeed fiddles his way while the city burns. Which, in this story, means he peddles cortex-bending mindtrips (mindfraks, really) that latch onto your brain stem and make you really feel it, man. Our introduction to Lenny also outlines his strict ethical regulation: no snuff trips.

Which is all fine and well, as Lenny is just barely hanging on in his dingy apartment, pining away after his ex, Faith (Juliette Lewis, she of the 90s grunge), mostly by cradling bottles of vodka and re-living (literally) past happy times. This sad excuse of a life is casually destroyed by the arrival, into Lenny's hands, of a snuff trip produced by a deranged killer - perhaps the most horrible snuff trip ever produced. Lenny, a disgraced cop, is immediately sucked in - he must track the killer down, especially when the killer sends creepy mindtrip videos of himself creeping around Lenny's apartment and holding exacto knives at Lenny's throat.

Employing the help of his badass lady friend Mace (a wonderful Angela Bassett), Lenny soon realizes that there are nine rings in Dante's Inferno, and the evil killer is only a couple down. As the tension builds, the explosions become louder, and we descend further into the decay, a ticker periodically appears on our screen to remind us that the stroke of a new millennium is a mere X hours away. This creates a sense of BLUNT FOREBODING.

There are some things in Strange Days which are done very well: at its best, the film is a kinetic, lively, silly cross between Philip K. Dick's drugged-out vision of urban sprawl and alienation, and Frank Miller's pulpy pessimism. (Indeed, Angela Bassett would make a wonderful Martha Washington!) The feeling of fluorescent filth and universal corruption and decay was just lovely (and a little pleasantly nauseating). And Ralph Fiennes performance - a very against-type role - unexpectedly hit all the right notes. Lenny's nasally American accent; his vanity (he can afford awful paisley futuristic Armani, but not soap, it seems); and his clammy vulnerability - everything was as it should be. Another unexpected (well, not totally unexpected) hit was Angela Bassett's woman of steel - it's always relieving for the PPCC to (finally!) see strong women; and here, Mace was very, well, physically strong, often saving Lenny from the clutches of burly henchmen by beating the hell out of them. Huzzah! Mace's obvious tenderness towards Lenny was also strangely touching. They made quite a pair.

The movie tried to insert some obvious parallels to LA's realities of the 1990s, with a subplot of race rioting. This was not totally effective - each step and each character was too much a stereotype. But we appreciated the attempt.

And then the film had some awful bits: most particularly the gratuitous violence against women and the salacious way this violence was depicted. Others have already noted how lurid tales of rape and humiliation are often breathlessly portrayed in film, where our hero can be properly horrified and thus we can feel OK about watching it all. Ugh, spare us. This was one of those films: it rubbed our face in the awful, terrible, sick, twisted, etc., completely unnecessary scenes and - even more disturbingly - everything was eroticized. This was the male gaze on steroids: we only see men take the mindtrips (women are only ever performers), and these men unanimously experience orgasmic states of heavy breathing, moaning, twisted faces, etc. as they watch terrible things happen to women in their brains. "Oh, how horrible!" Lenny cries after one such ride. Right. Sure.

This aspect was all kinds of horrible, and confusing, to boot, since the director is a woman: Kathryn Bigelow! What the hell, Kathryn Bigelow? Not only is this completely ridiculous and harmful to women, but isn't this whole movie also supposed to be about how our pornographic pursuits lead to general societal decay?!

This is why we think this film's either totally hypocritical, or some sort of meta commentary that's beyond our comprehension. Either way, we could have done without all those shots of razors cutting into women's underwear; the movie would have been much improved.

In the meantime, the trailer is excellent - particularly 1:54 on. It's excellence exceeds the film's by a long shot (as sometimes unfortunately happens). The music of the film (particularly all that Skunk Anansie and Juliette Lewis and PJ Harvey and other angry young woman stuff) was also very 1990s and fun. Not really recommended, unless you have an obligation to watch all cyberpunk/New Wave science fiction ever committed to film (as we do).

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, as with many classics, is reliably well-done. In fact, so perfect is its execution that it was almost too perfect - like a Kenneth Branagh movie, where everything exhibits a glowing, slightly alienating polish.

Which is not to say this is a pretty film. Instead, like many films of the 70s (what is it about this era, btw? GENIUS was in the air, in India, Italy and the US), it is gritty, totally up our alley and ultimately very sad. It feels, in many scenes, like the other American classics of that era: Easy Rider, MASH (the movie), Bonnie and Clyde… That is, scenes drift over naturalistic conversations; the setting is rough, the characters misfits; and there is an underlying, cynical sense of humanity getting crushed under near-dystopian circumstances. The 70s were, after all, the "Emergency" period in India, the "lead years" in Italy and the OPEC crisis for everyone in the world.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest begins with one typical protagonist of the times: petty criminal R.P. McMurphy (a young, electric Jack Nicholson) who tries to con his way out of a work camp by joining an insane asylum. (Much like Pasqualino Settebellezze!) What McMurphy finds in the asylum, though, is a soul-crushing, dehumanizing atmosphere where the obviously vulnerable are regularly humiliated and everyone is too traumatized to speak up about it. It all feels very grandly symbolic about the dangers of too much civilization (McMurphy being the obvious free spirit/libertarian stand-in) or the banality of evil (especially via collaboration! lots of gut-wrenching shots of characters looking at each other for help, and being unable to give any!).

The motley crew of "lunatics" are the clear ancestors of characters like those in The Dream Team or Awakenings or that one season premiere of House (where they basically grafted this movie scene for scene) or, well, many other Hollywood films featuring mental illness. There's the hot-headed Taber (a very young Christopher Lloyd!), the stuttering lamb-like Billy Bibbit (an incredibly young Brad Dourif! continue singing his praises!), the vacantly smiling Martini (an unrecognizably young Danny DeVito), the AWESOME and anxious Cheswick (Sydney Lassick), and the stiff, enigmatic Harding (William Redfield). And then, of course, there's the embodiment of pure evil: Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher). The film, which begins as a meandering pastiche about the highs and lows of the asylum inmates, soon evolves into a war of attrition between Good (McMurphy) and Evil (Nurse Ratched). And, need we remind you again, it's the 70s. You can guess how it all goes down.

Jack Nicholson's performance is a charismatic, iconic one: he is heroic in an almost mythical sense, with the added quirkiness of his jackal-like grin and rascally humor. Everyone else is very strong too; with William Redfield and Sydney Lassick being especially compelling, and Brad Dourif hitting the perfect pitch as the shy Billy, all wrapped up in himself. And that hair! How tender and enormous and adorable.

Ken Kesey, who wrote the book on which the film is based, apparently sued the filmmakers and refused to see the film (so said our in-flight entertainment trivia box). We don't know how this compares with the book, but what could Mr. Kesey have to complain about? It's a near-perfect film! "Near" only because, as usual, it hates women: shrewish virgins (Nurse Ratched) combat whores (Jack's friends) for control and attention of men's manlinesses. BIG SIGH OF TIRESOME DISAPPOINTMENT.