Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker, discovers a pair of special sunglasses. Wearing them, he is able to see the world as it really is: people being bombarded by media and government with messages like "Stay Asleep", "No Imagination", "Submit to Authority". Even scarier is that he is able to see that some usually normal-looking people are in fact ugly aliens in charge of the massive campaign to keep humans subdued.

Carl Theodor Dreyer is a young journalist in Copenhagen when he gets involved in the early Danish film industry. He writes scripts and inter-titles, and for some years he is the main editor at Nordisk Film. After those years of apprenticeship he gets the opportunity to direct his first film in 1917. Dreyer wanted his films to carry his personal imprints down to the smallest details, and already in his first silent movies it's possible to find stylistic traits that characterize his entire film production until his last film in 1964. The settings of his first films are naturalistic, but for Dreyer realism is not an art in itself. Only psychological realism is. His main interest is not the outer life, but the inner, emotional life of human beings. Emotions are most visible in facial expressions, and Dreyer's films are full of close-ups of human faces. By capturing the subtle, visual expressions of his characters, Dreyer tries to reveal the feelings they conceal and the storms that are raging inside them. Although many of his films end in tragedy, his intention is always to create a hymn to the triumph of the soul over life. Dreyer's own character was just as complex and contradictory as his film characters. Many of the actors he worked with describe him as a modest, amiable man, who was quiet in his statements, but intense and strong-willed inside. While his outer appearance was utterly self-effacing, he had at the same time an insistent stubbornness, which didn't accept any artistic compromises.

J.J. Hunsecker, the most powerful newspaper columnist in New York, is determined to prevent his sister from marrying Steve Dallas, a jazz musician. He therefore covertly employs Sidney Falco, a sleazy and unscrupulous press agent, to break up the affair by any means possible.

His wife dead from poisoning and his chief warrior, Kurbsky, defected to the Poles, Ivan is lonely as he pursues a unified Russia with no foreign occupiers. Needing friendship, he brings to court Kolychev, now Philip the monk, and makes him metropolitan bishop of Moscow. Philip, however, takes his cues from the boyars and tries to bend Ivan to the will of the church. Ivan faces down Philip and lets loose his private force, the Oprichniks, on the boyars. Led by the Tsar's aunt, Euphrosyne, the boyers plot to assassinate Ivan and enthrone her son, Vladimir. At a banquet, Ivan mockingly crowns Vladimir and sends him in royal robes into the cathedral where the assassin awaits.

In 1547, Ivan IV (1530-1584), archduke of Moscow, crowns himself Tsar of Russia and sets about reclaiming lost Russian territory. In scenes of his coronation, his wedding to Anastasia, his campaign against the Tartars in Kazan, his illness when all think he will die, recovery, campaigns in the Baltic and Crimea, self-imposed exile in Alexandrov, and the petition of Muscovites that he return, his enemies among the boyars threaten his success. Chief among them are his aunt, who wants to advance the fortunes of her son, a simpleton, and Kurbsky, a warrior prince who wants both power and the hand of Anastasia. Ivan deftly plays to the people to consolidate his power.

1944 two-part epic film by Sergei Eisenstein

It is the 13th century, and Russia is overrun by foreign invaders. A Russian knyaz', or prince, Alexander Nevsky, rallies the people to form a ragtag army to drive back an invasion by the Teutonic knights. This is a true story based on the actual battle at a lake near Novgorod.

1938 film by Sergei Eisenstein, Dmitri Vasilyev

A grieving couple retreat to their cabin in the woods, hoping to repair their broken hearts and troubled marriage, but nature takes its course and things go from bad to worse.

In Mexico City, late teen friends Tenoch Iturbide and Julio Zapata are feeling restless as their respective girlfriends are traveling together through Europe before they all begin the next phase of their lives at college. At a lavish family wedding, Tenoch and Julio meet Luisa Cortés, the twenty-something wife of Tenoch's cousin Jano, the two who have just moved to Mexico from Spain. Tenoch and Julio try to impress the beautiful Luisa by telling her that they will be taking a trip to the most beautiful secluded beach in Mexico called la Boca del Cielo (translated to Heaven's Mouth), the trip and the beach which in reality don't exist. When Luisa learns of Jano's latest marital indiscretion straight from the horse's mouth, she takes Tenoch and Julio's offer to go along on this road trip, meaning that Tenoch and Julio have to pull together quickly a road trip to a non-existent beach. They decide to head toward one suggested by their friend Saba, who seems a little confused himself of this beach's location. On the road trip, which ends up not being totally harmonious, the three go on a trip of discovery. For Luisa, she has to figure out what to do with her immediate future based on the news from Jano and a secret she is keeping. And Tenoch and Julio have to figure out what their friendship really means as they grow up.

A tramp falls in love with a beautiful blind girl. Her family is in financial trouble. The tramp's on-and-off friendship with a wealthy man allows him to be the girl's benefactor and suitor.

This is a lengthy exposition of the social and political history of renaissance Florentine history, told through dramatised conversations between the main participants, particularly Cosimo de Medici and Brunelleschi. Among its themes are commerce and banking, artistic and scientific advances such as perspective and early automation of manufacturing processes, political processes such as taxation and voting and conflict.

Pip, a good-natured, gullible young orphan, lives with kind blacksmith Joe Gargery and his bossy, abusive wife "Mrs. Joe". When the boy finds two hidden escaped galley convicts, he obeys under, probably unnecessary, threat of a horrible death to bring the criminals food. He must steal at peril of more caning from the battle-ax. Just when Pip fears to get it really good while they have guests, a soldier comes for Joe who takes Pip along as assistant to work on the chains of the escaped galley-convicts, who are soon caught. The better-natured one takes the blame for the stolen food. Later Pip is invited to became the playmate of Estella, the equally arrogant adoptive daughter of gloomy, filthy rich Miss Havisham at her estate, who actually has "permission" to break the kind kid's heart. Being the only pretty girl he ever saw, she wins his heart forever, even after a mysterious benefactor pays through a lawyer for his education and a rich allowance, so he can become a snob in London, by now "ashamed" of simple Joe. Only after years in idle wealth, Pip learns Havisham is not his benefactor as he assumed, and both her story and those of his real sponsor and Estella.

During the 1973 Thanksgiving weekend, the Hoods are - relationship-wise, skidding out-of-control, isolated from each other; Benjamin reels from drink-to-drink, His wife, Elena's losing patience with Ben's incessant lies. Home for the holidays, their son, Paul, heads into Manhattan, in search of a rich girl from his prep school. Wendy, the teenage daughter, roams the neighborhood, exploring the liquor and lingerie of her friends' parents, looking for something - anything - new. Then, an ice storm hits, and their problems seem inconsequential, and nothing will ever be the same.

In the 1950's, Ludvik Jahn was expelled from the Communist Party and the University by his fellow students, because of a politically incorrect note he sent to his girlfriend. Fifteen years later, he tries to get his revenge by seducing Helena, the wife of one of his accusers.

1969 Czechoslovakian film directed by Jaromil Jireš

This is a jolly coming-of-age story about a 14-year-old boy named Laurent Chevalier who is growing up in bourgeois surroundings in Dijon, France. This is France in the mid-1950s rather than America in the 1990s. Thus, Laurent is unharmed by events which would irreparably shatter the self-esteem of a modern American adolescent: he gets drunk, he smokes, he has sex, he is smothered by his mother, he is ignored by his father, a priest makes a pass at him, he gets rheumatoid fever, etc. There's enough scandalous behavior in this film to make 100 made-for-TV movies, and yet this is a very happy and oddly innocent tale.

Jamie

R Gowri Shankar

DVD List from the "corrupted theorist": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqpxT_iJ8Mc

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek's DVD picks

movie

tv show

Coby

An English rock singer-songwriter, composer, pianist and occasional actor

Queer Genius Musicians

From "I am not your Negro" to "Stonewall Uprising", these films explore a history of civil unrest, riots and revolutions.

2007 animated film by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud

2006 documentary film about John Lennon directed by David Leaf

Protest and Revolution Movies

Rilkean Romanticism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBgZQCkUp7E

Director Bong Joon Ho's DVD Picks

To Listen To

White Trash Childhood

The music MTV tortured us with in the 1990s. Nickelback was too obvious to mention

Philosopher Slavoj Žižek's DVD picks

Liked by

More lists by Coby

Queer Genius Musicians

Protest and Revolution Movies

Rilkean Romanticism

Director Bong Joon Ho's DVD Picks

To Listen To

White Trash Childhood

The worst music of the 90s

The best things you've never heard of

Zamrock: Psychedelic Rock from Zambia