Global Spin’s latest installment of five rental movies to watch over the weekend, pegged to the world’s news. Presented by Ishaan Tharoor and Tony Karon.
Z
The spectacle of a caged and bedridden Hosni Mubarak facing his accusers may have looked like an attempt to reprise of the death of French revolutionary Jean-Paul Marat but for Couch Potato it called to mind Costa Gavras’ marvelously taut 1969 political thriller Z. Filmed in Algiers and acted in French, it’s an allegory of the U.S.-backed dictatorship of the colonels in Greece in the 1960s. A left-wing politician played by left-wing actor Yves Montand is murdered by hit men under orders from military officials, and an investigating judge (Jean Louis Trintignant) manages to pin the crime on four senior officers. But while the leftists celebrate news of the indictment, but the trial is manipulated and eventually the officers behind the killing get off with a wrist-splap. Made at the height of Europe’s youth revolutions, it’s a document of its times — that may well have some relevance for events currently unfolding in Egypt. – T.K.
Kandahar
As the U.S. scrambles to draw down its troop presence and escape its decade-long quagmire in Afghanistan, the situation there looks as dire as ever. Our reporter in Kabul speaks to analysts who claim “things are bad and they are only going to get worse.” The International Crisis Group just released a comprehensive report detailing the continued failure of President Hamid Karzai’s government and foreign governments to effectively harness all the resources and aid slated for Afghanistan in order to fashion a politically viable and stable state. Iranian filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf’s Kandahar, about a Canadian-Afghan woman who returns home in search of her sister, appeared not long after the U.S. invasion in 2001, and was suffused even then with a poignant awareness of the fragility and many tragedies that have come to define this war-ravaged nation. -I.T.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cITh6ZxlljQ
King of the Hill
In a week in which the U.S. economy once again showed signs of another major slowdown, Depression-era cinema is begging for attention. One of the more memorable little gems that scarcely got the attention it deserved was Steven Soderbergh’s King of the Hill. Following the trials of 12-year old Aaron, who is left alone in a hotel room after his mother enters a sanatorium and his father fails to return from a business trip, and has to make his own way in a world whose power relations have condemned him to starve — unless he’s prepared to challenge and subvert them. There are heart-rending scenes of the hungry boy with an epic imagination sitting down to a feast comprising photographs of his favorite dishes cut out of magazines. He also learns fast, and painfully, that those power relations are enforced by people — cops, petty officials — of his own social class. It’s a lovely, lyrical film about the triumph of the human spirit against the odds, with cameos by a young Adrien Brody, Spalding Gray and hip-hop star Lauryn Hill. The economy may be depressed, but Aaron knows he can’t survive if he allows himself to succumb to gloom. Nor can he make it playing by the rules. Soderberg’s movie celebrates his protagonist’s courage, ingenuity and refusal to accept defeat. That’s a message for our times. – T.K.
The Planet of the Apes
In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift’s masterful 18th century satire, the eponymous narrator stumbles on an island realm ruled by sophisticated, imperious horse-creatures called Houyhnhnms. Serving underneath them are the Yahoos, a feral, filthy and suspiciously humanoid race. This narrative trope of reversing ‘castes’ in the natural world has stuck ever since and animates the decades-old cult series spawned by the original Planet of the Apes book and 1968 film, starring Charlton Heston. A reboot of the series opened in U.S. theaters today. -I.T.
The Golden Compass
In an awful, grisly attack, a polar bear set upon the camp of a group of British teenagers on an expedition in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard. At least one 17-year-old is dead and a number others are seriously injured — a grim reminder of the dangers still posed by one of nature’s most fearsome land predators. The polar bears of Svalbard, though, have an enduring mystique. In the fantastical Golden Compass, they are frighteningly strong yet noble creatures, capable of human speech.-I.T.