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Import/Export (2009)

In this fiction film, Ulrich Seidl looks at the state of our global world by following two 20-somethings in Eastern Europe as they attempt to find gainful employment, and perhaps from that a sense of self-worth. I was chastised to observe the tracking of my emotions from condescending superiority over this pair to a sense of respect and awe. With no one to guide them, they hold on to their moral compasses and tentatively reach out into the unknown, (naively?) believing they may find a place in this world. Or perhaps they simply can’t allow themselves to think of what will happen if they fail.


The New World (2005)

Terrence Malick suggests what it might have been like when Pocahontas encountered the English settlers and "civilization" of these wild lands began. No history book exercise, this strips away 400 years of assumptions and romanticizing of the era’s hardships, and feels like a filmed document from the 1600s. In the final half-hour as Pocahontas (a sublime Q’orianka Kilcher) trades one life and continent for another, we see the true price of civilization, and feel the inevitable march of time.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007)

Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik looks back to another enduring myth about America and finds a relevant parallel to today's "we're all celebrities" mentality. Robert Ford gets everything that he wants and still isn't quite sure what all that is. The film's true theme emerges in the final 40 minutes as (SPOILER!) a post-assassination Ford is left to make his way among the tabloid elements of the time, and becomes just another punch line in our violent self-made history. Casey Affleck finds a way to make us want to follow a creepy, double-crossing, obsessed outsider, and almost care about what lies at the end of his path.

24 Hour Party People (2002)

If I was a British lad but 30 years ago…I would have gotten my ass kicked but good. Luckily, a film like this takes me back via the safety of celluloid, to the roar of the blossoming Manchester music scene. Director Michael Winterbottom has worked in just about every genre over the last 15 years and Party People shows the humanism that makes his oeuvre such a joy to pore over. Self-referential, debauched, and with Steve Coogan playing the man who presided over Factory Records (in a performance of comic deftness), it feels like a soundtrack to life changes.

Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005)

Performance artist Miranda July goes mainstream (or rather shanghais the mainstream and makes great use of it) for tales of tentative love, sexual awakening among the young and old, caring for the elderly and "passing the poop back and forth forever." This material would be [intentionally] inflammatory in most other's hands but July finds the purity, innocence and strange beauty in her characters' lives, and by extension, our own.

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