A new subgenre of criticism seems to have spouted up in the past few months eager to find things in culture and society to blame for the rise of Donald Trump. To be fair, I too have given him consideration on my site, but it has taken on the tenor of looking at things that might explain his popularity rather than directly cause it. A look back at the cinema of the ’00s shows various prescient takes on the underlying issues in America that have recently bubbled to the surface: xenophobia, nationalism, authoritarianism, and anti-intellectualism.
Few distill these into a frightening, humorous essence as well as Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy,” however. This comedy played as ridiculous when it was released in 2006; its studio, 20th Century Fox, regarded it as such and unceremoniously dumped it in theaters with no fanfare. But in the decade since, it becomes less and less like an imagined portrait of America and more like a plausible future. Such eerie insight, roughly as it might be presented, makes it a fitting selection for the “F.I.L.M. of the Week.”
To say too much about how “Idiocracy” hits the nail on the head would only ruin its considerable pleasures for those yet to experience the film. Judge remarkably shied away from the easy targets of the time, choosing to satirize some less obvious culprits in the dumbing down of the country. He digs into demographic trends in population and education level to find the fault lines in society. He examines the cumulative effect of the “infotainment” dominating the news media. He takes corporate influence over the government to its logical extreme.
For Luke Wilson’s Corporal “Average Joe” Bauers, a man chosen for cryogenic freezing then unceremoniously forgotten for 500 years, this strange world of 2505 seems completely foreign. Yet even from a vantage point just 10 years ahead of when Joe gets frozen, this dysfunctional America hardly seems implausible. There are almost too many ideas packed into the running time of “Idiocracy,” so many that each issue gets a slightly cursory examination. If only Judge had the budget or the time of, say, a miniseries to really unpack his social critique. Sequel, anyone?
I’ve been pressed (in person) by two loyal readers who want to know the rationale behind my aversion to period pieces, in particular the so-called “costume drama.” I do try to elucidate when I hold an entire genre or subgenre in contempt – see my pans of “
“They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us,” Donald Trump 
Most romances focus on the passion, the heat, the sparks and the sweet nothings. Barry Jenkins’ “Medicine for Melancholy” is not a typical romance. In an effort to seek out diverse voices in filmmaking, I stumbled into this 2009 film. Jenkins is only just now finishing up his follow-up feature, “Moonlight,” set up for production and distribution by A24. How it took 7 years for someone to give him a second chance in the director’s chair is unfathomable to me. (Well, actually, I have some idea why…)
Realism in cinema has a habit of rubbing people the wrong way, given that many directors who practice the style tend to pummel their audience with an abundance of brutally mundane details. But this is not a necessity, as Chad Hartigan shows in “This Is Martin Bonner.” His tender, affectionate touch throughout demonstrates how filmmakers can evoke the rhythms of the everyday without recourse to deliberate inducement of boredom.
It’s common to attribute all the attributes of high-octane, adrenaline-pumping cinema to the “Hollywood” style, as if big studios are the only entities capable of producing great action thrillers. But great classical genre films can came from anywhere in the world. Case in point: the French crime saga “Mesrine,” broken up into “Killer Instinct” (part 1) and “Public Enemy #1” (part 2).
I must admit, I was skeptical of delving into some of the deeper cuts in director Ben Wheatley’s filmography after nodding off on two separate occasions during his cult favorite work “Kill List.” (It’s more me than the movie – I was tired both times and got further exhausted by working to understand the thick accents.) But after seeing his 2013 film “Sightseers,” I must say, I feel far more confident that I will like what I see going further back.
As I watched the climax of “The Hunger Games” series, my mind drifted away from the action on screen thanks to the presence of a fairly blatantly digitized Philip Seymour Hoffman. The resemblance was uncanny, sure, but everything about his facial expressions and mannerisms were wrong.
We still live in a time where deeply internal, emotional performances from male screen actors are rare – especially from younger ones. Perhaps because most major roles for men are written with external, goal-driven motivations as opposed to looking within, the smart career move is to position oneself for those. But every once in a while, a miraculous turn appears.
Generally, when I read any piece of criticism that refers to a movie as some kind of “metaphor for capitalism,” I cringe inside. It usually feels like an easy fallback, a way to sound smart when they just purely enjoyed something. But in the case of Sebastián Silva’s “The Maid,” it actually applies.
Fatih Akin had a bit of a rough go with the film festival circuit the last time around with his Armenian genocide drama “The Cut,” which received nearly unanimous pans out of Venice. To my surprise, the film managed to secure U.S. distribution (I had all but given up hope of ever seeing it).
Marshall and the Movies 
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