On Sunday I went to see the Glasgow Film Festival’s showing of Michael Moore’s new film ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’. Although out in the US since last September the film won’t go on general release in the UK till Friday. I’m not sure about other cinemas across Scotland but it will definitely be showing for a good while at the GFT.

I’ve seen a few of Moore’s earlier films and definitely wasn’t disappointed this time. It’s easily accessible for those who don’t care much for dry economics and has its funny moments while at the same time really showing up the utter devastation and despair which capitalism brings. We see 10 police cars turning up and the cops breaking their way into families’ homes to carry out eviction orders from the banks, leaving those who have lived there all their lives in tears with nothing left and nowhere to go. Many of these people had been encouraged to refinance their homes before being caught out by unfair terms and charges they were unable to keep up with.

And we see workers at a recently shut factory in Chicago who weren’t even paid the money owed to them since the bank wouldn’t provide the necessary finances despite themselves being at the receipt of billions of dollars of taxpayers money. Frustrated the workers go back and occupy the factory, receiving strong support from the local community and with even Obama expressing his sympathy for their cause. In the end the workers win a small but significant victory as the bank changes its mind and gives them their redundancy pay in full. The resistance in the US (and most other places too) may as of yet be isolated and sporadic but as cases like this show only through collective action can ordinary people ever hope to claim back what is theirs.

Moore returns briefly to his home town of Flint, Michigan to show us the twisted wreckage of the factory where his Dad once worked and which was torn down by GM despite record company profits. It is in Flint where he made his first film ‘Roger & Me’ back in 1989 not so long after GM’s chief Roger Smith had chosen to inflict so much misery upon the local population. As with many places hit by de-industrialisation the town has never recovered, being left to rot by successive governments and by an economic system which is completely incapable of meeting people’s most basic needs.

In some of the film’s funnier moments we see Moore, in his typical style, trying to get to get interviews with top bankers and CEOs and turning up at the banks with an armoured van to collect the American people’s stolen cash. It’s safe to say that security didn’t let him get too far in either instance. More successfully though he interviews some Catholic priests and bishops who seem to united in the belief that capitalism is a sin and an evil which must be eradicated. Moore, himself a Christian, asks on whose side Jesus would likely have stood in a country in which religion is so frequently used to justify inequality and right-wing political causes.

An interesting fact mentioned in the film is that the top rate of income tax in the US was once as high as 90% -- and right enough this was the case from during the war through to the mid 60s. By the time Reagan took power in 1980 it was still 70% but he soon changed that – appointing a finance department completely filled with his Wall Street cronies who slashed the top rate to just 28% and oversaw a decimation of American industry. Any pretence about having a democracy which is impartial and serves the interests of all its citizens has been stripped away as one small interest group – that of finance capital – has been able to achieve total control over all decision making processes at the highest levels.

Moore’s appeal is primarily to democracy, to the right of all citizens to have equal to the political and economic decisions that shape their lives. We see two different examples of workers’ cooperatives, one in which assembly line workers get paid three times as much as the average American airline pilot all because there isn’t a profit being skimmed off to go on bonuses for fat-cat bosses and shareholders. Everything goes back to the company and to those workers who keep it going through their common effort. And decisions are voted on democratically by all which creates a sense of solidarity and belonging.

There’s also, in the film, a good deal of praise for the sort of social-democratic model most European countries at least attempted to adopt in the decades after the war. One thing I hadn’t heard about which we see in the film is Roosevelt’s proposal of a ‘Second Bill of Rights‘ which would have guaranteed all Americans a home, a job and adequate medical care among other things. Unfortunately he died a year later and no later President took up the idea. The 50s, 60s and 70s nevertheless are often seen as the golden age of capitalism with almost all Americans having a job, decent housing and extensive work-related benefits, particularly for those belonging to the strong middle class for whom anything seemed possible.

But, as I think Moore himself alludes to, this endless growth and endless consumption is of course not sustainable. Especially now with the dangers of climate change (which the film itself doesn’t go in to) we need to completely rebuild and reorientate our economy towards serving the needs of all in a way which is at harmony with our natural environment. We can no longer afford to see the two as somehow being at odds with each other. But this will of course never be possible for as long as a tiny business and finance elite remains in charge. All progressive change throughout history has come from the bottom-up and it’s up to us as ordinary people to fight back and construct a better society and a better world.

Despite its strong US focus ‘Capitalism: A Love Story’ is, I believe, just as relevant here with a government which is equally committed to the insane neoliberal model which it so brilliantly ridicules and tears apart. As always there are right-wing fools who will denounce it as propaganda, and perhaps some of them genuinely believe our economy is being managed in the most sensible and rational way possible. If there’s one good thing to come out of the economic crisis though it’s the complete loss of credibility in the eyes of the public for the claims of the economic elites who expect all the praise when things are going (relatively) well but attempt to shirk all responsibility and shift the blame elsewhere when the problems inevitably begin to arise.

Here’s the trailer:

Popular culture has taken a peculiar twist in the past couple of years, one that is psychologically revealing about the times we live in. The apocalypse rules at the cinema, with recent top films including ‘The Book of Eli,’ ‘2012′ and ‘The Road.’ And there’s been a huge resurgence of vampires and zombies, most famously through the ‘Twilight’ films and books. It’s interesting to try and work out what it is about late-capitalist society, afflicted by economic and ecological collapse, that makes people want to settle down with, or even be, an undead creature.

‘Daybreakers’ is the perfect antidote to the abusive-stalker-mixed-with-moping relationship of Edward and Bella. It shows us a world just slightly in the future, where almost everyone in the world has chosen to become a vampire. Humans are kept in comas to be drained in horrific blood farms, and the few remaining on the loose are hunted by the military.

The society is still recognisably similar to our own, but has some high tech adaptations to the fact it’s inhabited by vampires. Sub-street walkways and cars with blacked out windows that can be driven by camera allow them to move about by day, for instance. But the real reason why this film grips you is because it’s speculative fiction at its best: a film about ideas, underlying it is an intriguing take on the problems that cut through the heart of our own society.

The main character, Ed, played by Ethan Hawke, is a top hematologist (that’s blood scientist) working on a project to develop and artificial substitute to human blood for vampire consumption. The reason for this is that with so few humans left in the world is approaching peak blood. His employer is the slimy and sinister Bromley (Sam Neil), a corporate magnate who is the personification of a corporate bloodsucker. He has gotten rich from human farming, and unlike humanitarian Ed, has no intentions of giving it up when a substitute is developed, declaring: “There will always be those who will be willing to pay more for the real thing.”

This is what made the film interesting for me-at its heart it is really an examination about our own society’s dependence on fossil fuels, and all the harm and problems that arise from it. Oil really is the lifeblood of our society, and in the real world huge military forces and oppression are indeed necessary to procure it for the use of the more well off.

The vampire world is capitalist to its core, and riven as ours by class divisions. As the blood supply slowly runs out the rich pull their private stocks of people out of their blood farm. When deprived for long enough of blood, the vampires degenerate into almost mindless hideous monsters that go around breaking into homes and attacking vampires who are still whole. They are known as “subsiders”, and they form a known, but hidden population within vampire society, living underground while everyone else attempts to ignore them, like the homeless in a human city. The consequences of poverty and inequality are less easy to avoid in a world of vampires though, and the ruling class are forced to confront the problem. Instead of seeing it as a problem of resource depletion and poverty however, they behave just like the real-world bosses. They hoard the blood supplies for themselves and militarise the streets, summarily executing the subsiders.

The main plot of the film follows Ed as he meets a human underground, dedicated to rebuilding humanity and finding a way to return the world’s population to being humans. This neatly ties up the allegory, as a minority seek a transformation that removes the dependence on a finite resource that is bringing about the slow death of society.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the film is perfect. All this intelligence is interspersed with some hammy acting and some classic action movie chase-and-fight scenes. It’s half action blockbuster and half intelligent allegory about class society undermining the basis of its own survival. That said, a lot of the fight scenes are greatly choreographed and exciting, and visually the world-building that has gone into creating ‘Daybreakers’ is gripping. These elements not only make the film enjoyable on a non-intellectual level, they’ll hopefully get mainstream blockbuster audiences thinking about some of the issues raised.

The point for me is that ‘Daybreakers’ is at its heart a film about ideas. It’s about really thinking about the oblivion that we’re all blindly walking into unless we can bring radical social change to our own world. Critics often negatively compare science fiction to literary books, claiming they don’t have the same subtlety or nuance of language. This is far from always true, but in any case it’s not really relevant. Science/speculative/whatever you want to-call-it fiction is a different kind of communication, one that deals with ideas, philosophical problems and extrapolating the consequences of real trends in the modern world. So, to me, it doesn’t really matter that ‘Daybreakers’ is half silly blockbuster. Because in amongst that is a real core of relevant ideas about the current state of our society.

The Daily Mirror have continued in their fine tradition of providing us with important information about celebrities as a public service. This time, they’ve broken the news that Daniel Radcliffe, who plays teen wizard Harry Potter in some famous films, might have been caught smoking a joint.

According to other party-goers, he was staggering around saying “I love weed.” and let a girl draw a comedy beard on his face. Hilarious!

He has come out and categorically denied it, though. Aww. We were going to invite him to be keynote speaker at our next Legalise Cannabis event, but it looks like we’ll have to make do with this slightly less famous Harry Potter actor.

District 9 is a film I have been excited about for months now.

South African director Neill Blomkamp and producer Peter Jackson (of Lord of the Rings fame) have made a tale of an alien ship that becomes stranded hovering over a near future Johannesburg. The main part of the film takes place 20 years after their arrival, and the aliens are confined to a disgusting slum outside the city, with legal segregation from the human population enforced by a massive corporation and its paramilitary mercenaries, Multi National United (MNU).

What excited me about the film was the possible combination of exciting visual effects and action with an intelligent and original sci fi story using allegorical aliens to discuss South Africa’s difficult racial history and present.

The final result certainly lived up to all my hopes in terms of an action sci fi adventure. However, its stand politically with regards to racism left a bit to be desired.

Visually, District 9 is probably the best example of a certain kind of film making that has been infecting cinema for around a decade now-cinema verite style shaky cameras. Starting with the Blair Witch Project through Cloverfield, the Bourne films and even the new TV incarnation of Battlestar Galactica, the faux documentary has been used with varying success. The thing that makes it work in District 9 is that it intercuts this with interviews with various corporate heads, academics and local people giving it the feel of a real documentary.

The talking heads introduce the starting point of the film-the forced relocation of the aliens by MNU to a virtual concentration camp in the wilderness. Leading this effort is Wikus van der Meurwe (Sharlto Copley), a South African office bureaucrat charged with overseeing the operation. Wikus isn’t one of the terrifyingly played white mercenaries of the company, but he is still a casual racist who openly refers to the aliens by the derogatory name of “Prawns”, and isn’t afraid to ruthlessly enforce human domination over the aliens. He’s the type of ordinary, unremarkable man that could easily have been a member of the Gestapo or indeed an enforcer of Apartheid.

The story of the film involves Wikus in a cathartic transformation that leads him to seeing things from the aliens’ perspective and ending up fighting alongside one of them who has been covertly preparing the way for them to be able to finally leave Earth. Whilst never becoming a fully good guy, Wikus is compelled by self interest to see things in a new way.

One thing that makes me really hopeful about this film is that it was, both visually and in the story, very original, but was made for what is, by the standards of Hollywood blockbusters, a modest $30 million. It proves that the current obsession with remakes, reboots and flogging dead horses in sci fi cinema really is a result of laziness rather than some total failure of creativity.

The problem I had with this film is that the director’s political position remains pretty opaque. The aliens themselves live in a disgusting rubbish dump, where they brawl, steal and get high on cat food. It’s difficult at first to view them sympathetically, which obviously raises questions about them as allegorical representations of black people. Ultimately, their hope for salvation from this situation lies in the actions of a (somewhat) enlightened outsider, and a lone intelligent leader. It’s at least implied in the film that the quasi-insectoid aliens operate in a caste-like way, and that most of their leaders are dead, leaving them shiftless slum dwellers.

But, on the other hand, it is necessary to make aliens feel alien, and as the film progresses we do get drawn into the world of District 9 and the daily grind and oppression faced by the aliens. All the action takes place in real world locations in Johannesburg. As director Blomkamp says:

“In my opinion, the film doesn’t exist without Jo’burg. It’s not like I had a story, and then I was trying to pick a city. It’s totally the other way around. I actually think Johannesburg represents the future. What I think the world is going to become looks like Johannesburg.”

The real problem lies with the depiction of the Nigerian gangsters who have moved in to exploit the aliens. They are brutal, exploitative and violent. Fair enough, they’re gangsters. What is pretty disgusting is that they are obsessed with gaining the power of the aliens, employing “witch doctors” and eating raw alien organs in pursuit of their technology. On top of this we’re told they run prostitution rings to “service the aliens sexually.” Black people who are superstitious and sexually voracious? Sounds depressingly familiar from over a century of Hollywood’s stereotypes.

Apartheid is constantly visually referenced in the film with signs such “For humans only” over much of the city. But the ability of the film to be any kind of an intelligent comment on Apartheid and current South Africa is pretty fatally undermined by the obviously questionable racial stereotypes it has of human black people.

However, apart from probably the other (relatively) low budget underdog Moon, District 9 definitely is the best sci fi release of the year, and one of the best in a good while. The evil corporation truly are racist capitalist and evil, and watching them getting attacked by incredible alien weaponry is pretty thrilling to watch. District 9 definitely shows it’s still possible to make an exciting, original and intelligent sci fi blockbuster without spending the GDP of a small country. My only qualification would be that it wasn’t as intelligent or politically progressive as I was hoping for. Its definitely one to go see in the cinema, as long as you’re thinking critically about some of the things it puts across, and really gives me hope for the future of science fiction film making.

CAPITALISM IS FREEDOM
It sounds like something out of 1984, but actually, the philosophy that the free market = freedom, will always = freedom and can only = freedom is just about the cornerstone of the entire organisation of our planet. Cause it’s true, right?
Wrong. The notion that capitalism automatically equals democracy, political freedom and human rights is, as Naomi Klein bluntly exposes using nothing but hard fact in her book The Shock Doctrine, actually, fucking bollocks.
During the 1970s and 80s, ideas first developed at the University of Chicago under the economist Milton Friedman began to take hold globally: that the unregulated free market, without interfering governments and state run services, was the only way forward. Such a system of economic ‘liberty’, it was said, would inevitably lead to democracy, prosperity and jobs for all.
Did it? Haha, no! This is capitalism, remember? In fact, it turns out that the Friedmanite economics of spending cuts, privatisation and market ‘liberalisation’ had such catastrophic effects for ordinary people, that the only way it could be introduced was through shock, confusion and mass disorientation – the tactics of Shock. And. Awe.
Whether it’s a war, terrorist attack, military coup, natural disaster or state terror – all have been used as cover while mass programmes of anti-working class policies have been rammed through.

This is the basic thesis that Naomi Klein examines in The Shock Doctrine, focusing on, among others, post-coup Chile, post-Soviet Russia, post-invasion Iraq, post-Katrina New Orleans, post-tsunami Sri Lanka, post-apartheid South Africa, post-Tiananmen China… see a theme developing here?
The book has recently been adapted into a documentary by acclaimed director Michael Winterbottom, which was screened on More4 last week. It’s not nearly as in depth or as captivating as the book, and in some parts feels a bit simplistic and disjointed, but is still a decent film which gets across Klein’s arguments effectively. The 80 minute documentary can be watched on the 4OD player for the next few weeks here:
http://www.channel4.com/programmes/the-shock-doctrine/4od
Oh, and if you want to see a bunch of Glasgow people (and me!) shouting ‘JUMP!’ at the Bank of England, better wait until erm… about 1:15:25 or so…

Alfonso Cuaran (of directing the third Harry Potter film fame!) and Klein have also made this short film on the Shock Doctrine, which actually sums up the basics of the book in about 6 minutes..

Review by Jack Ferguson.

As a filmmaker Quentin Tarantino has spent his career playing with some of the played out staples of conventional cinema, and trying to make them into something fresh and exciting. Previously he’s done it with gangsters and crime, blaxploitation and martial arts movies. His latest, Inglourious Basterds, is his take on the war movie, as well as the spaghetti western.

Basterds is a reminder of all the things Tarantino can do incredibly well-make a visually exciting, brilliantly scripted work of interlocking, exciting plots. It also contains all the things that give me reservations about him as a filmmaker-the casual sadism that actually led feminist groups to picket his last film, Death Proof.

Brad Pitt stars as Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds

The ads for the film pitched it as an action movie starring Brad Pitt, but this would appear to be more a function of the Hollywood star system and PR industry-Brad Pitt is the most famous so he goes top of the bill. Playing the leader of the eponymous Basterds, a team of Jewish American commandoes dropped into Nazi occupied France to commit atrocities and terrorise the Germans, Pitt is certainly not the star of the film.

In fact, very little of the film depicts actual warfare, which is probably because it takes place in a fantasy, alternate history version of World War 2, where vents in 1944 play out very differently from the way they actually did. The stronger of the plots contained within the film is about the sole survivor of the massacre of a hiding Jewish family, and the eventual opportunity she is given for revenge on the Nazis.

Though not technically a “Basterd”, Melanie Laurent plays the most important role in the film – a Jewish survivor out for revenge against the Nazis

The film is split into a number of acts that introduce the different elements in play that eventually come together in a triumphant climax. The opening chapter is given the title ‘Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France,’ which points out its homage to the westerns of Sergio Leone, which recurs throughout the whole film. In a scene reminiscent of so many spaghetti westerns, right down to the Ennio Morricone music, a farmer outside a remote cottage watches the approach of threatening presences from the horizon. In this case though they aren’t gunslingers on horseback, but Nazis on motorbikes.

The simultaneously terrifying and hilarious SS “Jew Hunter”, Hans Landa

In a 25 minute long scene that is one of the strongest in the whole film, he is then manipulated by the suavely menacing Col. Landa of the SS. The dialogue is brilliantly written, and takes advantage of the fact that the film actually has characters using their own language (Germans speak German, French French etc.) to build the tension. As the stoic farmer attempts to stonewall the ‘Jew Hunter’ as the Colonel freely admits he is called, he is slowly undone by Landa’s sinister genius. The climax of the scene is perhaps the only genuinely shocking bit of violence, as opposed to just unpleasant.

Christoph Waltz, apparently an Austrian TV actor being given his first big cinema break by Tarantino, is one of the real stars of the film, and delivers a brilliant performance as the truly hateful SS man.

It’s only after this that we actually meet the Basterds, as they are recruited by Pitt’s Lieutenant Aldo Raine, who gives them a speech about how they are going to scalp and terrorise the Nazis that reminds you of the George C Scott in Patton. As we see their antics behind enemy lines we also get to learn how they are infuriating a slightly cartoonish version of Hitler.

“The Bear Jew” – a particularly sadistic basterd who likes to beat Nazis to death with a baseball bat. Probably the best thing Eli Roth will ever do

One of the elements that left me uneasy in the film was Raine’s second in command, Sergeant Donnie Donnowitz, known to the Germans as ‘the bear Jew’ for battering in the heads of prisoners with a baseball bat. The character is played by Eli Roth, previously most noticed for directing the torture porn horror ‘Hostel’ films. After beating a prisoner to death he is portrayed as a little unhinged, straining to shout a baseball commentary on his own violence. But at nearly all other times in the film this seeming insight into why he behaves this way is lost, and he acts just like any other solid dependable war movie man.

The other thing that is discomforting is the little flashes we get of Tarantino’s misogyny. I do think he’s a great director, but he also undoubtedly has some serious issues with women. Although in this film he never goes as far as he does in some other films, there are scenes of torture and murder in this film that leave you wondering about what is going on in his head.

Melanie Laurent prepares herself for righteous vengeance against the Nazi high command

The two stories come together in two separate plots to assassinate Hitler and the Nazi top brass at a premiere of a Goebbels directed propaganda film. Tarantino takes the chance to express his love of cinema in this, with one character explaining why she puts a German director on the sign despite her hatred of the Germans with “In France we respect directors.” In the films climax the cinema itself is destroyed by igniting highly flammable film, consuming the Nazis who have defiled it with a puerile propaganda piece.

Special mention should be made of another practical newcomer Melanie Laurent, who plays the cinema owner plotting revenge on the Nazis, and Daniel Bruhl, familiar to socialist cinema fans from films like The Edukators and Goodbye, Lenin!. Bruhl plays a German soldier who is the star of the propaganda film, and is a Nazi celebrity for his war exploits. He practically stalks Laurent’s character, but this is in fact what gives her the opportunity for revenge. During the premiere, we appear to see Bruhl’s character troubled by himself on screen, but perhaps disappointingly this is only hinted at and we never understand him in greater depth.

At its best, a war film can really examine the logic and meaning of human violence. This film is not profound in that way. For a long time the Second World War has been the arena where boys can legitimately play out fantasies of violence because no one can deny the Nazi’s evil. Indeed WW2 has been used again and again to try and explain less justifiable wars because it is perhaps one the few wars that you could argue was just. I’ve often wondered if this will continue as it fades from living memory. However, perhaps the fear should be that, as the WW2 generation finally disappears, it will turn into more of a mental playground disjointed from historical reality.

However, that shouldn’t detract that Inglourious Basterds is still a great film despite its flaws. In the same way that The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West are great films, it is a brilliantly scripted and shot suspenseful thriller that’s well worth a watch.