Five Eco-themed Movies for a Rainy Summer Weekend
Contemplating a summer weekend weather report featuring clouds and thunderstorms, like I am?
Here's the upside: It's the perfect excuse to forego all that virtuous outdoor exercise we're supposed to be getting this time of year, and hang out at home watching movies instead.
If you'd like to program some global warming-tinged or otherwise eco-themed flicks (some more broadly than others, admittedly), here are some of my favorites:
In yet another post-eco-apocalypse scenario, it's "Year of the City" 2274. Lawman Logan tracks down "runners" trying to escape the rule that prevents overpopulation: Euthenasia at age 30. Until he suddenly finds himself on the wrong side of the hunt...
Okay, dark. But "Logan's Run" is more fun than it has any right to be, thanks to being a near-perfect gem of 1970s dystopic sci-fi: big environmental and ethical themes, a few goofy set pieces, and zappy guns -- all wrapped up in scenes of braless, minidressed female and male beauties cavorting with a youthful Michael York. It's set to a great minimalist score by Jerry Goldsmith (years before Philip Glass became Hollywood's go-to minimalist composer).
2. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
In this gorgeous, suspenseful, and child-friendly animated film, a bright, brave girl uses all her wits, intelligence, and athletic skills to face down dual crises. One is the invasion of her peaceful homeland valley by a rampaging army that's determined to suck the kingdom dry of natural resources. The other is the mystery of how the grotesque giant insect creatures in the world beyond, which has long been contaminated and ruined by toxic pollution, are none-the-less crucial to her people's survival.
The most outright environmentalist of Japanese anime master Hayao Miyazaki's eco-manga oeuvre.
3. Atanarjuat | The Fast Runner (2001)
This is a myth-meets-thriller art house film; if you like that sort of thing, then this is the sort of thing you're going to like.
The first feature film written, producted, directed and performed by Canadian Inuit, Atanarjuat is eco-related mainly because the gorgeously photographed Arctic landscape, and the traditional Inuit culture featured in the story, are both are under threat global warming's destructive impacts.
The lives of CIA agents, sheiks from oil-rich nations, their impoverished guest workers, DC politicians and ambitious oil industry insiders cross and weave in one of the decade's most powerful political thrillers. Features George Clooney, Matt Damon, Amanda Peet, Chris Cooper, Christopher Plummer, and even a glance of William Hurt.
WALL-E is a very funny, modestly hopeful vision of one logical endpoint to our use-it-and-forget-it (and in the case of our bodies, use-it-or-lose-it) consumer culture.
This kid-friendly choice seamlessly mixes Buster Keaton-inspired physical comedy, social satire, an eco-preservation parable, space opera of a sort, and a love story into one and a half very enjoyable hours.
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