Beautiful Feet

They had me at "dystopian;" I changed my movie plans immediately. Equals (dir. Drake Doremus, 2015)   is a surprisingly successful (but not perfect) movie with the poutily pretty Nicholas Hoult and solid Kristen Stewart as futurish Romeo and Juliet types (or are they?...), in a world that tonally, although not visually, echoes the one in Children of Men.  The story, shot largely in Japan, revolves around a post-apocalyptic world where life has been re-created, supposedly a post–common cold and –cancer utopia, but is threatened by SOS, a gene defect whose arc is like real-life's experience with HIV-AIDS. Social constraints swiftly eradicate those with "the bug," called "Switched On Syndrome." There is a far-flung place, The Peninsula, where degenerates live, embracing social bonds, but it is a no man's land that, if emotions were present, would give the people the heebie-jeebies, so adverse are they to the thought of social contact with any c...

Oh my lord, Maggie Smith is wonderful. In The Lady in the Van (dir. Nicholas Hytner, 2015), she plays Miss Mary (Margaret? mentally insert winky emoticon here) Shepherd with pathos and wit in this 'mostly true' tale, set in 1970s London. There is lots of subtext about certain classes of people being outside of the law—gays, the homeless—and those ostensibly living within social constraints—nuns, neighbours, classical musicians—but the film turns a lot of these assumptions on their heads. Alex Jennings plays the film-contained writer, Alan Bennett, with restrained wryness, although I found Jim Broadbent uncharacteristically underwhelming. Lest I provide spoilers, I will speak vaguely. The story contains  theological themes of absolution and ablution, and the van becomes her sepulchre, both as a living coffin for her sins and a literal one later, after she has experienced those sacraments. While the end would probably be difficult to create any less cheesily, there is enough g...