Film Land - Dave

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Edited by Robert Beach

As I write this, it’s August 1^st, and here in America, that means one major thing: the general election is fully under way. The Republican and Democratic national conventions are finished; the candidates were chosen; in three months, we get to see who’s going to be President: the qualified woman or the fascist reality star. Understandably, such a choice weighs heavy on one’s mind as we barrel our way towards November 5^th, but it also made me remember a very bizarre 1993 political comedy that’s become strangely relevant to this day and age called Dave. 

Directed by Ivan Reitman, the director of Ghostbusters, the film stars Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, and Kevin Dunn and stands as one of the best installments of the relaxed idealism that informed a lot of ‘90s political fiction such as The American President or The West Wing. What makes Dave unique amid the era and why it’s all so important right now is the film’s central hook: what if someone with no political experience or knowledge of any kind became president. 

Movie Monthly - Real Steel

So far, all the future film’s we’ve discussed have followed along to the idea of a very distant future.  The defining aspect of them has been that society, as we know it, has been completely swept away due to some great calamity and replaced with a wholly new system of government.  This has mainly acted as a way to up-jump the importance of the futuristic cyber sports within the world of the film.  Most sports movies are fine to let the stakes simply BE winning or losing a sporting event but in the realms of sci-fi, especially nerdier sci-fi, it’s weirdly suspected that an audience won’t necessarily engage with a story unless the stakes are Earth shattering.  So, this week we’re changing it up with a film that’s set in a not too distant future approximation of our world where the only real change is that we’ve invented fighting bots to take up the act of boxing and wrestling.  I’m speaking of course of the underappreciated 2011 gem Real Steel, starring Hugh Jackman.