The Screengrab : office space

The Best & Worst Get Rich Quick Schemes In Cinema History! (Part One)

Andrew Osborne — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:00:00 GMT

President Obama is two weeks away from the end of his first 100 days as Commander-In-Chief, and it’s been a wild ride so far, what with all the pirates, puppies and Queen-touching...but naturally, the administration’s main focus has been moving heaven and earth to ensure that nothing will prevent Bank of America executives from receiving my tax money while they charge me 24% interest on my credit card debt, thus ensuring I’ll never be able to afford any of the hundreds of empty, overpriced luxury condos in my neighborhood...because, as we all know, if the day ever comes when bankers and real estate developers make less than a zillion percent profit every second of the day, no matter how badly or unethically they run their businesses, then the terrorists win! (Or something like that...frankly, I’m just happy gas isn’t four dollars a gallon anymore. Hooray, bad economy!)

Anyway, the point is, now that Bernie Madoff has all the world’s money buried in a treasure chest somewhere on Skull Island, Americans have finally realized that money can’t buy happiness, and at long last we’re no longer trying to keep up with the Joneses, but instead living within our means, valuing the simple pleasures of life and judging people on their character, rather than the size of their wallets or the labels on their clothes.

Nah, just kidding: in truth, we’re all still cheating on our taxes, begging for bailouts and building bigger and better Ponzi schemes, because in the words of Danny Devito’s crooked fence in David Mamet’s Heist, “Everybody needs money. That’s why they call it money.” And so, in that altruistic spirit, your pals here at the Screengrab hereby present our very own economic stimulus package: THE BEST & WORST GET RICH QUICK SCHEMES IN CINEMA HISTORY!

OFFICE SPACE (1999)

By the time Mike Judge’s half-brilliant Office Space gets around to its get-rich-quick scheme, its best moments are behind it. It starts out so well, with the story of a chronically bored office drone (Ron Livingston) who finds himself – after an accidental dose of post-hypnotic suggestion – completely incapable of giving a shit about his job. This is Office Space at its best, a note-perfect satire of cubicle life enlightened hugely by the appearance of a character who upends the whole idea of consequence and thus makes for some of the most viciously barbed gags of its day. Once it gets around to Livingston and his colleagues hatching a Superman III-inspired, computer-aided plan to steal millions by shaving half-pennies off of every transaction, it becomes more or less a goofy caper comedy, which, while well-executed, can’t hold a candle to its truly inspired first half. Still, as get-rich-quick schemes go, it’s a classic, and damned if it doesn’t almost work. (LP)

HEAT (1995)

Heat famously brought Al Pacino and Robert De Niro together on-screen – if only for one diner conversation and a climactic chase sequence – yet it’s Michael Mann’s direction that elevates this cat-and-mouse saga to near-greatness. The story revolves around the efforts of Pacino’s cop to catch De Niro’s crook, two kindred warriors on opposite sides of the law. Though this dynamic is, to put it mildly, hackneyed, Mann’s film is an energized, invigorated work that recalls Jean-Pierre Melville’s noirs, which also focused on peerlessly cool lawmen and thieves whose dedication to customs, habits and ethical codes leaves them isolated. As the criminal struggling to reconcile personal desires for happiness with instincts that warn against being something he’s not, De Niro delivers his last great performance. Pacino’s trademark quiet-screaming overacting and a few too many narrative diversions prove occasionally aggravating, but De Niro’s superb turn helps offset these slight missteps, as does the thrilling in-broad-daylight centerpiece robbery that cements Heat’s status in the pantheon of heist films. (NS)

OCEAN’S 11, 12, 13… (1960, 2001, etc.)

The original 1960 Ocean’s 11’s best get-rich quick scheme didn’t take place onscreen; it was the Rat Pack’s all night, every night ring-a-ding-ding showcase at the Sands while shooting the film on location in Las Vegas. Sure, knocking over five casinos during a blackout on New Year’s Eve has a certain flair to it, but there’s nothing like working 22 hours a day for six straight weeks to really fatten the wallet. In 2001, a Frat Pack led by George Clooney and Brad Pitt staged their own Vegas heist, lifting $150 million from the Bellagio vault with the help of a Chinese acrobat, a Cockney explosives expert mysteriously played by Don Cheadle, and the always indispensible Elliott Gould. The remake took in even more than $150 million at the box office, which led to two further get-rich-quick schemes: the winky, self-referential Ocean’s 12, a sort of spiritual cousin to The Cannonball Run II, and Ocean’s 13, which proved once again that the death knell of a franchise sounds a lot like Al Pacino yelling. (SVD)

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)

Part of the point of John Huston's classic is that prospecting for gold isn't actually an easy or quick way to strike it rich at all, but once you've laid out for the tools and traveled all the way out into the middle of the Mexican desert and gotten used to the sight of Walter Huston jeering at you without his dentures, you're more than likely to stick with it until you've got something to show for it. After that, all you have to worry about is whether your paranoid, half-mad partner is going to be able to convince himself that you're plotting to steal his share of the "goods" so that he can feel justified in knocking you off and helping himself to your share. Whatever moral and practical defects can be found in Bogart's plan, it has to be said that he's a sage and a prince compared to the hippopotamus-toothed bandit played by the immortal Alfonso Bedoya, whose master plan involves decapitating Bogart and stealing his burros, after he's thrown away those saddlebags filled with the funny yellow powder that's weighing them down. (PN)

Click Here For Part Two, Three, Four, Five & Six

Contributors: Andrew Osborne, Leonard Pierce, Nick Schager, Scott Von Doviak, Phil Nugent

Trailer Review: Extract

Paul Clark — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 16:00:00 GMT

Back in 2007, Mike Judge’s Idiocracy became something of a cause célèbre around these parts following its dumping by Fox’s powers that be. So the good news is that it looks like Judge’s follow-up Extract will be getting a real theatrical release. The bad news is that it doesn’t look to be nearly as much fun as Idiocracy was, partly because it appears to be a whole lot more run-of-the-mill. Despite a funny cast- Jason Bateman still has plenty of Arrested Development goodwill to burn, and Ben Affleck gets points for trying something different- this looks like Judge just moved Office Space a couple of rungs down the economic ladder to address the trials of a factory manager. Also, would’ve been nice to find out what that instantly forgettable title is all about. Of course, Miramax trailers (even in this post-Weinstein era) tend to be pretty bland, and it’s entirely possible that they just want to sell this as yet another time-wasting comedy about work and with plenty of jokes about testicular trauma ("Ow, My Balls!") and smoking weed. But sadly, it’s just as likely that Judge learned an unfortunate lesson from the Idiocracy release debacle, and he’s just trying to keep working. Then again, Office Space's trailer was only mildly amusing, and look how well that worked out.

DVD Digest for February 3, 2009

Paul Clark — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 15:00:00 GMT

This week, a whole mess of “classic” movies flood the DVD market, which is good, since the recent releases coming out this week aren't all that impressive.

Heading up the classics crop is the Being There 30th Anniversary Deluxe Edition (Warner, also Blu-Ray). The good news is that the Blu-Ray disc will contain a number of intriguing special features, including an alternate ending. The bad news is that most of these features aren’t going to be on the standard DVD, so if you don’t have Blu-Ray, you’re sort of stuck. Still, definitely a movie that should be part of any good movie lover’s collection, no matter what form. And speaking of Peter Sellers movies, this week also brings the Peter Sellers 5-Film Collection (Lionsgate), which includes I’m All Right, Jack!, The Smallest Show on Earth, Carlton-Browne of the F.O., Two-Way Stretch, and Heavens Above!. Likewise, there’s a similar box set devoted to the work of Sellers’ mentor Alec Guinness- Alec Guinness 5-Film Collection (Lionsgate)- includes The Lavender Hill Mob, Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Man in the White Suit, The Captain’s Paradise, and The Ladykillers (a rather better selection than the Sellers set, I’d say).

More classics being released this week: Yentl Extended Director’s Edition (MGM), now featuring 30% more Streisand close-ups; the musical phenomenon RENT: Filmed Live on Broadway (Sony, also Blu-Ray), Friday the 13th, Parts 1-3, Uncut Deluxe Editions (Paramount, Part 1 also Blu-Ray), to tie in with the upcoming remake; the animated family film Oliver & Company 20th Anniversary Edition (Disney); John Carpenter’s wicked awesome Assault on Precinct 13 Restored Collector’s Edition (Image, also Blu-Ray); Richard Donner’s Inside Moves (Lionsgate); and the enticingly titled Silverado Single-Disc Version (Sony). Finally, Sony is releasing their second wave of their “Martini Movies” series, with this week’s releases being Getting Straight, Our Man in Havana, Five, Vibes, and Gumshoe.

On the recent releases, this week brings Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno (Genius Products, also Blu-Ray); Michael Cera in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (Sony, also Blu-Ray); Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah in The Secret Life of Bees (Fox, also Blu-Ray); the wine-centric comedy Bottle Shock (Fox); and Everybody Wants to Be Italian (Lionsgate), the movie that tries to prove that, uh, everybody wants to be Italian. Also, this week brings the long awaited release of Private Valentine: Blonde and Dangerous (Sony), yet another failed attempt at movie stardom by Jessica Simpson. After all, if you want to be a big-screen star, it helps if your movies actually get released in theatres.

This week’s TV on DVD releases include Bewitched Season 7 (Sony), Colombo Mystery Movie Collection: 1990 (Universal), and The Partridge Family Season 4 (Sony).

Finally, Fox is unloading four comedy favorites on Blu-Ray this week: Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite, Office Space, and Sideways.

Movies for a New Depression: "Kabluey" (2008)

Phil Nugent — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Kabluey, which was recently released o DVD after a brief run in theaters, is supposed to be a comedy, which given the state that its characters are in makes a statement right there. Almost ten years ago, Office Space captured an economic landscape where people had to rely on a soldierly camaraderie to keep from going insane at their shit jobs. In Kabluey, there's no camaraderie: an invisible bubble seems to have been lowered around each individual character, cutting off their ability to reach out or even empathize with their fellow sufferers, and it's everyone for himself. The movie starts with Leslie (Lisa Kudrow), who is as good as marooned in her cluttered Texas home, trying to watch over her two small sons while her husband is off in Iraq, getting his tour of duty endlessly extended. If Leslie doesn't go back to work, she's about toe get her health benefits cut off, but she can't afford day care, so she reluctantly calls in her husband's brother, Salman, a doofus and loser who is played by the movie's writer-director, Scott Prendergast. He, in turn, answers a job offer and finds himself reporting to a hollowed-out building--construction was completed just before the Internet company that paid for it hit the skids--where a harried woman (Conchata Ferrell) explains that he's part of a modest boondoggle, being used to burn off cash set aside to attract attention to the doomed company. In quick order, she stuffs him into a blue , top-heavy, foam-rubber costume that makes him look like a penis at half-mast and deposits him on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, with a pile of flyers announcing the availability of office space tucked under his arm. She's almost out of sight before it occurs to her to stop the car and yell, "You need a ride back?"

This is Scott Prendergast's first film, aside from some shorts and a small acting role in the instant-punchline Paris Hilton vehicle The Hottie and the Nottie, which probably taught him a great deal about the demoralizing nature of taking money for thankless work perforned in the course of an ill-conceived venture. He's not exactly a natural, either as a director or a leading actor. As a director, he tends to push too hard, going for broadly zany visual effects; as an actor, he leaps at the chance to give himself an opening scene here that may give viewers the mistaken idea that his character is meant to be some sort of medium-end functioning autistic, though it develops that he's just supposed to be "quirky" and a little withdrawn. But Prendergast has caught onto two of the best-kept secrets in movies: one, that you can forgive a movie a lot if it's constructed around the right central image, and two, that it's hard to go wrong with a big, stupid-looking costume. The recurring image of the poor shmuck encased in that sweltering suit, alone on a deserted highway, his foam-rubber head hanging in the Texas sun, does for Kabluey what George Stevens seemed to think a shot of the family house framed in the center of the wide screen would do for Giant.) The movie has other attractions, such as Christine Taylor as a well-heeled mother who hires the corporate logo to entertain at a kid's birthday party, and Teri Garr as a woman who lost her money in the company and is last seen gingerly poking the (abandoned) costume with a stick. And Lisa Kudrow is terrific, as is her wont: her ability to suggest a mind that's whirling at top speed trying to think her way out of a set of circumstances so crushing that it would lay a less resilient person down for the count could make her the movies' face of a new depression. Maybe it's time for somebody to launch an all-girl remake of I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang.

Morning Deal Report: Mike Judge Tries Again

Scott Von Doviak — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:30:00 GMT

Mike Judge hasn’t had much luck with his live action big-screen work to date. Sure, Office Space is one of the most beloved comedies of all time now, but its theatrical release was not a success. That is, unless you compare it to the theatrical run of Idiocracy, which could only have been measured with a stopwatch. I’m not sure, but I may be the only person outside Mr. Judge’s immediate family to see both of these movies during their brief stints on the big screen, so it’s a safe bet I’ll be lining up for Extract, Judge’s latest effort, should it be fortunate enough to make its way into theaters. According to Variety, Ben Affleck “is in negotiations to play an ambulance-chasing lawyer in the pic, which centers on a flower extract factory owner (Jason Bateman) who's dealing with workplace problems and a streak of bad luck, including his wife's affair with a gigolo.”

Somewhat less likely, given its low ratings during its television run, is a big screen Veronica Mars vehicle. Creator Rob Thomas and star Kristen Bell haven’t ruled it out, however. Per Entertainment Weekly, “ ‘Kristen and I ran into each other, and we did discuss a Veronica movie,’ confirms Thomas, who says he has also had ‘a few conversations’ with Mars executive producer Joel Silver.”

Danny Boyle has found a distributor for his latest, Slumdog Millionaire. Variety reports Fox Searchlight will release the film “based on a true story about an impoverished Indian youth who improbably strikes it rich with an appearance on the Subcontinental version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”

Related:
Brawndo Over Brains
No Forgetting Kristen Bell

That Guy!: Stephen Root

Leonard Pierce — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 19:30:00 GMT

Okay, that's enough of the artsy-fartsy European creeps. Let's get back to America! And they don't come much American-er than Big Steve Root, one of the most prolific character actors in the business today. For a guy whose first film role featured him unseen in a toilet (although, considering the movie was Crocodile Dundee II, maybe it's just as well), Stephen Root has a rather highbrow acting background: for years prior to the kick-off of a remarkably rich film and television career, he was a respected member of the National Shakespeare Company. His first major recognition as an actor came when he portrayed the flighty, meddling billionaire Jimmy James as part of the high-powered cast of NewsRadio, and even with dozens of film roles to his credit, he's probably best-known -- and best-paid -- for that role and his voice-over work on King of the Hill, where he plays, among other roles, the hapless Bill Dauterive. A number of directors have enjoyed his work enough to make him a regular member of their repertory companies, particularly Mike Judge, Kevin Smith, and the Coen Brothers; Root's ability to play extremely eccentric roles while never giving the same characterization twice makes him especially sought-after by directors who specialize in character roles, and Root admitted in a recent interview that being killed by the Coens (as he, or at least his character, is in No Country for Old Men) has been the high point of his career to date. Having just celebrated his 56th birthday, Root -- who, to be perfectly honest, looks like he's been playing a 56-year-old for the lion's share of his career -- no doubt has plenty of years ahead of him both on the big screen, playing his specialty of suit-wearing middlemen who have something extremely wrong with them, and in voice-over, where he's proven to have exceptional talent. And with most of his comedic work for television widely available on DVD, a case can be made for Stephen Root as the preeminent comic character actor of the 1990s.

Where to see Stephen Root at his best:

BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (1992)

There are two kinds of Buffy fans in the world: those who liked the movie and wondered why the subsequent TV show took itself so damn seriously, and those who hated the movie and look at it as an embarrassing shell from whence the brilliant television series emerged. Unfortunately for those of us in the former camp, Joss Whedon -- who created both -- is in the latter camp and all but disowns the movie. But one thing cannot be disputed: the series would have been much improved if Whedon had seen fit to include Stephen Root as the rambling, hilariously clueless Principal Gary Murray, who made the end credits of the film so enjoyable.

OFFICE SPACE (1999)

Outside of NewsRadio and King of the Hill, Office Space forms the third jewel in Stephen Root's crown of 1990s comedy dominance. No performance of his is more memorable, more purely distilled, more quintessentially Root -- in fact, Mike Judge built the entire movie around Root's performance from a series of animated shorts he did years earlier for MTV. While there's plenty to love about this subversive take on the deadening grind of white-collar work, nothing holds the movie together like a single red stapler, and no character is more central to the plot, from beginning to end, than the psychotically ineffectual Milton Waddams. An all-time great comic role.

O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? (2000)

We hate to keep bringing up members of the Coen Brothers Touring Company in this space, but what can we tell you? The boys know a good character actor when they see one. Stephen Root, in his first film with the Coens, has a small but unforgettable role: edging away from comedy and into (literal) tragedy, playing a variant on Tiresius as the recording studio operator and radio station man who first discovers the hidden genius of the Soggy Bottom Boys. Although Root has some funny lines in his scenes, it's his nearly-wordless performance in responding in a transport of bliss to "Man of Constant Sorrow" that is so astounding here.

Conglomerated Baddies: The 22 Most Evil Corporations in Movie History, Part 4

Peter Smith — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 18:00:00 GMT

Hudsucker Industries, THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (1994)

The Coen brothers, being involved in the film industry, have gotten quite adept at portraying powerful and sinister men in high places. And they don’t get much more powerful (or higher — forty-four floors, or forty-five if you count the mezzanine) than Sidney Mussburger. Paul Newman’s cigar-chomping, calculating executive wants to assume control of Hudsucker Industries (best imagined as the Wham-O Corporation if it managed to take over the world), but he can’t do it unless the comically compliant board holds on to the majority of its shares. To ensure that happens, he needs a sap to take over the presidency of the company and run it into the ground, and finds one in the sincere-but-doltish Norville Barnes. Aside from the greediness of their board of directors, Hudsucker Industries’ evil nature is best portrayed in the ridiculously strict policies in their mailroom, their shady accounting practices (as seen in this clip), and the fact that they seem to employ Satan to repaint their office windows.

Initech, OFFICE SPACE (1999)

For the first brilliant hour of its runtime, before it gets sappy and turns into a fairly typical heist comedy, Mike Judge’s Office Space is perhaps the most perfect corporate satire ever made. It’s not that the data-processing outfit Initech is particularly iniquitous; they don’t despoil the environment, employ slave labor, exert unseemly influence over the government, or start wars. All they do is crush the souls of their employees on a daily basis. Office Space perfectly captures the thousand daily humiliations of cubicle life, from the pointless memos about adding a cover sheets to your TPS reports, to desperately trying to hang onto your dignity in the form of a red stapler. The beauty of Initech (and of Tchotchke’s its corporate dining partner) is that it scarcely needs to exaggerate anything, from the relentlessly ingratiating tone of manager Gary Cole to the inability of the efficiency experts to remember anyone’s name. Wherever you work, Judge says, this is your life — and short of totally rewiring your brain, there is no escape.

Connex, SYRIANA (2005)

It’s no great secret that greed fuels American interest in the Middle East, and that the same motivation helps shape U.S. government policy there (see "War, Iraq"). Stephen Gaghan’s Syriana helped us understand the domino-like cause-and-effect cycle that works over great distances in today’s international capitalist kleptocracy. In response to losing drilling rights to the Chinese, Connex, the film’s fictional oil conglomerate, uses bribes to enter into shady mergers with Kazakh oil barons and shows a general willingness to do anything that keeps a good face on their company and its significant financial holdings. When lawyer Bennett Holiday (Jeffrey Wright), is sent to investigate them, they present him a mountain of paperwork and a stone-faced façade. Holiday manages to trace wire transfers back to a Connex employee, who's quickly scapegoated as a greedy free agent. But when this isn’t enough to satisfy the Department of Justice, Holiday receives inside information that places blame on his own boss’ involvement, absolving Connex and serving his own chances for advancement in the process. So much for the good guys. . . In the midst of contract talks and board room meetings we see sabotage, torture, political assassination, debilitating poverty, accidental death and suicide bombings, all of which trace back in one way or another to the oil giants and the decisions they make in the interest of massive profit.

Brown and Williamson, THE INSIDER (1999)

When Michael Mann told the real-life story of Jeffrey Wigand, the man who exposed cigarette giant Brown and Williamson, he created enough tension to make exciting a film that revolves around the possibility of an interview. He successfully casted Russell Crowe as a four-eyed nine-to-fiver. And he got the last restrained and respectable performance out of Al Pacino. Maybe he was inspired; it would be difficult to find a more devious or devilish corporate entity than Big Tobacco. As the film shows, in between Jeffrey Wigand’s firing and the first airdate of his infamous 60 Minutes interview he experienced verbal threats, legal threats, email threats and the not-so-subtle hint of a bullet left in his mailbox. Brown and Williamson doesn’t stop there, getting a restraining to prevent Wigand from testifying against them, threatening CBS with a multi-billion-dollar lawsuit and launching a 500-page-dossier smear campaign against Wigand. Mann does an excellent job of building the stress levels to portray just how alone this man is against a giant corporation with a very clear agenda.

The Umbrella Corporation, RESIDENT EVIL (2002)

It wasn’t enough for the Umbrella corporation to sell you your laptop and your antibiotics and your appointment at the clinic. Everyone knows real money doesn’t lie in honey-lemon lozenges. Real money lies in creating viral weaponry for the military. The problem is, you really have to do it in secret — like six floors underground. It’s also handy if nobody questions why your labs are under the city and why 500 people are now living underground, but such is the 21st century. With that kind of population, it’s best to run the whole place with a giant (evil) computer. That way it can impersonally trap everyone inside to die agonizing deaths if a deadly viral agent happens to leak out. Is it really the Umbrella Corporation’s fault that the T-Virus turned all those dead schmoes into zombies? C’mon. With a cute logo like that? Accidents happen. While we here at Screengrab endorse any role wherein Milla Jovovich kills zombies in a slip dress, and we whole-heartedly support roles where Michelle Rodriguez acts surly and carries guns, we hereby nominate the fictitious Umbrella Corporation as one sick mutated puppy.

Allcom, PAYCHECK (2003)

In Terminator 2, Joe Morton played a well-meaning scientist whose invention turned the world into a robot-run wasteland. In Paycheck, Morton played a well-meaning FBI agent tracking down a scientist (Ben Affleck) whose mercenary invention has the potential to turn the world into a nuclear wasteland. How Morton played the role without a gigantic deja-vu smirk on his face is a minor miracle. As evil corporations go, Allcom doesn't seem to have many employees besides smarmy Aaron Eckhart, notorious B-movie villain Colm Feore, and obvious love interest Uma Thurman. Nor does it seem to have a solid business plan: nuclear war would, presumably, put an end to the profits generated by the build-up itself. Two years later, Eckhart was hawking tobacco in Thank You For Smoking, a fair-enough lateral leap.

— Paul Clark, Pazit Cahlon, Bilge Ebiri, Phil Nugent, Leonard Pierce, Vadim Rizov, Bryan Whitefield

The Rep Report (October 11 - 28)

Peter Smith — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 17:00:00 GMT

NEW YORK: The Brooklyn Academy of Music gives the borough's literary poster boy a chance to display his wide-ranging taste in movies with the program Jonathan Lethem Selects (October 15 - November 19). Those looking for hard-to-find rough gems will be especially attracted to the "Hitman Double Feature" on October 22, with Don Siegel's The Hitman (1958) paired with the taut B classic Murder by Contract (1958), well directed by Irving Lerner and starring Vince Edwards as an icy fellow who's putting himself through college by performing mob hits on the side. On November 12, a screening of the gritty seventies Dustin Hoffman vehicle Straight Time will be followed by a discussion between Lethem and the movie's director, Ulu Grosbard.

LOS ANGELES: The Los Angeles County of Museum of Art presents Life and So Much More: The Films of Abbas Kiarostami (October 12 - 27), with ten features and three triple bills of shorts by the leading figure in Iranian cinema. A great opportunity for the curious or the benighted to catch up.

BERKELEY: Attention, Leone freaks: Once upon a Time in Widescreen: The Films of Sergio Leone (October 12 - 28) has everything you could want — the Dollars trilogy, Once Upon a Time in the West, Once Upon a Time in America, and the messed-up but lovable Duck, You Sucker, starring Rod Steiger as a Mexican bandit and James Coburn as a wayward IRA soldier — in the format you love, with many of them shown in restored prints.

WASHINGTON, D.C.: We may not have a labor movement in this country anymore, but that's no reason not to kick back and celebrate the 2007 DC Labor Filmfest (October 11 - 17) at the AFI Silver Theater. "Organized and presented by the Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO, the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute and the American Film Institute," the festival presents "an array of new films and beloved classics about work and workers," including a mini-fest of works by the living soul of socially committed British kitchen-sink drama, Ken Loach. (The selection includes Loach's Los Angeles movie, Bread and Roses and his little-screened documentary on the 1980 British miners' strike, Which Side Are You On?) The program also includes the Japanese comedy Hula Girls, the German documentary Our Daily Bread, and that one American movie in a billion that says something about working for a living in a way that most people seem able to relate to: Mike Judge's Office Space.

— Phil Nugent