The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, November 18-24
Repo Man (1984)
Directed by Alex Cox
Cox’s punk clarion call is perpetual counter-programming. News networks, cheap religious proselytizing, bad music and malevolent authority won’t ever go away, but we can always seek refuge in Repo Man. Though it lists sci-fi action, cold war noir and dark comedy in its ingredient list, Repo Man is a mohawked Horatio Alger story first and foremost. Otto (Emilio Estevez, perfect) becomes a repo man not just because he needs money, but because he needs agency and freedom from his parents, his lowlife friends’ artificial politics and capitalist factions that require him to wear a uniform, to pick sides. The repo men are his guide into the world of self-actuation, his guide to becoming someone who needn’t rely on a cut-throat system. Someone who can pour beer on the floor from a glowing chariot to a higher consciousness. Repo Man posits that sarcasm and a refusal to make the machinery of vile conservative governments work are far more important than godliness, which is as true in 2015 as it was in 1984 and as it will be in a hundred years. Scout Tafoya (November 21, 22, 12pm at the Nitehawk)
